The All India Lawyer’s Union meet over the weekend couldn’t possibly have had a more appropriate theme than ‘Hijacking the law for land grab in the name of development’. The meet also could not have had a more appropriate venue than Goa and been scheduled at a more appropriate time than the present. Over the past few months, even years, the one topic that has been monopolizing discussion in the State is land grab. Whether land is being grabbed by the government for development or by private parties for the same reason, it doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter that the projects are in Tiracol, Mopa or elsewhere. Local affected people have taken to opposing development projects that require huge tracts of land and often the government has had to bow down to the wishes of the people.
Prominent lawyers from Goa who attended the meet came down heavily on the government for its anti-farmer laws. Former Union Law Minister Ramakant Khalap said at a discussion prior to the meet that two thirds of Goa’s land has been sold without restrictions and that government machinery has aided the land grab. When a former Union Law minister says this it is time to sit up and take notice. While the figure appears high and to many it may sound surprising, the part of the land has been sold with the government not batting an eyelid over the sale is not surprising, simply because past experience in the State has proved that this is very plausible. Government will even make it possible to allow land to be sold.
Land grab in Goa is not a new phenomenon. In the early to mid 1990s there had been a flurry of conversions, leading to the period being dubbed conversion raj. This was not religious conversions, but land usage that was converted so as to allow ‘development’. It was at that time when in Goa ‘development’ came to be synonymous with construction and when the real estate industry waltzed into the State and even the local masonry contractor aspired to become a ‘builder’ and some did achieve that aspiration. Many who did make that transition and prospered for a little while, found themselves in debt and cornered when the bubble burst. That was the beginning of the land grab.
So powerful was the industry that the Regional Plan 2011 that was drafted sought to open up much of Goa for development. Does there then really exist an organized manner by which the law is being hijacked to grab land in the State? Till today, Goa does not have a Regional Plan in place, the sole reason perhaps being because a plan would restrict development to certain areas and rein in the current unbridled pace and nature of development. There has been also speculation that the latest moves to open the Outline Development Plans and included Calangute and Candolim in the ODP are more measures at grabbing land. These instances do point towards a positive answer to the hijacking of the law to favour land grabing.
Over the last two decades a large number of people from outside Goa have invested in land and real estate in Goa. Land prices have risen astronomically and this can be attributed to a simple law of economics that the demand has been higher than the supply. Land is the one commodity that Goa has little of but which a section has been generous with. A section, because there are also others who have been fighting the sale of land. And perhaps the time has now come for those others who have made it their mission to save the land to take their fight further. But this fight is going to be increasingly more difficult. Those battling the odds to protect their land will not have the law on their side, as the law, that one sacrosanct and dependable crutch that leads to justice, has been hijacked to favour the usurpers of land. The protectors of the land are alone and their fight will be against the government and its machinery.
