Governor Mridula Sinha, in her Republic Day address dwelt on the responsibility of the people to strengthen and protect the country’s unity and diversity. She called on Goans to be alert to terror activities and help security agencies. That was in Panjim, but in Margao Fisheries minister Avertano Furtado’s speech took a very different angle and he used the opportunity to make a number of key announcements, of what the government has done.
He spoke on the project to dredge and clean the River Sal, the sewerage plant that is to go fully operational by April 2016, the improvements in the Goa State Interim Compensation to Road Accident Victims scheme, underground cabling in South Goa, improvement of fish landing centres, open sea cage culture, mobile fish stalls and even dwelt on the IT Investment Policy. Most of the announcements were of interest to the residents of South Goa, Salcete in particular, but the minister did not touch upon those issues that are the focal point of discussion today.
With approximately a year to go to the next Assembly elections, the government is already beginning to skirt the major issues, be it mining resumption, Medium of Instruction (MoI), Regional Plan, shifting of casinos and today’s boiling topic the reclassification of the coconut tree as a palm. Except, for the coconut tree issue, all the other issues are those that the Bharatiya Janata Party had focused on in the campaign for the last election of 2012 and had then won the elections. In the past four years they have not been able to find solutions to any of these and as elections approach again, a decision on them is likely to be pushed forward without any resolution.
The major battleground on the 2017 election is going to be Salcete, the taluka which will decide whether the BJP that is currently in government will have another term on the treasury benches of the State Legislative Assembly or whether it will sit on the opposition side. The MoI is a sensitive issue and when thousands of parents are waiting to hear what the government has to say on the grants to English medium primary schools, couldn’t Furtado have reassured them with a few well-chosen words?
The BJP’s attempts to win over the people of Salcete seem to be hitting roadblocks. Besides Furtado’s lackluster Republic Day speech that was verbose without assuaging fears of parents, recently Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar made a rather startling statement that has raised several eyebrows in the taluka. The chief minister at the launch of the dredging of River Sal said he once though that Salcete was ‘far from us, but because of these 3- 4 MLAs, we all feel that Salcete is now ours’ and of the many things common between Salcete and Pernem. Merely such a claim will not make Salcete ‘his’ or ‘theirs’. It can happen only if the government shows that it is alive and alert to the issues that are affecting the people of Salcete.
The statement has elicited varied responses from across the taluka with people wondering whether this is an election ploy and predicting that Parsekar’s and the BJP’s Mission Salcete could end up in a ‘Zero Salcete’. Many questioned whether Parsekar realized how close Salcete was only after assuming the responsibility of Chief Minister and whether before, when he held other important positions, he had not discovered how much the two talukas of Salcete and Pernem had in common.
BJP holds just one constituency of the eight in Salcete. The split in votes in the 2012 Assembly elections helped the party to emerge with a simple majority. Making inroads and weaning away the voters of this taluka to their side will take much more than words. It will require action, and that action is just not forthcoming from this government. It will take some parivartan on the part of the BJP before it can truly claim Salcete as its own.
