MLAs got beaten, a police force from Maharashtra had to be summoned, the “mining affected” literally ran amuck and stayed put to complete their desire of disruption. The purpose of the mining stake holders was clear. And there was no pretence. Even the facade of going to Azad Maidan to assemble, speak, and demand was dispensed with. Disturbance and disruption was a clear agenda.
Irrespective of the provocation, frustration and absolute desperation of the closure of the mining business, for reasons we have debated ad infinitum, did the rest of Goa have to pay these prices a boy fetching medicines for his ailing mother was stopped, abused and his scooter keys thrown away, students on their way to give exams were stranded and over 200 people taking flights out of Goa could not show up, due to massive traffic blockades, and then a police bus, a fire tender and two government buses vandalised and then stones were pelted on people.
Is there a justification for making protest as tool of disruption and violence? Can vandalism be justified and can the failure to prevent vandalism by the administration be condoned?
Nothing worked really. Not even an appeal by Chief Minister Mr Parrikar from his hospital bed in New York conveyed through Speaker Pramod Sawant. But as injuries and violence left their ugly stamp, the absence of a leader and leadership was jointly evident. What was underestimated was not the numbers but the intent. The calculation of a requirement of a police force is not defined by the number they are against but the intent of the numbers. And once the intent to intensify an agitation is established, it has a domino effect of larger numbers.
It was initially left to an all-woman team of District Magistrate Nila Mohanan and North Goa Superintendent of Police Chandan Choudhary to face the increasingly restless and unruly crowd. While the agitators claimed that the police force did not engage, it was evident that there was very little the force could do to rein them in. Mohanan repeatedly and forcefully asked protestors to move to Azad Maidan and not block roads or traffic. It had no impact. Instead the protestors broke into an argument with the two senior most officers of the District, the Collector and the SP.
With the situation going out of hand, the Maharashtra Reserve Police had to be called in. While that may have been needed to bring a semblance of order in a chaotic situation, the flip side was they went on an all out attack with the circumstances of the agitation and the impact each move would have, of no significance to them. It is during this phase that Curchorem MLA Nilesh Cabral got a few brutal hits, albeit by the Maharashtra Reserve Police, who did not know the difference between a politician and a protestor though some of those lines were indeed blurred, on this black Monday.
Even in such an atmosphere senior ministers made promises to move the Supreme Court, in an attempt to diffuse a situation which had already gone completely out of control. This was evident when the taxi associations, already a thorn in the flesh of the government, not linked to the issue or the agitation, decided to join in for good measure and according to eye-witnesses and our own reporters, partly instigated the protestors not to believe in any of the government’s promises.
In the end, perhaps a lathi-charge was the only answer. But here too, the administration maintained that no lathi-charge was ordered. Yet, the Maharashtra Reserve Police, in what they say was retaliation to incessant stone pelting, initiated a lathi-charge.
What does this tell us? That the police and the administrative machinery were caught in a cleft stick, with their duty towards maintaining law and order on one side, and the lack of direction and the pretty overt support to the protestors by more than one MLA, on the other. Political posturing on the issue left them stranded, as mayhem continued while the police force got confusing signals which affected decision making.
It is exactly due to this reason that the Maharashtra Reserve Police was allowed to break free and retaliate, since the Goa police felt their hands were tied or restrained from doing what was needed, to clear the streets, get people to the airport and the sick to hospital.
There can be no greater shame for a state to collapse in a manner so unbecoming, when law and order becomes a casualty, sacrificed at an altar of political exigencies. No one was a winner on this black Monday. And Goa was shamed.
