In the face of protests, especially over the three projects that cut through the Mollem forest, Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant said that this infrastructure development is being taken up keeping in view the next 25 years and is being done for Goans. A day before he made this statement, thousands of Goans from across Goa, but mainly from the South Goa district, had stayed awake through the night, some squatting on the tracks at Guirdolim to stop the double tracking work that was scheduled to carried out at the Guirdolim level crossing. They returned home as dawn broke after ensuring that the work was not carried out.
If the infrastructure work is indeed for the benefit of Goans, why isn’t it possible to convince the Goans of this? Mere statements will not suffice. Goa needs these statement to be backed by convincing arguments and facts that will prove that the projects will be beneficial to the State and the people. Right now it is fully conceivable that the railway line double tracking is for the transpotation of coal. Ministers of the government say that they will not allow Goa to be turned into a coal hub. Of course we believe that, for we know that it is not a coal hub that the people are opposing. It is the unloading of coal at the Mormugao Port Trust and its subsequent transportation by rail and road that they are opposing.
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Look at Goa today. It started the year 2020 with the infrastructure projects of the Mopa international airport and the marina at Nauxim. Within months came the IIT at Melauli, double tracking of the SWR line, the Tamnar electricity project, highway expansion and the major ports bill. These are seven major infrastrucutre projects that are simultaneously being taken forward in Goa. If the government can convince the people that all these are really for the benefit of Goa and Goans, then the protests will surely stop. So, can the government take up this challenge and talk to the people telling them why these are beneficial?
Infrastructure development is required, but it has to spaced out and planned within the carrying capacity of the land. Goa needs to know how much development and what manner of development it can take before projects are conceived and work to make them happen started.
Another statement that the Chief Minister made was that the people are opposing the projects just for sake of it as they are scared BJP will come to power for a third time in a row. Why should the people be scared of the BJP coming to power for a third time in a row? Has the BJP done anything to scare the Goan people? By the way, it didn’t come to power the second time, but cobbled up a unseemly coalition by distributing ministerships to regional parties who blinked not even once when breaking the trust that the people had reposed in them, only to have their trust later broken when they were dropped from the government.
Perhaps it is these political parties that might fear they will be kept in the opposition for another term post the 2022 election, but all political parties must remember that what Goa is seeing at the moment is not a political fight. It is a people’s battle and the political parties that attempted to hijack the movement that night on the village roads of Guirdolim and Chandor and the tracks of the South West Railway line were quickly and firmly shown their place by the people. The movement for a better tomorrow for Goa, free of billowng coal dust, must remain that of the people, for if not, the battle will be lost.
