So Goa government’s under secretary GA-I Circular of November 13, 2018 said, “All Secretaries/Additional Secretaries/Joint Secretaries/Under Secretaries to Government/Secretariat Department/Head of Departments /Officers/Corporations/Autonomous bodies and hereby directed that all the correspondence, files and all other official matters be addressed and diverted to the office of Hon’ble Minister for Power” and that it has the approval of the Chief Secretary. And then Chief Secretary Dharmendra Sharma tells Goa that he has not seen the circular and that it was “a minor error”. All this in a fortnight when Goa’s ruling coalition partners were forced to speak out against a government of the bureaucrats, for the Chief Ministerial coterie but by the Constitution of India. Wake Up Goa! We now have other new leaders or leaders and the news is that they are completely out of our control.
History will always judge the current government of Goa for making a mockery of the Constitution of India and every other law of the land that governs us. While the fact that a minority party cobbling together a ruling coalition with dollops of partisan affection and support of the Governor and running the State may well be forgotten by most of us, what we shall always remember this government for will be a Chief Minister running the State from overseas to managing it from hospital bed to even managing it through shadows and whispers. All the while ensuring that the children of Goa shall now learn in their civics textbook that you require just a signature, a photograph and a bunch of loyalists to ensure that you don’t need a CM or even his Cabinet physically to run a State; Article 164 of the Constitution of India is not needed. What the 40 MLAs (including the two who abandoned ship, four who cannot attend Assembly and one who pretends to be but has no clue!) don’t realise is that the people see how shallow, clueless and helpless they are.
First, they gave us an unconstitutional Cabinet Advisory Committee, then they gave us an invisible Chief Ministerial Executioner Coterie and now they are also giving Goa a pseudo-CM. The power struggle in Goa is no more about how to run the State of Goa (that is anyway down in the dumps) but more about who is calling the shots. With the controversial Government circular anointing a new power centre, one thing is clear. Even the IAS/IPS lobby that once worked in tandem to ravage and ruin this State more than making it iconic now even decides who our leader is. And yes, they have no Constitutional right nor business to do so. Question is when a seriously ailing Chief Minister does not let go of his chair or his 28 odd portfolios, how and who did sanction the appointment of a pseudo CM? BJP did not know, its coalition partners did not know; so who brought in this weird and unprecedented order? It wasn’t a faux pas. It was a sinister move to haul yet another unconstitutional and illicit leader on Goa. The chilling truth that we now need to accept is that nobody manages Goa, everybody is running it – nothing is happening.
What prompted Goa Pradesh Congress Research Department’s recently appointed State Coordinator Rajan Ghate to don his activist avatar and start a hunger strike for a new CM? Ghate’s simple appeal is a simpler fact. In his words, “CM is unwell for the last eight months and the administration has come to a standstill. He (CM) needs rest and State needs new CM”. While his party strewn apart by an invisible standoff between reluctant MLAs and uninspiring GPCC failed to throw out the government, could Ghate’s hunger strike inspire Goans to take matters in their own hands? Let us accept it, none of the political parties (except for a dogged but insignificant numbered AAP) and their MLAs are even remotely interested to address the issue. While the GPCC president tries to escalate Goa’s leadership crisis to the national level (more comfortable addressing press conferences issuing press releases from AICC Headquarters in Delhi), his party MLAs have taken their deeply fragmented and weak opposition in Goa Assembly out in the public domain. Did you hear your Congress MLA ruing the absence of government and governance in Goa? Murmurs of dissent from BJP’s own coalition partner ranging from insensitive bureaucrats (GFP) to restart mining or we will withdraw support (MGP) to nothing is moving (Independents) completes the whole picture. The question topmost on Goa’s minds is what should the State’s primary concern be – who is running the State or whether the State is running at all?
As Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung would say, “In all chaos, there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order”. While all forms of politicians, political parties and politically affiliated persons are content holding press conferences, picketing government departments, issuing press releases, having morchas and even squatting at Azad Maidan – all for the media, the press fraternity; the serious question that Goa needs to ask is “What was the result of all that?” The problem now isn’t who is talking and who is protesting. The concern here is who is listening. And are they listening at all? Let us face it. Mining is Goa’s problem but it is not everybody’s problem. Formalin in fish is everybody’s problem but nobody in particular especially the Fisheries Minister will take responsibility for it. Coal pollution, tree cutting in Mopa, Alvara lands, projects sanctioned by Investment Promotion Board (IPB’s status itself is challenged in High Court), Goa Coastal Zone Management Plan, Regional Plan 2021 (all languishing in the courts) – the question then is what are the decisions being taken and being implemented by this government? In all this chaos, something definitely is cooking which is sinister and ultra vires. The circular is but a tip of the iceberg.
Newspapers filled with announcements and statements, cable television news channels, news websites and WhatsApp forwards revealing a government ‘in action’ is nothing short of eyewash if the surface is scratched. Have you noticed how the once pompous sounding Ministers from the coalition and even the ruling coalition parties have started withdrawing from the pan-Goan presence and started restricting themselves to their rapidly shrinking domains of influence? There is an election in the air and Goa should well know that even those who pocketed a few notes to vote the current dispensation were themselves robbed by demonetisation supported by the same party that they voted for. This is a season of betrayal and what the circular-gate exposes is that Goa’s democracy is so fragile that any joker in the pack can hijack it for his/her own selfish gains. In governance, there is no ‘minor error’. There is either commission or omission. In this case, the secretive shift of power to a pseudo-CM was commissioned by someone and the confidence of the rest of the Cabinet was omitted. Just as CM Parrikar desperately holds on to power by hijacking all possible statutes in the Constitution, this too was another desperate attempt to hijack his position itself by introducing a new player. This no more is a tiatr of absurd. This is complete anarchy.
