The people’s plan
Regional Plan 2021 charts a brave and bold new path, says DR OSCAR REBELLO
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It was audacious, it was historic and it was pure, undiluted magic. The week that lapsed, must be a golden week for Goa. The sun truly rose bright and incandescent from the west. The SEZs were given a decent burial by the HC of Goa and the Regional plan 2021 finally left its womb (unaborted and undeformed ) to chart out a brave new path for this innocent little lamb standing for slaughter by the Arabian Sea.
There’ll be plenty of carping and criticism on essentially a few pockmarks on the remarkable face of this plan. But that the Plan dares to dream and dream big, no one can deny.
Highlights and Victories
* The near fanatic preservation of Eco sensitive zones which to my mind is the real identity of Goa and Goans.
* The drop dead gorgeous look to our pristine villages by dropping FAR’s as wished for by the people.
* The chasing away of the land mafias that would have decimated and then dominated our land. ( though they’ll try every trick in the book, to sneak their way back in )
* The sensible walk down 73rd/74th Avenue. All the beautiful suggestions that would embellish the plan were incorporated, all the ugly ones weeded out.
* The almost obsessive compulsive detailed and extensive mapping exercise which identifies each and every hill / pond / field / khazan land. Any violation of these can now be easily prosecuted speedily and then punished severely (hopefully)
* The intelligent creation of alternate economic thrust areas connected by new rail and road networks. After all, people do need jobs to survive. They surely can’t sustain themselves on love, fresh air and moribund economic theories.
* The cunning, very cunning, provision to heavily tax second homes in Goa. We have to somehow halt Goa becoming one giant casino where every pan chewing, seedy speculator comes to make a fast buck, and scoot while we are left cleaning up the mess.
* The affirmation that any Regional plan for a golden future requires not just pen, (with green, not red refills) paper, compass and Google but essentially have what this plan has – A heart and a soul and a vision.
Pitfalls
The best laid plans can, however, be torn asunder by men and women of straw. So, this plan can also be botched up big time. How?
*We will all be missing the elephant in the room if we do not address the gargantuan issue of corruption in our society. In Charles Correia’s immortal words “Corruption doesn’t just come from top to down. It is also a bottom up phenomenon”. Corruption is the life blood of this Government. No question. The stench emanates from every pore of governance and unless this python is annihilated or at least tamed by the system, implementation of such a wonderful document will remain a frustrating mirage.
*PDAs: (The babudom that determines planning and growth in our cities and an unbelievable cash cow) is an area the Chief Minister will tread gingerly not to ruffle feathers. Will Goa be saved 100%?
* Flipping the Economy : As long as people in Goa think that mining, building, sex, drugs and casinos are the only economic models we need to follow, we are certain to slam head first in to a wall. There are rumblings of change, though. Change to a greener economy. Agriculture, Floriculture, Ecotourism, Educational Hubs and Green Industries. These little streams must coalesce to give rise to a giant tidal wave that overturns the more destructive models of economic growth.
*Donations of land : The rich, wealthy and connected in Goa have this altruistic penchant to donate large tracts of land to religion, trusts and other construction related activities. In a mood of extreme charity, could they donate land in their possession back to the environment – for posterity? Could there be a tax rebate on that?
*Education: Many of these ideas will dissipate in to clouds of snow, if they are not taken forward by the youth of this state. The post liberalisation generation, not shackled as viciously, by agendas of caste, religion, language and colonial balderdash must understand that all this is about their future. A future, that they can choose to make sustainable, peaceful, clever and prosperous. Or embark on a highway to hell!
CREDITS: Credit must be given where it is due, the bows must be taken.
*The CM: How this roly poly, apparently naive Chanakya manages to survive and pull off a coup as tectonic as this, is difficult to comprehend. His cabinet has gamely accepted the decision. The Cong – NCP party’s on board and the ship is on course. So, do all those religious pilgrimages somehow help?
*The SLC /Taskforce led by the clever and charismatic Charles Correia and the wise and wonderful Prof Edgar Rebeiro: They burnt the mid night oil, put plan to paper, faced the odds and delivered a triumphant product. It didn’t help much, however, to have one mercurial, temperamental idiot on board. (guess who?)
The Politicos : These land battles would have never reached a climax if not for the unstinted and vocal support of many in the political class. Mathany Saldanha, Manohar Parrrikar, Shripad Naik, Nirmala Sawant, Shantaram Naik, Froliano Lobo, Radharao Gracias, Christopher Fonseca, Shashikala Kakodkar and many others. They kept hammering out at these issues and kept the pressure cooker on.
