On Monday, Goa’s biggest land agent for the sale of its land, including settlement land, the Investment Promotion Board will meet again to sell off some more of Goa. The figure bandied, for the projects coming up for discussion, when some more of Goa will be guillotined, is 5000 jobs.
On the agenda on Monday, are projects worth Rs 937 crores, the majority of which will be for hotels, resorts and water sports activities all in the garb of eco-tourism, and justified by the pretext of creating jobs.
Before the IPB clears any of these projects, let it at the very least show reliable and believable evidence of how these jobs will be created project-wise. Most importantly, the nature of the jobs and the average monthly earnings for these need to be documented and made public. So does the ratio of skilled to unskilled jobs. This is needed to have a level playing ground to see if the job creation justification is valid at all in the face of overwhelming information that it is no, at least. In the real sense, these jobs will hardly prevent skilled Goan youth from leaving Goa for better earning and living.
The job argument, at least till the land agent, the IPB, establishes otherwise (and the onus is on them), needs to be dismissed immediately. The focus should be entirely on how the Regional Plan of 2021 is being manipulated and actually quashed, to clear projects in settlement and other eco- sensitive areas through the fraudulent mandate that the government has given to the IPB, through a legislation.
One of the biggest projects that the IPB is set to clear is a Rs 342 crore project on the Mandovi for boat cruises, water sports and a four-star and a five-star resort. As we have reported, this involves also creating a floating jetty. With the Mandovi already chock-a-block with boat cruises and casinos with yet another casino cleared through the back door literally, this project is not justified in the very least. The tested practice of getting a project like this approved by the IPB, “in principle” of course, and then sending it for environment and other related clearances will be followed. The state’s environment and pollution control bodies will then be subsequently pressurized to meekly surrender and accord approval.
A project of such magnitude will not even be tendered but actually gifted to a private player across the board. Here’s how. Spark Healthline Private Limited will be allotted almost 70,000 square meters for this project in an area which is clearly marked as “settlement” in the Regional Plan of 2021. They are getting this 70,000 square meters in lieu of the 1000 square meters they bought for the ropeway project from Reis Magos to Panjim.Look at how the private player benefits seventy times at the cost of the state. For 1000 square meters they get 70,000 square meters, with no competing tenders.
This happens to be just one of the projects which will be cleared on Monday. Among the others is yet another resort at Bambolim to be floated by the scion of a major real estate major in Goa with links to the top brass of Goa’s and India’s legal system.
The pattern is therefore obvious. Major assaults on Goa’s land are being planned and instead of manufacturing projects which bring in the real investment and jobs, the majority of big ticket projects are in the so-called Eco-tourism category, each of them in fragile eco-systems with absolutely no diligence done on the carrying capacity of the land and the ultimate loss to Goa’s ecology.
But can you expect a government which has become a land seller and the IPB, its agent, to do otherwise?
