The Goa Gujarat connection happened well before Modi and Parrikar
Just before the turn of the fifteenth century, Vasco Da Gama had arrived on the East Coast of Africa and was looking for a navigator who could steer him across the seas to India, he finally found a man called Kanji Malam, a Gujarati spice trader who frequented the sea route between Mozambique and India, who steered the Portuguese explorer to Calicut in the East, opening up the vistas of other voyages to the hub of the spice trade in Gujarat.
With the Portuguese Gujarati connection, and therefore by association the Goan-Gujarati association established way back to 1498, Goa can perhaps prepare to do “business” with India’s new Gujarati Prime Minister, Narendra bhai Modi. Manohar bhai Parrikar for one is waiting for the opening bell of this trade alliance to strike, when the center will not be a foe, coming in his path but an ally who will facilitate. After the days of 2007 when there was the Congress in Goa and in Delhi, Parrikar pulled out a decisive victory, in Goa. But gradually his battles with Delhi increased, especially after the Shah Commission report on mining. This relationship reached its nadir in September 2012, when soon after he banned mining in Goa, the Environment minister Jayanthi Nattarajan came to Goa and at a press conference announced the cancelling of all Environmental clearances of mining leases.
From then on his run in with the center on the issue of buffer zones for mining, the mining policy, the controls exercised by the MOEF became legion. For Mr Parrikar, to convert the mandate he received in 2012 to absolute governance, he needed a Prime Minister like Modi, the man he was quick to endorse before anyone else as Prime Minister, on the eve of the BJPs national executive meeting in Goa in June 2013.
As Herald has maintained in earlier editorials, the two men are every similar. Workaholics who begin their day early, working late into the night, keeping decision making completely to themselves even as they talk of decentralisation and autonomy.
They talk of minimum government but maximum governance, but ensure that maximum governance is controlled by levers in their hands. While Modi has proved that this can be a very effective style of functioning in Gujarat, Parrikar hasn’t quite achieved the same success in Goa. But with a Modi government in power, much of Parrikar’s ideas which seemed too out of the box like asking for separate Goa cadre or even developing his own cadre of officers to replace IAS officers, may well work in a Modi sarkar.
The promises that will immediately be called for action are the one on giving Goa a Special Status and a mining package. The stunning mandate for the BJP in the mining belt of South Goa, as well as in the North, adds pressure on Mr Parrikar to solve the economic tangle of the common man who is mining effected as the first sign of Modi-vartan, the Narendra Modi version of parivartan.
More importantly, the Chief Ministers biggest dream of a Rs 25,000 crore cash injection through new investments have the best chance of blooming under this government than any other.
The Gujarati Kanji Mallam shook hands with a Portuguese in 1498. Goa’s Chief Minister of 2014 wants more than a handshake. He needs a political embrace from a Gujarati Prime Minister who he openly salutes.
