Our Chief Minister has told us that Goa needs a second airport whether some people like it or not. He said so after finalizing the Request for Qualification or RFQ for the Mopa International Airport which defines the qualification parameters of the private bidders, the first stage for selecting the company or a conglomerate which will build the MOPA airport, virtually snuffing out all opposition.
As the roller coaster, or in reality the bulldozer ride takes off, it is unclear if the Chief Minister included the Ministry of Environment and Forests, in his ambit of “whether some people like it or not”. In the insistence on rushing through this project, he needs to take heed of notifications and circulars issued by the Centre, because till we last heard, Goa has not been exempted from central directions.
The biggest question mark over this process of finalizing a party to go ahead with the project is that the Environment Impact Assessment for the project has still not been done, a process which should have preceded even the land acquisition for the project which is now complete. It is now learnt that once the EIA process, now underway is completed, a public hearing will take place. It is clear that the EIA, the most critical part of any such Greenfield project, is being dealt with in a ludicrous manner wherein all decisions are taken with the assumption that the EIA and the public hearing will be done without any opposition. The manner in which the land acquisition was done and the compensation given and now the way in which the government is literally bypassing the EIA, by conducting it in an illegal manner, goes against all norms of decent and transparent public engagement.
The stand of the MOEF on the issue of clearing such projects is clear. Its notification states, “The project authorities will intimate the location of the project site to the Ministry of Environment and Forests while initiating any investigation and surveys. The MoEF will convey a decision regarding suitability or otherwise of the proposed site within a maximum period of thirty day”.
In January 2008, the MOEF further stated “All project activities listed under the EIA Notification, 2006 shall require prior environment clearance under the said Notification without linking it to the date of land acquisition, if the project activity has not commenced at the site.”
The spirit of this is clear. It was envisaged that right at the inception of this project, the site should have been inspected and the suitability of the location should have been studied from the environment point of view. What has happened though is the entire process of acquiring about 82 lakh square meters from 470 odd people, was carried out without a public hearing during the EIA study.
While public justification will be plenty, this government cannot escape the charge that it thinks that the EIA process is a mere formality, and not a serious process of public engagement and conversation with people, who have clearly lost land, with inadequate returns.
And we are not even going into the narrative of whether this airport should be built in the first place and the economic impact it will have for South Goa. That argument, strongly justified by many, is not the agenda of this argument. The agenda here clearly is to ask and demand an explanation of how central notifications and norms were dealt with as just something that came in the mail.
As the project gets into the business end, the government must be forced to answer tangible questions, governed by rules while keeping out the intangible but important ones raised by those who are against the airport. These tangible questions revolve around whether central guidelines have been followed and whether just compensation has been given to those whose lands were taken away for the airport. On both counts, the government has failed.
