What do you call, fifty menacing looking muscle men who come to your backyard at night, creep into your house and ravage your land and destroy property? You call them dacoits. And when they strike terror with impunity, defending their wrongs of the night with feeble legal justification by day, what do you call them- clever terrorists, because they, by definition spread terror.
Let the people of Tiracol and Goa decide what they want to call the men hired by Leading Hotels, or on their payroll, who bulldozed their way into their village, slaughtered trees and forcibly built a road to the site of their Golf Course and hotel project. Well- intentioned people do not creep into villages with machines and bouncers and carry out acts which are nothing short of goondaism. Using their influence and muscle power and their seat in the inner circle of the BJP, Leading Hotels has managed to buy off the entire land of the village through stealth and guile. These purchases are according to villagers, completely illegal and have been strongly challenged in court by the NGO, Goa Foundation. Meanwhile, as things stand now, the National Green Tribunal has ordered a status quo on all construction and has forbidden any felling of trees. No court of law has quashed or stayed these orders.
In as show of extreme violence and extreme frustration, Leading Hotels forced their way into the village to construct a road to their project site by slaughtering trees, while their paid musclemen kept all at bay. Imagine goondas entering your own village from outside Goa and cutting trees, leveling the ground and building a road when the very ownership of those lands, they claim is theirs, through purchases, has been challenged. The land that Leading Hotels have said they own by buying from the original owners, the Khalaps, covers an area of over 12 lakh but say that only 9 lakh will be used for the project while the rest will be, they claim, “for the villagers”. The company also claims that they have 81 permissions from government departments allowing them to go ahead with the plans of a resort and golf course. All these points have been met with a very strong legal challenge by the Goa Foundation.
The proposed development of the Tiracol Golf course would require the mass slaughter of 1966 trees and their replacement with exotic grass. The project is located on a pristine plateau with dense vegetation in several portions and comprises hill slopes which descend towards the village settlement below and immediately thereafter, the river/sea.
But the violent behavior shown by the company on Thu night through Friday morning goes beyond environmental concerns. It’s an alarming sign that the brutality of big companies, with key advisors who are part of the ruling BJP dispensation in Goa, will be regularly on display in defiance of law, civil and human rights and the collective will of the people. The company, in the manner of its speech and deportment and the swagger of their PR officials, seems to think that no challenge to their madness will suffice, no law can be a deterrent and no appeal for fair play will work. They see the protesting villagers as a bunch of people motivated by NGO’s and vested interests, when all they are doing is to protect their lands and homes. This is where they have lived. This is where they have worked. Can any project be bigger than their right to live and cultivate their own land? The land of the entire village has been “bought” by Leading Hotels, which means the land has been sold. The manner of this sale has to be measured on the touchstone of fair play and legality.
This is not a BJP or a Congress issue. It is not a North or South Goa issue. If what is going on in Tiracol is allowed to go unchallenged, it will set a precedent for bouncer assisted projects where goondaism will be resorted to, if locals protest and object. It is important that Goa rises and joins the people of Tiracol to lie in front of the bulldozers and tractors and not allow a single inch of land at Tiracol to be taken, unless all legal challenges thrown by the people are fairly surmounted by Leading Hotels. Coming into our villages in the dead of the night and defending the actions by saying that the time was “auspicious” for the project boss, is an insult to the intelligence of Goans and if the corporate communications head of the company has thought of this mumbo jumbo, let us tell him not to waste his time or ours.
People of Goa must give a fitting reply to this goondaism and send a signal to the government and such project proponents that they should look for an auspicious time to pull out of this confrontation and do projects which are not in conflict with people’s interests.
