For all the blundering and foot in the mouth comments of Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, his government, appears to be doing a reality check on many of Manohar Parrikar’s sweeping, wide-ranging promises. This reality check is bringing despair but above all, a sinking pain in the gut prompting us to ask, did Mr Parrikar spin dreams and then fly off to the Centre?
Parsekar’s Industries Minister, Mahadev Naik on Friday, said what everyone, except his former boss Parrikar knew. Goa doesn’t have enough land to support the proposed new investments worth Rs 25,000 crore over the next five years. This was Mr Parrikar’s pipedream which became policy. Now we have a situation where the Investment Promotion Board (which itself is struggling to get a credible CEO, independent office space and other such things to actually start functioning) has been formed to woo investments, but the Industries Minister makes it clear that there is no land for those investments. The same Industries Minister under whose tutelage the Industrial Policy was formulated and signed off. The very policy that said Rs 25,000 crore investments would be brought to the state in five years, 50000 jobs would be created and there would be enough land.
Shockingly, this policy was passed and executed on the premise that the Parrikar led government would be able to pull off a backroom deal with SEZ promoters who were allotted land by the government, to return only 70% of the land allotted before the government decided to scrap the SEZs. Parrikar termed his own decision as pragmatic, because he thought he could manage to get the SEZ promoters to give back 70% of land and withdraw their petition in the Supreme Court challenging the scraping of SEZs, without once considering that this was clearly bad in law. And based on this fragment of hope and overconfidence, he got his government to seal a policy of attracting investment which is completely land dependent, a policy that the same Mahadev Naik was a party to.
We now have a situation where 21 investors wanted to start projects and applied to the State Investment Promotion Board. Of this, the minister said, 11 had to be rejected because no land was available. If this is the state in the first year of the policy, we can shudder to think how far the targets of Investment will be met. But the truth is that they should never have been set in the first place.
Coming to the manner in which the Government has gone about trying to unlock the land under SEZ, it is shoddy. Of the 15 proposals, only three were notified before the policy was scrapped. The land allotted to projects which were not notified can be freed and made use of. There appears to be no challenge for that not to happen. Thus much of the 40 lakh square meters of land (38,50,763 square meters to be precise), can be freed and given back to the original land holders and then taken back again to be re- allotted for industrial investment.
Manohar Parrikar’s attempted land adventure was based on getting the SEZ promoters to agree to an out of court deal without realising that there is another petition in the Supreme Court to give the land back to its original owners, and importantly, order a CBI inquiry into fraudulent land allotment to SEZ promoters. Thus, the former Goa Chief Minister was extremely ambitious to think that he would weave out of these legal entanglements when his sole purpose would have been to free the land allotted which is not under litigation and get all the land back under litigation, because the State’s case was indeed very strong. Moreover the CM’s proposed backroom tactics was purely in his own domain. None of this was discussed either with his Industry Minister or the senior administration.
By doing so, the former CM went against the Governor’s address in the assembly on the same subject in March last year. His words were that of the government. Governor B V Wanchoo referring to the land allotted to several companies under SEZ before scrapping their proposals, had said that it shall also be the endeavour of his government to unlock the land caught in the SEZ imbroglio for immediate economic usage. He certainly did not mean back room endeavours. And till now, even genuine endeavours have not been made.
The Industries Minister will now realise the folly of blindly giving a stamp to every policy of Mr Parrikar’s without realising the practical ramifications. A folly that has and will continue to cause a reputation hit to the government for announcing an industrial policy and not backing it with basic infrastructure. At this rate the only inflow the State will get is a poor reputation and bad vibes. If the industrial policy has to succeed, land has to be unlocked.
