The statement given by a forest department official affirms, “that the State forest cover has increased in the last two years by 5 sq. kms out of which 4 sq kms are mangroves.” It is estimated that the total mangrove forest cover in the State amounts to 40 sq kms.
The question which will naturally occur to any Goan is: Where are these mangroves grown, to be considered/ declared forests? Are mangroves growing on the hills? Or are they growing in our dry cultivable lands?
I am hailing from an island village surrounded by bunds and all my life I have seen mangroves grown on the river side border (outer border) of the bunds, thus affording protection and stability to the bunds, holding them to the soft soil by their roots which penetrate deeply in the soil, under the water.
Presently we are seeing mangroves growing everywhere in Goa in the kazan lands. Hence a fundamental question arises: Can kazan lands be declared forests? Let me limit the question to Goa, only.
With due respect to the official I beg to differ. I think, the official should go deeply into the land mass history as well as agriculture history of Goa and then only make accurate statements, otherwise historians and knowledgeable citizens should stop these IAS officers coming from across the border from imposing their views on Goans. If they don’t know the reality of Goan ecology and environment they should have enough humility to learn and correct their wrong thinking.
As we know centuries back Goa was predominantly living on agriculture. In those centuries Goan economy was mainly agricultural and since there were no industries, man had to survive on the produce of the land and that is why our ancestors evolved a unique system of agriculture in Goa – unparalled in the whole world called the Comunidade system. The kazan and non-kazan land was owned by the Comunidades or village Communes and no government interfered with it till 1961.
If one sees the maps of olden times of the Islands of Tiswadi namely: Chorao, Divar, Jua (St. Estevam) etc one would observe the waters of Mandovi River presently Mandovi touching the hills of Chorao, Divar, Jua etc. All these areas were covered on high tides by waters of Mandovi with no link in between them. Our Goan agriculturists of the time saw these vast swaths of silt and sluice covered by waters on high tide and through their natural geo-engineering surrounded these swaths of sluice with bunds and sluice gates, thus reclaiming them for agriculture, for cultivating paddy, vegetables, pulses and cereals and fish from where These bunds have been built through the strenuous and toilsome labour of our original agriculturists namely the Kunbis and Gavddas, extended through the centuries till finally these bunds came to be relatively stabilized and in order to hold them to the soil inside the water they planted these mangroves on the river side border of these bunds and it is there that they grew all these centuries- being their natural habitat, in Goa.
So in Goa mangroves grow on the river side border of the bunds of kazan lands and not in the kazan lands.
Now the next question to be answered is: How did they grow within the kazan lands? To answer the same one has to go again to the post-1961 history of Goa’s agriculture and enquire how did they grow in the kazan lands. The answer will be: the culprit is the Agricultural Tenancy Act 1965, which, ostensibly enacted to regulate agriculture in Goa, succeeded only in destroying our agriculture. Since then, mangroves are seen grown all over Goa in kazan lands. I will not call them forests – for kazan lands are not forests and cannot be called forests. It is against the very nature of kazan lands.
The Agricultural Tenancy Act brought to fore pisciculture in lieu of agriculture. Some mamlatdars combined with manxekars (sluice gate operators) started doing roaring business in selling fish – by keeping open the sluice gate doors during the high tides and breaking the bunds at night with gelatin sticks. Due to this, the seeds of mangroves which were normally carried out by the tides to the oceans entered the kazan lands and started growing there and now it is estimated that they are occupying nearly 40 sq kms of kazan lands. Can 40 sq.kms of agricultural kazan lands be declared forests? In fact they came into existence centuries before any of these heritage monuments of stone were constructed and need to be preserved for posterity as part of the most ancient heritage institutions of our Goan land – the Comunidades.
Many a time we see the Government so blind, deaf and dumb to the voice of the people and goes on promoting projects in the name of development everywhere and anywhere, while selling our land to investors and has shown least interest in promoting agriculture while Goa has primed itself in the past as the most advanced State in agriculture due to the Comunidade System, so much so, that Goan agriculturists were invited by Rajas and Maharajas of other places to develop their agriculture, and they were even taken to Brazil to develop agriculture there.
