Nobody wants a North-South divide over the Mopa airport and yet every word spoken, every act and every move of everyone in the government and to an extent even by those opposing the project, is making the divide deeper.
The Mopa airport may see its first flight land ten years later but this project looks set to have a fall out which will be beyond the efficacy and need for the second airport at Mopa. The pro-project proponents and those who are against it are equally divided with stands hardening on both sides, cutting across party lines, but gradually, and that is bound to happen, this is becoming less about an airport and more about a divisive force.
The reason for this divisiveness is not far to seek. There is a natural antipathy towards moving out of comfort zones and the Mopa project, at the cost of Dabolim is a huge dent to the comfort zone of those having an airport nearby and the spin off benefits that accrues. The choice of the area where the new airport is going to be set up is extremely significant. It is clearly out of the comfort zone of South Goa. The Dabolim airport being the only one for so many years was a part of everyone’s comfort zone. The Mopa airport has become a comfort zone for people who have bought large tracts of commercial land in the vicinity of a big project which brings spin off benefits. But beyond the politics and the hype, for the non travelling local public of North Goa, especially in the Pernem and adjoining talukas, which far outnumbers the travelling public, the airport is a benefit if they secure jobs or businesses and get spin off benefits. But that incidentally will happen only if there an exponential growth of tourism infrastructure. The current tourism stakeholders in Calangute, Baga, Morjim and Ashwem will continue to get the same inflow of tourists because the there is hardly any difference in the distance to these places from Dabolim or Mopa.
Therefore the deep divisions over the airport are along emotional and regional lines and while South Goa has every right to think of itself as a victim, the government has no right to further rub this in by statements like “Don’t the people of North Goa have a right to an airport”, coming from the Chief Minister. Of all the divisive statements, this was perhaps the most potent one since it seeks to position Mopa as North Goa’s airport. The only way South Goa will get its comfort zone back (and that looks impossible now) is if the Mopa airport is aggressively pitched also as South Goa’s airport. That has never been done.
The danger is that the Parrikar government is making no attempts to make this an inclusive process. The Chief Minister has been bulldozing his way through the airport project making it clear that South Goa’s wishes are irrelevant. He has reduced the entire movement as being dictated by some invisible foreign hand, and far from telling South Goa that the airport is meant for them, because the entire road connectivity project is meant to link South Goa, they have been portrayed as irritants who no longer matter.
No progressive Chief Minister can hope to rule buy deeply hurting sentiments of the people- especially of Salcette- who actually overcame their pathological dislike for the BJP, to vote for anti-BJP backed Congress independents.
While the BJP is trying to counter this by pumping in development projects and projecting the governments complete support to the these ‘altar’ boys, it hasn’t realized that Salcette and chunks of South Goa, always have and will vote with their hearts and not their minds. The anti-Mopa agitation is beginning to have the same ingredients as the language agitation of 1986 which clearly became a North versus South Goa fight over Marathi and Konkani as the official language. In the end it went beyond just the issue of language but became a divisive issue where religion and geography scored over language.
In the end South Goa’s emotions won over North Goa’s persistence because the pro Marathi lobby allowed the battle – in the mind-to remain as a North Goa versus South Goa one.
It’s a simple law of nature that the person who is deprived will be a fierce reactionary and in both cases- the language agitation and the agitation against the Mopa airport, South Goa has been made to feel victimized. Therefore if there indeed is a divide, the people of South Goa aren’t those who have created this divide. They are only victims of a government that has failed to unite.
