With the Parrikar government about to reach its half way back of two and a half years in government in September, this July-August budget session is appraisal time. This is when delivery will be demanded more than dialogue. And while the big ticket problem areas will plague the Chief Minister, he will not be able to bat his way out of trouble by saying all is well.
The problem with a five-year time frame of governance is that each of the big issues are needed to be resolved now to allow the Chief Minister to do macro level vision planning because that and that alone will be his legacy.
If no one in his government has quite done, then perhaps this broad primer of priorities that Herald has drawn for the Chief Minister and the government should help. These issues have been bracketed into three categories.
The First are the ‘Can’t Wait’ ones. Here there is no scope for procrastination, not even till the next session or else disaster will loom. This list is understandably the shortest because the issues are complex. It includes the all-important new Mining Policy. The existing Mining Policy of September 2013 needs to be scrapped and the new one incorporating the moot point in the Supreme Court judgment, that the state should decide how ore has to be won and transported, needs to be introduced.
Connected to this is the government’s scheme on handholding stakeholders with mining loans, which needs to be announced this very week. This issue assumes immense significance because the future of investments, envisaged in the Rs 25,000 crores Investment Policy will hinge around the right signals from government that Goa is good to do business in.
Closely connected to any business is land. The Chief Minister has been dangerously flirting with Goa’s planned development by keeping the 2021 Regional Plan which he had promised to scrap, in limbo, while still using the archaic 2001 Regional Plan as the base. He told the Herald two months ago that he was actually afraid to touch the Regional Plan issue because industrialists and builders would be after him. The statement was confusing. Isn’t it in Goa’s interests that we have a plan that gives us a broad picture of areas that will be marked for development and the no go areas like farm lands and heritage sites, and an outline development plans which goes into specifics of this land use. There is also a need to bring all urban areas, now a part of planning and development authorities, in the Regional plan ambit.
Another critical area that cannot wait is the issue of the compensation paid to those who will lose almost 84 lakh square meters for the construction of the Mopa airport. They have been paid around Rs 40 per square meter of land while the market rate around the area is as high as Rs 800 a square meter. These acquisitions were done, before the new Land Acquisition Bill was passed in Parliament. It has been further clarified in this session of Parliament that there will be no upward revision of compensation rates. At the same time the Chief Minister said over the weekend that the tenders for the Request for Quotation (RFQ) for players keen to bid for the construction of the airport would be announced on August 5. Should this blatantly unfair and unjust compensation paid mainly to farmers of Mopa (and not for barren lands as wrongly touted) go unchallenged?
The final issue in our ‘Can’t Wait” list is the supply of power. The state needs a minimum of 300 MW of additional power if its massive industrial and investment plans are to fructify. The bulk of power is expected from power manufactured in a power plant in Chhattisgarh from coal procured from the coal block allotted to GSIDC in that state. Goa is nowhere close to getting that power. Meanwhile domestic industry is reeling under difficulty with the power supply arrangement with Reliance Infra coming to an end on August 14. Notwithstanding a last minute deal to use Reliance Infra’s distribution network, Goa will still be short of good quality power.
While the issues that need urgent attention are equally important and some are border line cases with the ‘Can’t Wait category’, the issues raised here are ones that go beyond politics or the opposition.
