Parting with unsweet sorrow
The Mormugao Port Trust (MPT), the body that administers Goa’s port, has a long history; it is one of India’s oldest major ports. MPT has had several chairpersons over the years, and their relationships with the state government of the day and the people of the state have seen ups and downs. But never, ever, before the tenure of Praveen Agarwal, whose term as MPT Chairman just expired, have ties touched their nadir as they have at present.
This is unfortunate. A port exists for its hinterland and for the people who live there. Administrative issues do create tensions – minor and major – from time to time, but relationships should never deteriorate to the point where they begin to resemble a ‘fight-to-the-finish’. That is like cutting one’s nose to spite one’s face. Regrettably, that has been the reality of MPT-Goa government dealings over the past few years. And, to be fair, the fault lies on both sides.
Mr Agarwal is clearly a dynamic and ambitious man. He had a great vision for the port. This included a grand expansion plan to create new facilities, including container depots, oil-handling terminals, a berth for cruise liners and a marina, both to the east as well as to the west of the existing port infrastructure. But it also included impractical proposals like a massive new extension of the port into the Baina bay.
Seen in pure managerial terms, Agarwal’s tenure as MPT chief was a highly successful one. The port greatly expanded its materials-handling capacity and its revenues, despite the global recession. His expansion plans scored one major success in the successful private-public participation (PPP) project for MPT’s state-of-the-art coal terminal. But his plan for eastward expansion into the Vasco bay came a cropper, thanks to the large-scale eviction and resettlement that would have been required at Khariwada.
Agarwal’s vision and missionary zeal for the port was obviously not matched by the kind of people-management skills that are required to turn dreams into reality in Goa. His running battle with the people of Vasco over the coal dust pollution in the town as a result of the port also did not earn him much sympathy.
Some of the steps he has taken in his last days seem quixotic at best, and resemble a bizarre at vendetta at worst. The first was his sudden turnaround and refusal to make the port a designated pharma hub; he had earlier agreed to it. His excuse was lame at best: that the port could not handle pharma containers unless the contentious Khariwada area was vacated for the MPT’s eastward expansion plan. The pharma industry in Goa, which now has to send containers all the way to Mumbai for export, rightly felt it was being unnecessarily victimised in a fight between the port’s chief and the government.
And last has come what can only be called a parting kick, reiterating the MPT’s ownership claim to lands and waters far, far away from the port. Written to 15 seaside Village Panchayats, Mr Agarwal’s letter, written just a day before he was to remit office, said any and all activity along the waterfront of these villages needed the MPT’s prior permission. Such a claim would be reasonable if it restricted itself to the areas the port currently uses and those that form a part of its expansion plans. But to alienate the population of the state in which the port is situated is certainly not the best policy. Just like chairpersons of ports, governments of states too have finite terms, which expire. But both the ports and the states go on forever. It is a spirit of accommodation, of give-and-take, which always yields the best results. Eternal feuds have no place in a modern democracy.
