As the lyrics of the song ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, the truth is, that I never left you’, inspired by the life of the once first lady of Argentina, Eva Peron, haunted generations, the silver lining the song was the assertion of her constant presence.
As tears flow in Goa, with a gang rape in Betalbatim, the molestation of a minor girl, and massive power outages in Salcette, and the absolute desperation of the ‘mining affected’ forcing people to take to the streets, what we are actually losing is hope of a Goa where basic governance and protection of law and order, is getting overwhelmingly difficult. The macro landscape has its own set of challenges where a manufacturing and enterprise injection is expected to shore jobs. But this has been in the realm of fiction for long.
But it is the day to day, micro challenges of living which trigger conflict and angst between people and arms of government. Nowhere is this felt as deeply as in the villages. A controversial move to remove “any other business” from the agenda of gram sabha meetings may cut the gram sabhas short, but make the list of unaddressed issues long. The fine line between wanting to eliminate political agendas coming to the fore and addressing critical people problems should have been drawn, without necessarily eliminating sudden non-agenda discussions at gram sabhas.
Meanwhile, rural and urban areas are enjoined by the chain of apparent neglect, under the weight of neglect. As filth accumulates of the edge of roads and village fields, our towns, especially Panjim and Margao seem to be unable to quickly break out of its morass of not finding adequate parking or effective transportation. While Smart City solutions are on the on the anvil and must be welcomed, it will be a tad far-fetched to expect to literally ‘outsource’ every aspect of Panjim’s civic requirement to the Smart City project. The government and the city administration have to deliver on the nuts and bolts which go towards making a city liveable and garbage management, public transportation, power, water supply and drainage are non-negotiables. And the same works for other areas as well.
Taking nothing away from the deep focus on the TCP Act, the controversies surrounding Planning and Development Authorities and jobs, the people of Goa deserve to, at the very least, have hope, of leading better lives as people who live here, as opposed to those who have moved to Europe, leaving even government jobs and surviving in sub human conditions abroad.
Each arm of local self governance should be held by active people’s participation, to deliver the basics to the people of Goa. And with non delivery becoming the norm and not the aberration, the sense of hope is also eroding. And this is a critical system erosion, and frankly, it has cut across parties. The underlining DNA in our local self government institutions is of sloth. With the withering away of hope, the despair among people is being articulated and this articulation is getting transformed into feedback, sent to tourism and investment stakeholders. Hence the mismanagement of Goa at the grassroots is affecting its broad position before the world.
Panchayats, municipal councils and corporations therefore need to redefine themselves as strong pillars of governance and not as mere extensions or puppets of politicians. Civic bodies have literally turned into fiefdoms of politics. For hope to return, they have to become fiefdoms of the people and of hope, to stop the tears from flowing.
