Almost 30 years after Goa attained statehood, and Daman and Diu were given separate Union Territory status, two issues cropped up this week that indicated that Goa, administratively, is still tied to its former Portuguese colonies that were liberated along with it. Goa, Daman and Diu were a single Union Territory from 1961 to 1987, the only common factor binding them together being that all were former Portuguese colonies and had been liberated by the Indian army in December 1961. After Goa attained statehood, and Daman and Diu were given separate Union Territory status, one expected that the ties, the administrative one, would have ended. But they didn’t appear to have happened.
Today, Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) is awaiting a cabinet nod for finally cutting off ties with the industrial estates it had set up in Daman and Diu during its earlier avatar when it was known as Goa, Daman and Diu Industrial Development Corporation. But, surprisingly it was not GIDC that wanted to give up the industrial estates in Daman and Diu. GIDC had in fact requested the Union Territory to renew the lease for the Diu industrial estate by another 69 years. In the case of Daman, the land had been acquired by the government. The Union Territory administration turned down the Goa request and hence a proposal was then moved to the State government to transfer the land of the industrial estates to the Union territory.
There is no plausible reason for GIDC to want to retain the administration of two industrial estates in Daman and Diu that are making losses for the corporation. The losses may not amount to huge amounts – Rs 97,000 a month in the case of the industrial estate at Daman and Rs 40,000 in Diu – but they are losses all the same and GIDC’s decision to want to renew the lease is questionable.
The other issue that came up during the week was that of a recruitment advertisement that appeared in the newspaper that sought knowledge of Gujarati as an essential qualification for the post of Probationary Officer in the Department of Women and Child Welfare. On further probing it was revealed that the department was following the rules to the ‘T’ and that the recruitment rules had not been amended or changed and so Gujarati remained as one of the languages that any aspiring candidate should have knowledge of, along with Konkani and Marathi. There was a demand that the advertisement be withdrawn, and the department has assured that it will ask the government to make the necessary amendments to the recruitment rules so that this anomaly is struck off.
That, 29 years after Daman and Diu got delinked from Goa there still exist recruitment rules that make the Gujarati language a qualification for recruitment in government service is an indication of how cursorily this has been treated by the administration. After the abnormality has been brought to its notice, the department assures that it will request the government to amend the rules. Why was this request to the government not made before publishing the advertisement? Similarly, GIDC moved a proposal to delink the industrial estates in Daman and Diu after the Union Territory administration refused its request for an extension on the lease. Again, why didn’t GIDC move this proposal before their request was turned down by Daman and Diu?
If these issues were not settled immediately after Statehood in 1987, there was ample time to take them up in the later years. Instead of now taking these up on a piecemeal basis, and dragging the process for years, the government should ensure that whatever rules still remain that bind Daman and Diu with Goa administratively are severed. Cultural ties should be promoted, but government and administrative time should not be wasted on amending rules as and when stray issues crop up. It has to be done in one go.
