By Felicio Fernandes
In an interview on March 5, 2025, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pandurang Madkaikar accused his party’s government in Goa of being involved ‘only in corruption’ and alluded to a minister of forcing him to pay Rs 15 to 20 lakh bribe. “Nothing is moving”, he said. “They are only busy counting money. All ministers are busy counting money. Nothing is happening in Goa, every minister is busy making money; no matter how…. all ministers. People are waiting to send them home.” This may be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but it exposes an unwritten code of doing business…. LOOT.
Loot has become a natural phenomenon, rampant and ferociously eating and tearing into all institutions, be it political, governmental or bureaucratic. The Goan polity is scourged with these epidemics of party defections, rigged elections, a weak Legislature, internal conflicts mostly propelled by the size of potential loot that can be extracted from lucrative portfolios, erratic governance, a manipulated and dysfunctional executive, portfolio allocation based on appropriation of the maximum share of loot and prospective looting avenues available, money and muscle power, favouritism in business dealings and connivance among looters.
Thus political leadership gets leveraged using state machinery to prioritise their personal interests over the collective welfare of the public.
The recent attempt by the Goa Government to amend the Code of Communidades had met with belligerent oppositions from the stake holders who insisted that the current code in vogue was comprehensive and thorough and that the amendment was superfluous and unnecessary.
The Communidade land which had been allotted to the Zuari Agro Chemicals Company decades ago for industrial purposes was now being used for construction of residential units. The loot of land at Amdai (Sanguem) for the beer project, the forced imposition of the Mopa airport onto a dense forest, the battle by Tiracol villagers against the Leading Hotels, the conversion of paddy fields into settlement zones at Taleigao village, the allowing of slums and tenanted homes to migrants to settle as potential vote banks, be it on the Saligao or on the Mapusa hill or at the Moti Dongor or the slopes of Odxel in Taliegao or the Chimbel cluster of migrants and so on. Don’t forget the brute mockery of Goans by legislating that a coconut tree is grass (Goa Legislative Assembly January 14, 2016) has only exposed the extent legislators holding power would bend to loot and fight over the distribution of loot. 25 lakh square meters of land has already been converted to settlement zones and ownership endorsed to big non-Goan land sharks.
Be it the vanquishing of the tiger dens at the Vagueri hills or destruction of the pristine hillocks in Goa and even obliterating the golden coastal zones of Goa all have a one-word agenda… LOOT.
Politicians and their babus exploit their power over a mute population. When political power is concentrated in the hands of a few people, corruption raises its ugly head and it is used to create wealth in favour of those who hold it. They buy and sell influence. There is no accountability as in the case of the recent ‘Cash-for-jobs’ scam. It’s an ethics called ‘You scratch my back - I scratch yours’ and of course their disdainful camaraderie written off as “We are all in this Together”
When legislators and bureaucrats stoop so low just to “make hay”, the sun will stop shining on Goa and Goans, will be disenfranchised (both demographically and politically) from their own land which we so dearly and passionately call “Amchem Goem”