It is extremely sad for us Goans that although we have been blessed with excellent geography by Mother Nature, our history has been extremely cruel and doesn’t seem to stand the test of time.
We are in the middle of the twenty first century literally and we are obsessed with the sixteenth century.
Today Goans by and large have not only moved to other states of our country for greener futures but also sailed across the seven seas to integrate themselves with other cultures. I am not talking about Lata Mangeshkar regaling India with her melodious voice, but Goans have done India proud with their music culinary skills, fine carpentry pottery fashion designing, and hordes of other trades. We are blessed with a language which has Roman, Devanagari, Arabic, Malayalam besides other extend scripts and is extremely close to Sanskrit, yet we have not appreciated and preserved our language but even our culture which has blended superbly with other distinct and diverse ways of life. Yes, we must learn from history & not allow the bad to repeat itself. Sadly we have failed miserably even to protect the literature, medicine, music, artisanship, of the past but ferociously fight over myths, fairy tales and who is our Goencho Saib, instead of moving on fast forward mode to usher in the advantages of Artificial Intelligence and the recent developers of science, commerce, technology medicine and engineering.
In the last 50 years in particular and over the 100 years of mining history of Goa, we have viewed development with squinted vision. We tom-tom and undertake tom foolery to declare mining as a core economic activity and even after the loot, plunder, damage to our aquifers, pollution of our rivers siltation of our ponds, massacre of our sacred groves we have mining dependent Goan parasites.
Look at Pissurlem, a village rich in precious water and sustainable agriculture is today arid, dry and residents are dependent on tanker from PWD to sustain the parched dams of village community. Iron ore belt is not a renewable and a sustainable resource. We can call solar energy as a sustainable form of energy but not biomass and bio resources specially when we undertake these by deforestation, pollution, introduce the casino culture, gambling and intoxicating ourselves with adverse ill effects instead of harnessing the medicinal and health benefits by judicious use of our resources. Look at our rivers and our river banks. We are obsessed with the Sagarmala project. It would have been good if we had used it for navigation & not planned it for coal transportation.
For decades we have been debating whether we must built a marina and a yatch haven off the Goan coast. I remember Mr. Chowgule from Vasco was planning for a highly sophisticated yatch docking point in Goa for high end boat owners across the globe in Goa.
However, neither did we have a marina in place nor do we have docking facilities for small boats for high end tourist with families on board.
During my investigations in research on marine fauna and fisheries, I have worked on fish habitats in marine environments both in Portugal and off the west coast of India.
Just as we love to have our home of our own, fish too are found of a dwelling in the deep waters of the high seas. It was observed by scientists that fishes are fond of dwelling in coastal reefs, rocks, in sunken boats and also in artificial cages designed to keep finger lings and fish fry youngsters with phyto planktons and zoo planktonic fauna in it as a food chain agents to catalyse the growth of fish in the cages as captive nurseries. Even mussels & oysters and crabs are grown in a van of such diverse cages. Somehow during my research crab growth in cages were not as successful as mussels mushrooming on ropes.
High sea fish nurseries, marinas and off shore structures often supplement as well as compliment the net fishing industry.
Yes, in the era of today we cannot just solely depend on ramponkars, and fishing cannoes.
With growing demand for sea food for our protein needs, vitamins and mineral supplements, we must ensure that essential elements like Iodine, Vitamin 2-3 D, Vitamin A, other fatty acid omega fatty acid grant us a healthy living for our future generations. India lost over 47 lakhs of our population during Covid-19. Our poor nutrition results in us harnessing lower immunity and wholesome disease-free living.
Let us know that modern technology as marinas in our coastal waters are encouraged sustainable growth of fisheries by ensuring mangroves, marshy soils and our estuarine coasts are not disturbed by sewage releases casino wastes.
It is tragic and an atrocious to spend Rs 6 crore of public fund for just a meaningless swearing-in event of the Pramod Sawant government of today. We quietly accept these meaningless expenses but shout hoarse from our roof tops that marinas and offshore fish farming or agriculture is undesirably wake up Goans. We must desist and resist ourselves from being self-style environmentalist. We must learn about the Goodness of food chain cycles, mineral cycles and advances in technology now needed to make our population strong and healthy by balanced diets and healthy living with increases economic growth & prosperity.
We cannot reject each and every development project coming into Goa in the garb of environmental protection and sustain our increasing demands for a better quality of life for our future generations.
The Chief Minister’s ardent appeal to Goans to cooperate with his government for a better, cleaner and greener Goa for our Generation Next is comforting and wise. Marinas if we study and use them sensibly cannot only free Goan rivers of sewage released by the inland vessels but also help us to create artificial reefs, cages and nurseries for fish, mussels, crabs, sponges and other marine delicacy and will also improve our economic growth.
(The writer is a retired Goa University professor and an environmental activist)
