It is indeed very distressing and disturbing to see how much hue and cry was created over the demolitions of illegal houses in Baina.
A few years back a clean drive for Baina was undertaken after dismantling the vice infected areas where all types of illegalities and irregularities took place. The forbidden name of Baina had been restored to some extent of its former glory. But now once again it is in the limelight for all the wrong reasons as every politician is trying to gaining mileage. Imagine the politician coming from Karnataka all the way to support his people who have made Goa their second home by hook or crook. To get rid of all illegal houses, be it of Goans or the migrants should be the top priorities of the authorities. Whether they lived there for 4 years or 40 years is not the reason or criteria to make something illegal into legal. Has anyone verified these people’s credentials or background of their existence in Baina? It is but logical that anyone living in Goa for number of years will definitely muster over the language and the culture, but that does not give him/her the title of a Goan.
Goa has lost thousands of hectares of land at prime spots be it in Baina, Chimbel or Moti Dongor in Margao where the illegal houses have cropped up over the years– thanks to the vote bank politics. And today the same politicians use these yardsticks to rehabilitate them at the cost of the true Goans who will have no place for themselves to build an extra room in near future.
The Goan communidades have been usurped by the successive governments and today suddenly Goans are finding difficulty to own a piece of land. For example the communidade land of Nagoa in Salcete has been acquired by the government which would have been enough to take care of the Nagoa villagers for next so many generations to come. But today the village of Nagoa is finding itself chocked with migrants and without any land mass available for future development or housing, we shall have a hell of a time for our future generations.
Goa being a small state should have been a model state as far as land management is concerned; instead Goa’s politicians have rampaged on every inch available to them and have amassed wealth for themselves and to their kin. Neither CBI nor any anti-graft agency can ever touch them. The builders lobby has aggravated the situation as they went on plundering the goan villages at will.
Coming back to the point of demolitions in Baina, are we to believe in real sense that niz Goemkar are still living in those illegal houses which are in the firing line? I doubt very much! There is definitely no true Goan family who lives in illegally owned houses. All those who claim to be Goans and seeking rehabilitation package are the migrants themselves who have made Goa their second home. Migrants’ contribution to the Goa’s development should not be an alibi to justify wrongs. They have worked and they have earned and made a living. They have their own homeland from where they came and they belong to. Do we have any survey in place which accounts for these settlers? It’s high time we take stock of this situation, least the day will come when all the migrants’ families will have a claim over all the vacant land in Goa and we Goans will be just made a laughing stalk.”
