Investigative journalism is often a long and lonely road, more lonely than long. Sustained campaigns to hold truth to power do not always get the desired results in terms of corrective action. But we keep at it because our primary responsibility is to inform so that our most discerning readers can join in our joint battles.
Therefore, when a series of exposes actually leads to the beginning of some action which points towards acknowledging, reacting and then finally acting to course correct, it’s a vindication of the fact that people power has not yet lost its muscle.
The week began with revenue officials in South Goa, being forced to decide that the massive very apparent grab of comunidade land at Shirvoi Comunidade (Pedemol), could not be ignored. Thus for the first time in about seven or eight years, the Deputy Collector of Quepem, has picked up the Land and Revenue Code, looked at his powers and will now be drawing notices against all those, mainly migrants from Karnataka, who built houses on comunidade land in a manner blatantly fraudulent. As Herald has reported, the Attorney of the comunidade is responsible for issuing fake affidavits and declaring migrants as mundkars and giving them land to build houses, in complete violation of the Code of Comunidades.
The Deputy Collector will therefore make the Administrator and the local comunidade custodians party to the case. This is very significant because the abject illegal surrender of comunidade land is impossible without the direct involvement of the Administrator (the post and not one person).
While the action of the Deputy Collector, are good tidings, even his office needs to be subjected to scrutiny. Why should a series of stories alone spur him to take action, when his office was clearly aware of the illegality, since the mamlatdar had submitted a detailed report to him on the illegalities over a year ago? We are sorry but no one should be out of the zone of scrutiny because of some forced actions being taken now.
For a fair and impartial inquiry the following needs to be done. Time can no longer be wasted on surveys and inquiries
– The administrative body of the comuniade should be dissolved and a fresh process to formulate a new attorney and administrator should begin.
– All houses built on communidade land, which do not pre-exist and found to be illegal, should be demolished, with adequate notices given on humane grounds, for the occupants to move out. The sympathy card cannot be used here. If the fisher folk of Baina can be moved out of their homes when the monsoons come in, with absolutely no remorse, because politicians want the Baina land cleared for their mega projects, the residents of Pedamol cannot be accorded special privileges
– Legal proceedings should begin against comunidade and revenue officials.
– And most importantly, owing moral responsibility of his utter failure to protect Goa’s land from being misused in this manner, the Revenue Minister should offer to step down or undertake all of the above actions immediately and declare that his department’s topmost priority will be to restore the sanctity of the comunidade code.
It is with a sense of deep shock that even as the issue has been brought to focus only due the sustained investigations of Herald, and for no other reason, new constrictions have been noticed. This only goes to show that this ugly show would have gone on unabated if Herald had not highlighted this.
Lastly the government, the ruling party and even the opposition, all of whom are party to this lot of Goa’s land should not come in the way of efforts to correct these wrongs and restore the land of the Shirvoi communidade back to its rightful owners – the gaunkars.
