They say, well begun is half done. And nothing summed up better than a Goa Foundation Facebook post which is irresistible enough to be quoted verbatim. “2019 is Fight Back Year in Goa. Within the first week came two environmental victories. In the first, 4 activists of the Goencho Avaaz led by Capt Viriato moved the vacation bench of the High Court to successfully halt illegal quarrying and nature destruction at Sirsaim. Simultaneously, Judith Almeida emerged victorious in her fight to have the vast illegal extension of Hotel Silver Sands demolished, as a violation of the CRZ law. Goa lovers hit the ground running. More in store. We may win, we may lose, but not for want of fighting. Shortly after I sent out this post, got confirmation that the Mines Department has on Friday (January 4) seized huge stocks of illegally extracted river sand, on the persistent complaints of another environmental die-hard, Shailesh Shetye. So what about congratulating our fellow Goan colleagues (and ourselves) for a change?” (unquote). Congratulations indeed to all those unsung, unreported and unwanted warriors fighting to save and salvage whatever is left of Goa. The word unwanted is for all those powers that be who wouldn’t want these champions of Goa to win, ever.
The fight for Goa continues well into the New Year as covert attacks on the Goan landscape continue. A Herald expose of a Central government plan to set up one of its cross-country multimodal logistics park in Panjim is the latest attack on Goa. Strange it may sound but every clandestinely proposed and ill-conceived ‘development’ project in Goa is no less than an attack on the fragile State. Imagine hundreds of trucks, tankers and containers swarming the outskirts of the State capital bringing in goods, taking away goods. Where is the land? Mind you, this is multimodal logistics park so the park will have to be connected to other forms of transport. Nearer Panjim this would be a barge terminus even as there are no railway lines running by. Again the same question. Where is the land? Panjim did not have land enough to have its own waste treatment plant in its jurisdictional area; Panjim did not have land enough to decongest the streets of its State government offices, so where will the land come for a logistics park? In the rapidly encroached khazan lands of Ribandar, Merces and St Cruz or whereabouts? Does Smart City Panjim even know about this new scheme of things?
Every day brings about a new set of highfalutin ideas and proposals from the government. Many of these were never discussed nor ideated with the people of Goa. The State government is as detached from ground realities as a rudderless ship could be. The promises of manifestoes of all the three coalition partners have long been forgotten as they bask in the glory of a ribbon cutting, plaque unveiling and numerous seminars and conferences. These events make good news items, the speeches make for good newspaper copy and television bytes but an average Goenkar seems to be completely disconnected from his government. The recent proposal for diversion of traffic between Cortalim and Verna was not known to the people of Cortalim and Sancoale nor was it known to even the Verna Industries Association next doors, which came down heavily on the preposterous idea.
From politician and builder mandated Outline Development Plans and Regional Plans to unregulated hill cutting to build roads and ‘projects’, the panchayats have been overridden, the municipalities have been reduced to puppet-hood. This year, maybe the local self-government should realise the power of democracy and go ahead to wrest back their powers from the Panchayat and Urban Development Departments. Their neighbourhood activists are not pests but their best bets to keep a marauding State government in check. A State government that wants to convert every available strategic piece of land, every remote unused piece of land into real estate.
As the warriors of Goa battle it out to make our world a better place, we should never forget the fact that their battles become even more difficult as those within the system face a grim battle. As the State saw earlier in the year-end, a desperate attempt by the Power Minister to rope in the indomitable Kashinath Shetye, the bête noire of the ruling dispensation as his own OSD. If you can’t beat them, try to win them. But then integrity and uprightness still abound in amchem Goem. Shetye took his camera a week later and roamed the khazans of Panjim to make a vlog (video blog) on illegal land-filling. An ailing Judith Almeida braved ill-health and an uncomfortable night journey to win back the silver sands of Goa in an NGT court in Pune. Something for which people of Colva may not be thankful but humankind would definitely be. The calendar may have changed but the warriors remain and their tribes grow quietly as an insensitive political system fails to understand the gentle rumble of people’s voice. The rumble may soon turn into a roar as people in this genteel and gentle State reach their limits of tolerance.
As Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos in a 1978 couplet said well, “what didn’t you do to bury me but you forgot that I was a seed”. As a selfish Centre readies to plunder our beaches with a 50-metre coastal regulation zone, as our State government connives to hand over our greens to unlawful miners, as our system conspires to devoid Goa of its own self, the seeds of a thousand rebellions get sown in the countryside. Rebellion, that our Ministers and their blinded followers chose to play down and ignore and hence bury with their indifference. What they don’t realise is that the seeds have now grown into seedlings of resistance and they continue to grow. Dear Goa, in this New Year, may you have many more battles to win, may you bear more warriors of your own.
