I have often taken hospitality of this column to focus on the ‘idea of Goa’ and the destruction of that idea. At the cost of being hackneyed I delve into that area again. Various battles were fought to save what is left of Goa. The Civil society is now tired fighting. People’s power got the Babush Monseratte Regional Plan withdrawn and Special Economic Zones scrapped. But those times the governments were responsive to public views. Currently there is over dependence on the High Court, in the public quest for protection of Goa’s verdant landscape, being ruined by the recent changes in the land laws.
If you want to live with harmony with nature, Goa is the place for you. It is the landscape with a blend of its vibrant culture, relaxed way of living and Portuguese influence that makes Goa what it is. For over two decade, the environment activists, concerned citizens have been highlighting on the disastrous consequences of the way this ‘cradle of tourism’ is disintegrating into chaotic concrete jungle. Ald Judge of the Bombay High Court in Goa said a few days back in open court ‘the hills belong to us all, the Town and Country Planning department is only our trustee. The entire Goa – its hills landscape, plateaus and the sea shore belongs to us. The trustee cannot be permitted to negotiate over our prized possessions. Now the trustee is neither sensitive nor responsive to public and their views. We are now at a new low as the trustee brazens it out. They will suck the last drop of blood in their endeavor to collect money bags by converting ‘the pearl of the orient’ into a cursed city state.
The trustee has become very audacious. To hell with the public views and what the people want. We can manage them at election time seems to be their response. Sec. 16A of the TCP Act which introduced change of zone on ‘case to case’ basis. The High Court had granted some interim relief. During the last election the opposition proposed to delete the arbitrary law on the change of land use. The people actually rejected the opposition and elected those who stood by Sec. 16B.
Perhaps that emboldened the newly selected trustee to delete Sec. 16B, but bring in a similar provision- Sec. 17(2) with unilateral power to modify or rectify inadvertent errors in the regional plan. The provision is actually a scandal. The feeble public protest to Sec. 17(2) also fizzled out as the matter reached the High Court. As this is not enough, we now have another scam called sec 39A giving further arbitrary powers to alter, modify or change the regional plan or the outline development plan for carrying out change of zone. There was no much opposition in the house when Sec. 17(2) or Sec. 39A was brought in. Earlier Sec. 16B also did not find opposition in 2018. As the real estate booms, conversion mania drives the politicos and their economy.
Nobody wants hills slopes and hills tops for cashew cultivation or low lying paddy fields for paddy cultivation. Make no mistake about it. Whether it is erstwhile Sec. 16B or Sec. 17(2) and now Sec. 39A, it is a prelude to the great land grab in Goa. Nobody has the interest of local population when such provisions are brought into the planning laws. After over a decade of RP-21 we are told that people are put to hardship and land belonging to poor has been converted from settlement to natural cover. Who believes him and the experts he chooses? Everybody knows that the attempt is to create a land bank for rapacious private interests, builders, real-estate brokers investors from outside ready and willing to provide ‘a piece of Goa’ to holidayers and second home seekers who want to get away from the madness of other places. The beauty of this place is actually becoming a curse for the locals. The problem is that our elected believe that only high speed highways, a new airport and depletion of green cover is progress and development.
The current chief trustee of the Goa’s landscape, coming from the fiefdom of Sattari, appears to believe that the issue of environment, hill cutting, conversion of paddy fields and orchards is only issue in Salcete. To hell with the Xashtti warriors! Who cares as long as Sattari and part of Bicholim can provide a fifteen thousand lead to the ruling party at election time and the two seats of Sattari mean a lot in a house of forty. Earlier even the opposition lived in hope of forming a government with the Sattari satrap and many still live in hope of forming such a government in the future.
In July 2022 back the trustee told us that 3.59 sq mts. of land in 5 villages of north Goa’s coastal belt were converted from tenanted land, cultivated land, slopes and mangroves to settlement in the villages of Calangute, Candolim, Arpora, Nagoa and Para. These villages are out of the ODP. A few days back an ordinance to validate approvals granted and conversions reports, zoning certificates issued on the basis of the existing ODP prior to the withdrawal from planning areas has been promulgated which has gone unnoticed.
The zone changes of massive areas of orchard to settlement in ecologically fragile areas has sent the entire eco sensitive I and eco sensitive II zones in the RP 2021 into total oblivion as lakhs of sq. mts. of Goa’s natural cover converted into settlement on the pretext of corrections under Sec. 17(2). The stink of Sec. 39A is yet to reach the countryside. It’s time to act, before the stink spreads.
(The writer is a practicing advocate and a political thinker)
