Enter the Patto business hub of Panjim, and one is treated to a stench your nostrils will not forget in a long time. We are told it emanates from the garbage handling plant. Visit any major city of Goa any day, and your eyes and nose are treated to the mounds and ever piling garbage around almost every corner. Why, just while travelling along NH4A or NH17, one is now treated to the sight of ever increasing garbage strewn, flung or stealthily unloaded on either sides of the road. After changes in governments, municipal councilors and COs, Sonsoddo is still a mess and a white elephant for reasons best known to all. Ditto garbage dumps at Vasco, Mapusa and Ponda. We the lesser mortals are told that this “complex garbage issue” is being tackled and we shouldn’t be impatient. After all only a few foreign jaunts have been undertaken and only a few crores have been spent to “learn” solutions to this problem!
A Remo Fernandes or an Elano Blumer of international repute or a Tarun Tejpal (how can we forget him) is hounded by a cracking police of Goa. Complete with lookout notices and the works. But the mystery of a minor’s rape at Vasco, Fr. Bismarck’s death, Scarlett Keeling’s death at a North Goa beach, Cipriano’s death in police custody, abetment to suicide at Pernem, Carol Sweeney’s death at Vagator, the drug mafia nexus, the ever-creasing dacoities and rapes and murders in Goa, the desecration of temples and churches and cases involving the rich and the influential politicians may well remain mysteries forever. We the lesser mortals are often reminded that the “law will take its own course”. How’s that!
The non-issue of the Medium of Instruction which is being communalized by a bunch of senile buffoons, the promised issues of grant of Special Status to Goa, a new and transparent Regional Plan of Goa, the clearing of the casinos from the Mandovi, the bringing of mining looters to book, the adoption of zero tolerance to corruption, the bringing of looters of the exchequer of the erstwhile corrupt government to book, all these and more promises of the present Government , which had raised the hopes and aspirations of the Goans, have been dashed to the ground.
The Government has been so busy packing and repacking the same old wine in new bottles, that it has not been able to do justice to any of its promises. Instead what has the Government done? It has gone ahead and declared that the coconut tree is not a “tree” but a “grass”. Why? Because trees have to have branches, by definition, and coconut trees have none. Can you beat that? Let us all clap to the magnanimous heart of our Government for keeping all burning issues aside and taking time off to bring an Amendment to The Goa, Daman and Diu Preservation of Trees Act, 1984. “All in the interest of the common man” in the words of the new minister. We the lesser mortals are to assume that the agitation announced by the villagers of Sanguem to an alcohol brewery supported by their MLA , by cutting 800 odd coconut trees, a couple of days prior to this announcement, was JUST PLAIN COINCIDENCE. Tell us another fairy tale please. Go on, tell us how Goans have trouble running from pillar to post to cut a coconut tree that is precariously positioned or the trouble the “bhatkar” has to get rid of his sick non yielding trees. Oh, how considerate of our ever so obliging government, ever willing to alleviate the suffering of the Goans!
Are we serious? Are we really seeing our Government in the fifth year of its term changing the nomenclature of a coconut tree? Is this what we elected it for? What happened to the promises on issues of paramount importance to the Goan? Developed cold feet in their implementation? And now it may cry itself hoarse and silly trying to convince us lesser mortals that this move has nothing to do with the concretisation of Goa. Goans may be “susegad” but we are definitely not naive and stupid. We have shown it many times, the latest being in the Assembly elections of 2012. To the aam aadmi it is crystal clear why the coconut tree is become such a stumbling block to the present regime. And crocodile tears are being shed by some members of the previous regime, conveniently forgetting that they had brought in an ordinance applicable from retrospective effect, to save an illegal portion of a hotel from demolition.
Goans are not impressed with the sections and subsections of the Acts. Add or delete 1A or 12A, but the coconut tree has to come within the jurisdiction of the Forest Department and must need a Forest license for felling. Period. Anything short of this will be seen by Goans as a dishonest ploy on the part of the authorities for achieving ulterior motives. And with good reason. Time and again our lawmakers have miserably failed us by conniving and colluding with land sharks for “accumulating assets disproportionate to their known sources of income”. 5 times bitten, 10 times shy. There is no way the Goan wants to wake up to the day when, instead of the swaying palms along our fields and plains, concrete multi-storeyed monsters stare at us with garbage strewn all around.(It’s already happening all over Goa). Instead of the coconut plantations all along our coastline, monstrous five star hotels and high end Delhi owned villas will rob us of our already dithering “Goenkarponn”. Many a neo ”bhatkar” may be tempted to sell off his coconut plantation to a non Goan for erecting high-rise buildings (Goans cannot afford land in Goa) and migrate to Swindon on a Portuguese passport. Imagine the Carmona, Tiracol, Vanxim, Sanguem, Betul projects’ owners going berserk, razing acres and acres of coconut plantations and stripping our “supurlem Goem” naked of her modest swaying palms!!
Hats off to all the sons of the soil for raising their voices against these apparently dubious and devious acts of the powers that be, camouflaged in the cliché “common man’s interest”. Its time Goans across the length and breadth of Goa unite to save the coconut tree that is synonymous with “Goenchi feni” and all that is Goan.
The majority of our elected representatives have failed us in protecting our “maad”. We now look up to Her Excellency the Governor of Goa to save the nostalgic coconut tree of Goa for our Goan posterity!!
Fellow Goans, if this amendment goes through, Goychem “madd” podlem re!
(The author is an engineer with a leading multinational company.)
