Michael learns to rock and how. Weeks after virtually demolishing his own party for letting down the Mining dependants as well as the unemployed youth of Goa, the Calangute MLA and the architect of the current coalition Michael Lobo says, “There is complete unrest in Goan society, especially among politicians, about the state of affairs in the Goa government”. When your MLA (especially of the ruling dispensation) isn’t liking the way his own government is running the State and publicly expresses his unhappiness about the state of limbo in which Goa lies suspended, we are forced to wonder and ask – What are we paying our taxes to the government for and obviously, what are all these men and women in white cars speeding into the Secretariat, different government departments and collectorates, up to? Goa government isn’t running anymore, it is existing. It isn’t living anymore, it is merely surviving. No politician, no voters, nobody knows.
The scariest part of a democracy isn’t only about wrong leadership. Rather, it is about the absence of visible and existence of an invisible secretive leadership running the State. After the hurriedly called publicly promoted, cabinet meeting a senior minister admitted that it was not them but a coterie that was running the government. Powerful words from one of the most public faces of this government but quite soaked in truth. Sample this – Goa’s Home Department does not have a policymaker to decide upon the recruitment of a couple of thousand urgently needed cops, Goa’s General Administration Department does not have a decision maker who could give the orders to start the process of this urgently needed police personnel but the Home Department literally burnt its midnight lamp to draft the new Goa Public Gaming (Restriction) Bill that seeks to replace the Goa, Daman and Diu Public Gaming Act 1976. While the new Act may threaten to completely wipe out Goa’s traditional tryst with a community and societal gaming happening in hundreds of social and cultural clubs across the State, the writing on the wall is – no fun for the Goan.
There is a more disturbing discourse developing even as the State remains headless. While most of the Goans didn’t even know of the gaming policy, a prominent casino baron very close to the minister in charge for gaming (Home Minister) optimistically opines in defence of the new policy, “In Goa, it has become part of the economy now. Goa does not have a lot of taxation or revenue coming in from anything else other than tourism and casinos”. Did you notice the gentle shift in Goa’s economic priorities? Mining be forgotten, casinos are the new mines and tourism is the civil conduit for it. Matka still remains under unquestionable quarantine from any governmental interference. The fact that the Law Department head, who would have overseen this new Gaming Policy wears a tourism hat and gets his votes from the mining affected too, makes irony die a thousand deaths.
Behind the opaque curtains of seemingly inoperative government, many fruit-bearing trees were cut down in Tulaskarwadi in Cansarvanem over a kilometre and half from the proposed Mopa airport site. This systematic hatchet job carried on by the contractors building the greenfield airport is a clear-cut attempt to choke the livelihood of the local people and force them to evacuate areas even beyond the demarcated airport site. Is the local MLA turned Tourism Minister also a part of this nefarious plan to develop (what former GPCC President Luizinho Faleiro famously referred to as) a Sin City at Mopa airport site which would essentially be the new destination for all those floating casinos currently choking the Mandovi? Not a word of support has ever come from the Tourism Minister either in solidarity or in sympathy to the woes of the Mopa residents whose trees of livelihood have been cut and their lives ravaged. This is what happens when a State has a disconnect between one corner and another.
Look at ourselves, People! If you are living in Margao, Panjim’s garbage-parking-congestion crisis does not affect us. If a large number of trees are cut in Mopa under Pernem constituency that will leave many villagers without their green cover and their source of livelihood, it does not matter to the mining affected people living in the mining belt. The fact that many people in the mining belt even don’t have any resources left to pay off their outstanding bank loans and they shall be celebrating another dark Diwali or Christmas for the seventh year in succession does not matter to the coal affected in Vasco who anyways have ‘vested interests’ coming from outside the polluted port town to fight their battles for a cleaner air. Look at us, a State not even 150 km long and 100 km wide, yet there seems to be an abject disconnect between one place and another! The Ponjekars, Madgaonkars, Mhapsekars and the rest of the ‘kars’ face similar battles every day but are not united or in solidarity with each other. For an average Goan, even his own daily problems are something that he has accepted as a normal and has grown used to; why should he bother about what happens to the rest of Goa?
There is a political and social insensitivity that has crept in over the years that insulates us to anything that goes around us. In Dabolim constituency, the airport taxis association are the ones who are vehemently backing their own MLA who openly pitches for Mopa airport not knowing that someday soon their own airport won’t be there and nor will there be any association. Whatever happened to us? How shallow could we be? The whole State seems to be suffering from a mass epidemic of Stockholm syndrome where Goans do not seem to find any fault with their own MLAs as long as their petty interests are taken care and they dare not speak up for a more publicly accountable, committed and transparent leadership. This isn’t funny anymore. Between political sloganeering and activist rhetoric, there exists the humble Goenkar who looks for a solution. He still isn’t able to make out how his MLA and his government have been working at two levels. One that is visible to him as a busy bee churning the wheels of governance and another that is, in fact, working for crony capitalists and friends of the government.
Ask yourself, how many of us with a serious ailment, and bedridden – turn up on camera to ensure passage of a Rs 230 crore investment promotion but fail to defend why we sold Rs 2000 crore worth of government bonds to just keep Goa going? Dear Goan, the people whom you voted for in March 2017 are not running your State but the interests that they represent is taking Goa wherever it wants to. Your vote has been betrayed. But do you realise the price that your Bangarachem Goem has to pay for your silence to speak out, your reluctance to ask the uncomfortable questions and your fear to ask your betraying representative to step down and not shame democracy any further?