Media: Nowhere in the world is the media more with the people rather than power as much as it is in Goa. Every Editor (print and electronic), every columnist and opinion maker (the more acerbic they are, the harder they love the land) every letter writer wrote and published, voiced and anguished, cajoled…and reprimanded to push Goa away from the abyss and back to a modicum of sanity.
Civil society organisations: All of them, some celebrated, some unnoticed, have waged a relentless, no holds barred, sword fight to the finish to voice the grievances of the “aam aadmi”. A tad too idealistic and non pragmatic at times, their commitment, sincerity, and their sheer force of conviction is unparalleled in Goa’s history.
Religious organisations: The Church, Hindu Samaj religious heads and Muslim organisations pitched in hard and fought long. And more so the Church. To be a monumental moral force of courage and perseverance in modern times, despite the odds, despite the taunts and jibes and despite all the dark despair,r is one helluva task. Try carrying a cross every single day of your life.
Celebrities and Goa-philes: From our rock stars to our novelists, our thinkers to our NRGs, they lobbied in the corridors of power in New Delhi, they pushed the envelope, and they ensured mega media attention and made us believe that celebrities can also be on the right side of history.
To paraphrase a JFK advice: “Ask not what the Plan can do for you but together what we can do for the plan”.
PS: I will never ever have a rational, scientific and mathematically precise explanation as to why all this has happened so I’ll concede this just this once, only once: There must be a God somewhere up there who really loves Goa.
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The thread that binds us
By Sajla Chawla
The dynamics of being an outsider in a predominantly homogeneous society are complicated. When a person ventures out of his own homeland to go and settle in a relatively alien place, he or she already puts aside certain pre-conceived notions regarding people, because he or she has taken that gigantic risk of venturing into a strange land with the hope of making it his own. It is quite like the proverbial “leap of faith”, where a person trusts the fundamental universal essence of human beings and puts aside conventional, traditional, racial, and ethnic prejudices. Surely, there would be some way to connect to people, no matter what language they speak, which religion they follow, or which region they belong to. There would be a little bit of earth and sky that even strangers can share. A smile could bridge many a differences.
Somewhere in my mind I believed in this, without even being aware of it, when I came to this small village in Raia. The community here seemed so close, with everyone knowing everything about each other or at least claiming to know!! It was quite a change from the vastness of Delhi, where I grew up, with its relative anonymity and poignant de-personalisation! These were two extremely different environments to develop social perceptions. I was brought up in one and then suddenly thrown into another, just by fate. There was no other way but to deal with it.
Every time I smiled at my elderly neighbour, Tony, he would look down! Well, all my notions of bonding with them seemed to be put on the shelf and no matter how hard I tried to get through to them, it seemed that I had encountered a wall of prejudices, being a woman from a big city. However, in time, I became a little friendly with my neighbour’s wife and we spoke whenever we met. This continued till the day my neighbour lost his lovely wife in an accident. He was now left all alone in the world. Gone were the walks they shared up the hill, gone was the smile from his lips and gone was the little sense of neighbourhood that I had because of her and her kindliness.
Well, if I could not reach out to Tony, now, at the saddest hour of his life, there was no point in being human at all. I started visiting him sometimes. Death is so solemnly universal, that one does not need to have a shared culture or language to feel its unbearable sadness. A tentative friendship developed between us.
Whenever I need any information or help regarding anything in the village, I turn to him. Sometimes I go over to his house and scold him for keeping it in a mess. Sometimes I call him over and we share a good conversation and a meal. He tells me of his time and experiences on the ship.
It is not smooth sailing always. Oh NO! I tried to make exotic south Indian dosas for Tony and he ate them quietly, a few times for breakfast, and then finally got fed up and to my dismay, blurted out that he hated them and would prefer omelets and bread like the way Goans are used to!! And when I told him how touched I was by his thoughtful gesture of taking all the neighbourhood dogs for a brisk walk in the woods every evening, he replied poker faced, “I do it for my own exercise, not as philanthropy to them”!!
I can’t understand why he goes to Church so often. He probably can’t understand why I have long, loud, bellowing singing sessions with my friends!! It took us a long time to accept each other’s attitudes and perceptions and we are still working at it! Last month, during the visit of Our Lady to my house, Tony came with the rest of the village people. And as I stood there, to my surprise, I saw the same man who would not even smile at me a few years back, lighting all the candles for me, so naturally and responsibly, as only a close friend would. As I watched the flame dancing and lighting up Mother Mary’s face, I felt I was loved.
