However, Tiswadi and people living in Panjim are engaged in assumptions and presumptions and hope for a sooner-than-later visit of the PM, the Home Minister, the President or at least the Vice-President.
Modi landed from a chopper at the helipad area of the Goa University ground and proceeded to 9th World Ayurveda Congress and Arogya Expo, 2022 venue at Campal via Dona Paula and Miramar. On the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, the road along this route transformed with every crack and gap on the road being filled and new road separators installed all across the road. Even the cement road dividers have been painted white and black, and the rumblers have vanished with ease to drive down and ride without hurting your back.
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The whole of Panjim city is dug except the route that the Executive Head of India was to travel on Sunday. To the extent, the bumpy and damaged road just 50 metres away from Kala Academy hasn’t been repaired, despite the capital city hosting the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) just a fortnight ago.
One is aware that such cosmetic touches are a usual affair in the BIMARU States where development itself is cosmetic except for the road infrastructure that has taken flight during the last decade. Even a state like Gujarat was exposed despite the propaganda of a Gujarat Model in the aftermath of Morbi bridge collapse incident when the PM was visiting the hospital, the section of the hospital which the PM would visit was transformed overnight so that it would be photogenic.
The question thus arises whether the Prime Minister is aware of the ground situation and the problems the locals, even in a State like Goa suffer from.
One would recall the BRICS Summit of 2016 and how the roads had been transformed along the routes of the VVIP movement. Earlier this year, the visits by the former President of India Ramnath Kovind and Home Minister Amit Shah had met with similar cosmetic makeovers of the roads and signboards along the route of their travel. Astonishingly, even the barricades installed across Panjim city receive a makeover with the advertising agency replacing the casino ads during the visits of the VVIPs.
Goa will be hosting international dignitaries in April next year as part of the G20 Summit meetings. There is no doubt that infrastructure will receive a boost once again to showcase the beauty of the State.
However, one still wonders, what stops the government from providing similar facilities to its citizens despite their committed participation in the economic progress of the State. It is every resident in the State of Goa who has contributed to the revenue generation that propels the development engine of the government.
From the slogan of ‘pothole-free Goa’ in November 2021 ahead of the Goa Assembly elections, the government has now gone on to ensure ‘potholed Goa’, with every town and village in the State being dug for some sort of work, putting the lives of its citizens off-track. The capital city is leading the State in the nightmares the commuters face while navigating Panjim.
The concrete highways are yet another example of how copy-pasting technology leads to wrong results. The bumpy rides all along the new concrete-laid National Highway are a sorry tale that none is able to understand, the possibility to make somebody else understand is far-fetched.
It is not the works that have become troublesome, but rather the longevity of the disturbance and pain that everyone is suffering that has begun to test the patience of the people.
Goans want an end to the perilous and perpetual suffering in the name of development. Infrastructure development as such is not a problem; it is its use to reinforce that infrastructure development is the only way to progress that is evil.
