The United Goans Foundation, a growing people’s organisation, has summed up the apathy of this Parsekar government better than the official opposition or any of its groups have ever had. The Parsekar government’s five point mission, so religiously lapped up by sections of the media without questioning, centers around the development of Pernem, Bardez and Tiswadi. As UGF said, Parsekar’s dream for new industrial estates in Chimbel and Tuem was “too little too late” and that this mission should have begun in 2012. The so called mission cannot be Goa’s mission but merely Parsekar’s own 2017 power retaining desperation in his backyard.
The more the government spends days in office, the further it is moving away from its core promises which seem to fade with each passing day. Meanwhile, the BJP manifesto for the 2017 elections has become a very distant mirage.
The UGF is bang on when it says that “recovering the mining loot, appointing a Lokayukta, ensuring that government employees are paid their salaries, eliminating corruption and implementing policy reforms that are essential for Goa’s economy, tourism and export”, should be the government’s mission rather than setting up new industrial estates and constructing the Mandovi bridge. The government has failed to create jobs, bring in manufacturing, ensure quality power at affordable costs, retain land for locals rather than give it away for projects with no local benefit, introduce and notify a people friendly Regional Plan by sending it back to people and make our tourism delinked from and not dependent on casinos. But this wish list is impossible to fulfill. When the Deputy Chief Minister, addressing a conference of surgeons in Cavelossim, reportedly asks doctors in Goa not to forget to go to the casinos, the dependence and the bonhomie between the government and the casino sector is clearly evident.
As the UGF has stated, priorities are completely misplaced. The structurally weak Zuari bridge is not on the mission list. But another Mandovi bridge, is still being built even though the center has refused to fund it. UGF has also raised the issue of the urban revitalisation plan of Rs 2,000 crore meant to be implemented in phases over five years in all municipal areas and urban townships. Instead the entire focus is on the development of just one city Panjim.
Mission Parsekar is built around just one institution, the GIDC. This organization is functioning like a real estate agent and a regular paymaster for pet contractors. Roads across Goa are dug and re-dug and aren’t complete. Industrial estates across Goa have unutilised plots which are not taken back and new industrial estates are being planned without augmenting infrastructure.
It is also very unusual for a government to suddenly spring a mini mission plan with less than two years of its term remaining which is so bereft of detail and completely out of sync with the five year mission of this government on the basis of which it went to the people. It is evident that there is system inertia with the bureaucracy, which does the brick and mortar stuff and translates policy to action, completely clueless. A case in point is the TCP department which has even giving up trying what its minister, Francis D’Souza, means or plans with the Regional Plan, with conflicting and contrary statements on whether the plan will be kept open for two days, or more days or sent to the people, emanating from the minister’s office.
The Herald commends the UGF for asking the right questions and questioning such selfish and narrow mission statements.
