The site of the IIT at Loliem is increasingly becoming a battleground rather than the ground for Goa’s most important educational project the IIT. While the discourse for the project has been hard and passionate and the discourse against it equally vociferous, there needs to be an immediate and urgent “cease fire” called. A village like Loliem cannot be divided with fault lines cutting through old relationships, village bonhomie and even family ties.
While this newspaper has advocated that several ground level concerns of housing, water, environment and land have to be addressed scientifically and in detail, the will of the people has to be taken on record, in the time tested manner of a gram sabha resolution. And this can be done in the only manner possible – through a legal process where the vote of each member of the gram sabha, will place on record his decision on the IIT coming to his village. This long drawn out process, which will be based on identifying each member of the gram sabha as a legal voter who in turn will vote on the resolution has to be carried out in the a subsequent meeting. These decisions cannot be taken at hurried meetings called only of people who belong to one side of the argument and a resolution passed, deciding that the village has spoken. If the village indeed has to speak, then the village has to be represented by all those who are permitted to have a voice and a vote in that village. Moreover, those who feel that they have the majority on their side – in this case the anti-IIT activists, should welcome the opportunity of having a perfect meeting and foolproof voting so that there is no scope of their numbers going unrepresented. Instead a hurried resolution passed on the fly with a panch nominated to preside over the meeting, after the gram sabha was adjourned, was sought to be validated. Success for this group was almost achieved when the Director of Panchayats, clearly not abreast with the full facts of the case validated this resolution, only to realise that this was passed after the gram sabha was duly adjourned. This promoted him to clarify that the anti-IIT resolution was not valid.
The only reason why the happenings at Loleim need to be debated at length is because, irrespective of which way the people’s decision goes, the process of ascertaining the village view cannot be negotiable or altered. Loliem has taught us several important lessons and while course correction in Loliem is imperative on the grounds of fairness, it is also significant in the larger context of how people’s aspirations should be managed and represented when big projects come calling. Firstly, the project needs to be justified in a manner in which people understand. Secondly their fears of displacement and loss of either their land, or resources need to be addressed and mitigated. And finally and most importantly, after the first two steps are taken, an informed gram sabha can meet and vote on the project after discussions.
The fallout of this will be a win win for the people in any which way. No anti-people and anti-environment project will be pushed through and no pro-people and locally beneficial project will ever be stopped.
Loliem has a historic opportunity and a responsibility to lead the way in this direction. It must not fail.
