Dear Mr Ganguly,
Dominic died on Thursday last. In normal circumstances we wouldn’t have bothered you or even hoped you would know who Dominic was, even if he lived in Tiracol. But these are not normal circumstances.
You would know Tiracol of course, one of your latest playgrounds, a village you claim your company owns, in a manner that several tycoons own islands and all that come with it. Its air, its water, its trees and yes, also its people. You think you own them all, don’t you, because you bought them. Thus, you would have bought Dominic too without knowing who Dominic was. That’s fine Sir. After all when we buy ten bars of soap, are we supposed to know each bar by name and know what each looks like, do we? But we probably remember the super market and the owners of the super market. In this case the super market was the Government of Goa, and, lucky you, even when the owners of the super market changed, they let you buy anything you wanted, even items that could not ever be on sale – like land of tenants. Your super market owner friends have ranged from Dr Wilfred D’Souza, Pratapsingh Rane, his son Vishwajeet and his family and then of course Mr Manohar Parrikar and now the latest owner of the Super market, Laxmikant Parsekar who believes in the “the guest is God” principle and has made you feel as if you actually own the super market called Goa and one of its branches, Tiracol. Congratulations. You have done well.
Dominic’s land was not “bought” though. Here your super market owners went a step further. They knocked off his name from Form I and XIV of his property, thereby deleting not just his name, but his future. For you, it didn’t matter, as long as you got the land. Of course your highly paid lawyers must have worked overtime with the government to get this land.
In a normal civil society based on dharma, karma and the rule of law, politics is defined by polity and the word polity has its roots in people. In a rapidly changing society when it is getting increasingly difficult to be good, and good business has become antithetical to being good, politics is defined by anti-polity or anti-people.
You and the Goa government are the epitome of anti-polity. And if you still do not know why, here’s why. When a capitalist wants to invest in a State to set up a golf course as a front and multi-crore villas as the real deal, he does so to enhance his capital, not give benefits to locals or protect the environment. If you had to protect the environment, you would have left it alone. Your sugar coated lies haven’t managed to reduce the bitter after taste of your sentences like this: “We will not destroy the natural beauty of the village” (your words of December 10, 2012). Or this: “We will give full respect to environment and the villagers”.
Let us ask. When you decided to storm the village on May 14 and 15, 2015, to clear the forests to build a road to your project site, when your permission to cut trees had expired and you had not yet got your revalidation, were you giving respect to the environment? When you disturbed the peace of the village by unleashing your menacing looking bouncers, were you giving respect to the villagers? And on June 25, when your JCB machines and bulldozers arrived and you moved into what you called your property but the people who’ve lived there for years, screamed it was theirs, were you respecting the people.
Dominic Pereira who died of a massive heart attack on Thursday, had his name removed from the land title forms. He and many villagers said they were tricked into giving powers of attorney to your people which were misused making many villagers sign off and ‘sell’ their land, unaware of their consequences. It is on this land where you are building your dream golf course and villas. They never really sold them. You tricked them. You took their agricultural land and violated the Tenancy Act by converting these huge lands for non-agricultural purposes. All this has been challenged in court Mr Ganguly. You are not clear. You cannot conveniently take the view that no decision is a decision in your favour, because your actions in the village, of cutting trees, building boundary walls, moving into people’s property are irreversible moves which affect lives, livelihoods and people’s futures. You are playing with people’s lives here. Do you understand?
You have in turn filed FIRs against villagers, accused them of being divided and looking for money to cut deals with you and then charged them of being violent, so much so that you needed muscle men to protect your company’s interests. These villagers and their families have lived there for years and not harmed a fly. You have shattered the peace of this village and when this angers people and they rise in revolt and hurt and kick one of your bulldozers, you call this an act of violence and label them as rowdy criminals.
You have neither given respect to the environment nor to the villagers. Thank you for teaching us the definition of respect in the eyes of a corporate worth billions of dollars which sets up magnificent hotel chains and now will construct villas worth Rs 25 crore each. Half of the cost of just one of your villas is enough to meet the basic needs of this village for years.
So if we can clear this rubbish of you giving respect to villagers, out of the way, in the manner that you have been clearing the trees of Tiracol, we can move on.
This government has been a willing partner, in your effort towards owning the whole village. It has bent laws, it has manipulated forest reports, it has declared private forest as non forested allowing you to get your Environment Clearances and CRZ permissions. This was done by the same Deputy Conservator of Forests M V Karkhanis, who in his role as a member of the State Level Expert Committee signed off on survey numbers 4, 5 and 6 as a private forest and then declared it as a non forested area. He was obviously told to do by the government.
We are not challenging the fact you have got permissions, we are challenging the government for the manner in which it has accorded them. And we are challenging them for the manner in which tenanted land of the Tiracol villagers was ‘sold’ on the basis of which you call yourself the owner, the lord and master of all you see.
And we as a newspaper and the people of Tiracol (and in case you haven’t got it, we are with them and not with you and will never be, because we are not neutral, we are on the side of what is right), are standing up to you when you enter the village and its lands and start your process of destruction. We tell you that the very manner in which you have seized this right to call yourselves owners of the land in Tiracol, is challenged and is pending with the courts of this land.
To get back to where we started, Dominic died. Of a heart attack. The night before, he went to what was always his land, to see how it was being taken over by you. His heart sank and then gave up. That’s why he died. But don’t worry. The doctor has put down the cause of death as just that that. A heart attack. It’s become a natural death these days. But if you think we will allow you to build your dream castles and your golf course and your villas on the foundation of broken hearts and destroyed futures, we are sorry, that won’t happen.
People like you and the companies you work for have made the task controlling the system into a fine art. We realise we are fighting against heavy odds. But fight we will. Because rolling over and allowing you to do what you intend doing will be shameful. After all we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel proud that we fought against injustice of this high order. Because we want the next generation of children to be born in a free Tiracol. And most importantly because we want our Goa to remain our Goa.
Finally, we don’t grudge you, your business or your prosperity but NEVER at the cost of the people of Tiracol.
Thank you.
