Ramesh Tawadkar is not even aware of some of the countries whose publications have carried his remarks of paving the way for the culling of India’s national bird, the peacock by including it in the list of nuisance animals.
Even as Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar stepped in to stem the damage caused by his loose cannon Agriculture Minister, it exposed the rot in the way the Parsekar cabinet functions. The Minister of a Department which is attempting to control the nuisance of animals destroying farmers crops, has had to be put out of the firing line by the CM who has basically said in other words, that his ministers comments should not be taken into account.
“I don’t think it is included. It cannot be included in the list. It is a national bird,” Mr Parsekar told agencies. He said though there are complaints of large-scale peacock menace in some rural areas, the bird comes only to eat grains after the harvesting. “It does not damage the crop. Even if there are complaints, we can have measures to handle it,” the chief minister said.
This is completely contrary to what the ‘foot in the mouth’ minister Tawadkar, had said two days ago, that he had formed a committee to “assess” animals which would be included in a list of “nuisance animals”, (vermin) and that the peacock and the gaur (Indian bison) would be on the list, because both the bird and the animal were destroying crops are were a menace to farmers.
The peacock is India’s national bird while the Gaur is Goa’s state animal.
He even said that he was aware of the peacock’s status but insisted the government would follow a procedure whereby the bird could also be classified as a nuisance.
While Herald sensed the outcry and the banality of such a move and highlighted it in its issue the next day, the national and the international press were quick to pick it up. The BBC headlined the story “Goa proposes reclassifying peacock as ‘vermin’.
The Guardian, UK’s media giant, too ran the story at a time when major national stories of India do not make it to its pages. The Guardian report headlined, “Is it a bird? No, it’s vermin: Goa reclassifies the peacock”, stated, “A move by India’s popular tourist state could lead to mass culling of the country’s national bird. India’s popular tourist state of Goa has ruffled feathers with its proposal to reclassify its national bird, the peacock, as vermin, reports said. The move, which is aimed at making the bird easier to cull, comes just weeks after Goa’s legislative assembly caused similar consternation when it ruled that the resort state’s beloved coconut trees were not in fact trees, but palms.”
Obviously rattled that the coconut declassification controversy hasn’t yet died down, the BJP fielded Sankhalim MLA Pramod Sawant, to distance itself from its Agriculture Minister on the vermin issue. “We are not in favour of terming peacocks and bison as vermin,” he said.
Chief Minister Parsekar needs to take serious stock of his ministers and admit that their lose comments, based on nothing tangible is damaging the State’s reputation and increasingly leading the rest of the world see the State as some kind of a banana republic.
Today the world – to use a cliché – is a village. As long as the State government’s words and actions remain within the confines of Goa, damage can still be controlled. But that was another world. Goa is facing international ridicule over its thoughtless decisions of declassifying the coconut and now contemplating putting the national bird on the culling list. Though the CM realised the damaging potential of Tawadkar’s remarks, Tawadkar’s absolute “stupidity” (because there is no other word to describe what he did) has been beamed, uploaded and printed the world over.
This government has gone down in Goa’s history for its most contentious, anti-people decisions. And more such remarks or decisions are surely on their way. And if the national bird was likely to be on the chopping block, the state isn’t in very good hands.
