Anyone who has followed the OTT platforms has certainly come across the famous Jamtara series about the infamous Jamtara district in Jharkhand which has been tagged as the phishing capital of India. Here, mobile sim cards are changed within minutes if not seconds. In April last year, Delhi Police Cyber Crime branch busted a fake call centre syndicate from Jamtara, arresting six persons, and recovered 22,000 sim cards used in the crime. It took the police six hours to count the sim cards.
In contrast, back in Goa, there is a village in Sanguem taluka, Verlem, about 40 kms from the taluka headquarters in the interiors of the hinterland. This village does not have a single mobile tower and therefore no internet. Students as well as others have to trek up to 3 kms of the hilly areas to be able to get mobile connectivity and internet access. Even getting connected to the ambulance service is a distant dream as locals, with hardly any motorable roads to the neighbourhoods, are forced to walk the distance up the hill to be able to connect to 108.
While Goa tops the list of Net State Domestic Product (NSDP) per capita in the country, Jharkhand is number three from the bottom in the list of 33 States and Union Territories. Whenever one talks of Goa, one thinks of a developed State where everyone has access to basic amenities including potable water, road connectivity, electricity and, in the modern times, access to cellphones and internet. However, Verlem is not the sole village which has been facing this problem. O Heraldo in the past has highlighted the plight of the students residing in Netravali and Bhati in Sanguem taluka and Gaondongrim in Canacona. There are still many more villages in the remote areas of the State where there is neither proper power supply nor mobile and internet connectivity.
At a time when the government boasts of providing ‘Sarkar Tumchya Daari’, the absence of power supply and internet connectivity raises questions about the obsession to reach the person on the last mile. Unfortunately, the situation has not come to the limelight only recently, but since 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world and the State government later shifted its education and learning to online. Then, in 2021, parents had even built temporary shades atop the hills to facilitate a place for the students to spend hours trying to learn their school lessons which were taught over the internet.
Infact, last year in September, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s outreach programme ‘Shiksha Pe Charcha’, to reach out to parents across the State, was a failure in the remote parts of Sanguem taluka. While parents gathered at one government primary school in Netravali, they had to leave the premises without watching the entire session due to internet failure.
While villagers in these talukas are demanding a mobile tower to enable connectivity, areas where there is stiff opposition witness overnight construction activity to install towers. As Socrates said, ‘If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer.’
People of these hinterlands are suffering on account of being denied access to mobile connectivity and internet access. Government has launched websites and mobile apps for better governance and people’s participation in time bound public service. However, with the absence of internet, if these villagers cannot even call an ambulance in times of medical emergency, how can they even connect to these government websites and apps?
The Goa government needs to develop a robust network plan for villages across the State along with the mobile connectivity service providers. In the meanwhile, the Goa BroadBand Network (GBBN) which has been time and again under the scanner, needs to spread its coverage to reach the remotest of the villages in the State to facilitate at least the education and learning of students.
