The Kajugottow-Corla village may well pass off as a fictional wonder on any remote spot on this earth. And even though this village is indeed a reality, in the Quepem taluka of Goa, it remains fictional for those entrusted with the task of reaching development to the remotest door.
Herald’s page one story in its edition of Monday September 26, headlined “Village in Quepem is cut off from rest of Goa – parched and isolated even after 55 years of liberation”, was a severe indictment of Goa’s failure to meet three basic responsibilities – water, health and education.
Kajugottow-Corla is the real failure of development. The failure to get more factories, more jobs, more institutions and IT parks pales into insignificance when we cannot give access to health care, schools and to grassroots government institutions like panchayats to some villages. If there is a real definition of development, then it has to be to provide the basics that allow families to be within striking distance of meeting the basic human indices of survival and growth – health, water and education.
And that is something Kajugottow-Corla does not have. The village does not have a market, the nearest being in Canacona and the health centre is at Balli, 25 kilometres from the village and needs two bus changes. And it’s not as if there are buses available on the hour, every hour. To get most of their basic work, including submitting various applications, seeking No Objection Certificates and the rest, the people of the village have to travel 60 kilometres to the panchayat headquarters at Cavrem Pilla. And this perhaps is the absolute last straw which has already broken the concept of development, not just here, but perhaps in several other villages off the radar in Goa. Children have to walk for 16 kilometres (yes 16 kilometres) each way to get to school of which four kilometres is through a forest. Let us pause. If that’s all we can do, then at the very least let’s ask, which world are we living in? A world where children have to walk 16 kilometres to school because there is no approach road from this village to connect to another approach, nine kilometres away? And this is not an indictment only of this government. Goa has been a part of India for 55 years. If we haven’t fixed this for 55 years, then governments should take responsibility and be shamed in proportion to their tenure in power
The larger reality is that there could be, and it’s more certain than doubtful, more such Kajugottow-Corlas. They sadly do not show up in government data, or on human indices. As Goa gets awards for the being India’s best small State on many fronts repeatedly, the remoteness and the hardships of these villages get further pushed into the dense recesses. In fact one can go to the extent of saying that the more Goa claims of having complete ration card coverage and highlights its schemes, the fact that access to governance, due to non development, is denied in many places, doesn’t get highlighted. And that is the scourge that we should actually be ashamed of.
The irony is that there are fights and protests raging in villages, against an IIT, against mobile towers and against many projects, with the government castigating panchayats for objecting to development. The real fight for villagers is to point to the government down so that Goa is rid of all villages like Kajugottow-Corla. And governments – present and in the future – cannot afford the sin of pushing for development when the nearest access to health care is 25 kilometres away and a trek to school is not a fun activity but 16 kilometres of extreme hardship for children.
