The demand of the villagers of St Cruz to keep their village with its lakes and fields away from the Babush Monseratte inspired Greater Panjim Planning and Development Authority, needs debate and not a final judgment.
The TCP minister Vijai Sardesai must keep channels of communication open because there is genuine apprehension that eco-sensitive and low lying areas will suffer a body blow at the altar of development under the new PDA. One must understand the context of these apprehensions. The immediate context is the construction licences given to ten villas around Bondvol lake. But Sardesai has been quick to point out that these renewals were done by the same panchayat.
But the bigger reason for the apprehensions lies in the experiences of ‘development’ that villagers have faced in neighbouring St Cruz and adjoining areas under the tutelage of Babush Monseratte as former TCP minister and MLA of both Taleigao and St Cruz. The Monseratte model of development has seen a construction and urban boom and an agrarian bust. With the same man as Chairman of the GPPDA, is it any surprise that the fear factor is so visible? Agreed that the successive panchayats of the village have a lot to answer for but when you have a Planning authority with separate budget and powers and have Monseratte at the helm, additional guarantees will be sought. It’s a clear banking principle, the bigger the risk the greater the guarantees that are sought. The people of St Cruz are doing just that.
The ground level agitation cannot be discounted. And it is a genuine people’s agitation. Last Sunday, hordes from outer villages of the planning area joined St Cruz residents in support demanding the rejection of the PDA, where the St Cruz MLA Tony Fernandes announced his resignation from the same Greater Panjim PDA.
The TCP Minister said the opposition to the GPPDA is uncalled for, and he too is in the favour of creating legit eco-sensitive zones, and that those areas are protected. Here speed is of the essence. Irrespective of whether a memorandum has been submitted or not, the Minister should take cognisance of the public protests, invite a delegation and work on the eco-sensitive areas which will be cordoned off. It is concrete interventions like this, at this stage, which will build trust because the lack of trust factor is the biggest impediment to solutions.
This is without prejudice to the argument that Goa needs to be planned uniformly under the one state one plan concept and not have the PDAs and panchayats, planning differently. The state plan or the Regional Plan should be built on empirical data of population, required land use and their projections and the urban rural ratio of land use. Urban planning has to be then a subset of total planning and not a parallel planning universe. It is only then that situations like that in present day St Cruz can be prevented in the rest of the state.
Therefore the demand of St Cruz villagers, to the PDA needs debate and not a final judgment.
