The picture of Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar riding on a bullock cart that was published this week is perhaps representative of his government’s pace of working – slow and lumbering. In his first two months as head of the Goa government, Parsekar has shown neither any dynamism in his manner of functioning, nor displayed any vision for the State through his statements or his actions. Except for routine matters taken up at the cabinet meetings, there has been little of note from the government till date. Even the administration appears to have dropped off into a slumber, which the New Year has not been able to shake it out of.
Such is the lethargy in the administration that on January 1, though government offices remained open, attendance was thin and little work was completed or even taken up. For practical purposes, government offices will begin to function normally only on January 5, which is Monday. New Year’s Day was a restricted holiday and there is just one working Friday before the two-day weekend kicks in. If past experience is anything to go by, government employees will grab at this opportunity of an extended holiday by availing a day’s leave before returning to their desks. This was admitted to by a government official who also said that it would then put pressure on the departments in the next week. This shouldn’t happen and department heads should ensure that leaves should be planned so that government work is not affected and citizens who visit government offices are not made to return another day just because the concerned staffer is absent.
Parsekar needs to concentrate first on toning up the administration, which is the backbone of any government and then getting on with the job of governance and development that he has been entrusted with. The administration has to be more professional in its approach and corporate-like efficiency needs to be infused in the system if Goa is to stride forward in the New Year.
In 2015 the government’s pace of working needs to change to the speed of a sports car – fast and smooth. The chief minister has to push the functioning of his government to a new level, a level which Goa is comfortable with and gives the State the sense that it is moving ahead and is not at a standstill. The general feeling today among the people is that ‘nothing is happening’. That perception has to change and the only to change it is to make things happen.
By his own admission, creating employment opportunities will be the chief minister’s priority in 2015. He said so in an interview this week. There’s nothing sensational or new in that statement. It’s merely a repetition of what successive chief ministers of the State have been saying for decades, ever since the first government was elected in 1963. A statement such as this does not inspire confidence. What would be interesting to know is how the State intends to create more employment opportunities.
Yes, the chief minister did add that new industries will be ‘asked to provide more job potential’, but that hardly qualifies as a definite plan or even a visionary statement. Merely asking is not likely to compel industry to provide jobs to local residents. Corporates, unlike government, look at a candidate’s ability and efficiency rather than just educational qualifications when offering a job. The process to create jobs should also be reflected in the educational system, where students are prepared for the kind of jobs that are likely to be available at the point of time when they are ready to enter the job market.
A government should be able to provide its citizens with a more tangible proposal on job creation. The Goa Investment Policy 2014 talks about ‘creating 50,000 new jobs in the next five years’. If 2015 is the first year of the ‘next five years’ then Goa should have 10,000 new jobs created this year at the rate of an average of 27 jobs a day. It’s a difficult task and the planning for it should have already started. It may be already late, but that first step can still be taken, and then the process expedited to change that bullock cart pace of working to that of a sports car’s speedy velocity.
