This comes with a warning to the government that the agitation will be intensified if the doubling of railway track project is not scrapped. Besides this, there is the other group of protestors who are working on a different medium by writing letters to every MLA asking him or her to raise the issue of Mollem tree cutting in the Legislative Assembly when it meets on July 27 for a single day. Squeezed between these two movements opposing the same projects, the government will have a difficult time extricating itself without giving in to the demands of the people.
In the battles that Goa has waged against various projects over the decades, it has often been handicapped by the fact that those not directly affected by the development plan would stay away from the movements, which allowed the government to play the divide and rule card to advantage.
Many movements failed due to this. The tree cutting at Mollem and the doubling of the railway line could also have fallen into the same category, but the interest that these projects have evoked across the State and in persons of all ages, takes the movement against them to a new peak, and one that the government would not be very glad about. The State has to now act. It cannot stand back and hope that the movement will lose steam somewhere along the way as that is now unlikely to happen. It has grown too big for that to occur.
If there has to be one reason for such a large number of organisations coming together under one umbrella then it has to do with the sustained onslaught on the environment over the years that people are now beginning to fear that what remains could also be wiped out soon. These are projects that will lead to the felling of over 50,000 trees, many of them in the protected areas of the Mollem Wildlife Sanctuary. Planting saplings to replace these trees will never substitute the forest, where these trees have grown and given food and shelter to the wild beasts who make this forest their home. Right now, we are counting trees, can even begin to count the number of wild animals that will lose their natural habitat if these projects are allowed to go through? That is simply not possible as there is no census of the wildlife that could get us numbers.
The battle lines are now drawn and not even the lockdowns have acted as a deterrent to the people in their bid to form this new organisation and take their fight forward. They haven’t won anything yet.
This is just the beginning as numbers by themselves will not suffice to force the government to backtrack on the projects. The emotional appeal of houses being lost is one, but it is the cold and hard facts of damage to the environment in the form trees being lost that have to be used to win the argument. The movement has alleged that the double tracking is for the transportation of coal issue, they have to prove this, for mere statements will not suffice when it comes to a debate. The movement has a long way to travel, and cannot be allowed to get derailed as it would then lose the battle even before it can start.
