There is an oft-quoted aphorism by American sports media personality Colin Cowherd (1964- ) “Live your life through the windshield, not the rear view mirror.”
Our current Chief Minister Dr Sawant would do well to pay heed to it.
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You don’ t have to actually know how to drive a vehicle to understand that there is a reason why its windshield is so big and the rear-view mirror is so small.
The windshield signifies looking ahead to the present moment or future; the rear view mirror only shows us what is behind — in this context it means the past whether good or bad.
To go forward, one needs to have one’s full attention on what is on the road right now (the present), and what sort of challenges lie ahead (the future).
If you were the Chief Minister of our tiny state, dear reader, and were in the driving seat, what would you give your undivided attention to? The dilemmas we face in the ‘here and now’ such as the looming devastating drought and desertification Goa faces if (some pessimists say when) Goa loses the Mhadei river-sharing dispute with Karnataka? The scandal that despite our small size, unemployment in Goa is higher than the national average? The fact that just a few months ago Goa’s own Union Minister Shripad Naik stated that drugs are the main reason behind all crimes here? The international press gives Goa the dubious label of ‘ India’ s Pattaya,’ while the national press reports that drugs, prostitution rackets and illegal massage parlours are giving the state a bad name.
According to a recent article in a Goa Journal, ‘Fatal accidents claimed 91 lives in three months from January to March 2023, up from a corresponding 53 for the same period in 2022. Road accident deaths are now felling an average of a life a day in Goa, and three with grievous or minor injuries. These numbers are far more serious than its Covid-related fatalities.’ (I presume the memory of our Covid-related fatalities is still fresh in our minds).
The report continues: ‘Truth is, statistics prove that road accidents are higher on wide, open, straight roads that have become race tracks for speeding vehicles. Consider this. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of all accidents and 63% of all fatalities that took place in 2022, were on wide, multi-lane national highways and state highways, though both constitute just 5% of total road length in Goa.’
In the crazed race to lay down national highways, commensurate thought has not been given to road safety. That the same logic has been applied nationally to bullet trains over rail safety came depressingly and horrifically to the fore with the recent Odisha train disaster claiming hundreds of lives, one of the country’ s worst train accidents in recent history.
The monsoons are upon us, and the capital city’s roads are still in shambles due to unfinished ‘ Smart City’ work. We had been assured the work would be completed before the rains. Despite a remarkably delayed onset of the monsoon this year, that promise has not been kept. CM Sawant has also assured us that the city’s storm drains would be cleared and there won’ t be flooding this monsoon. But given his track record of promises made and then ignored, I for one am not holding my breath. The accumulation of rainwater after even light showers earlier this month is a pointer to what we can expect as the monsoon gathers pace.
Those storm drains, by the way, that have served us so well for so many decades ever since they were put in place, are a Portuguese colonial legacy. Should we undo all the good work done in civic infrastructure and planning, merely because our Chief Minister has a bee in his bonnet about our colonial past?
All the problems just mentioned above and so many more, too numerous to list here, threatening Goa’s present and future take a back seat (forgive the mixing of vehicular metaphors) to the rear-view fixation that ails our Chief Minister.
In that sense, it is in keeping with the ‘ double-engine’ Central government’ s own obsession (and a selective one at that) with the past. In Goa, the whipping-boys (and girls) are those damn Portuguese and all the god-awful things they did. In the rest of the country, they morph into the Mughals, Tipu Sultan and the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Sawant’s speech on June 6 at Betul, calling for ‘wiping away’ all traces of Portuguese rule in a ridiculously tit-for-tat retaliatory move for their ‘ destruction of temples’ centuries ago is at odds with his own words at so many other occasions. In October last year, while inaugurating a Church hall in Ribandar, he railed darkly at (but didn’t name, for reasons only he knows) ‘religious forces’ attempting to create a ‘communal divide’ and disturb the ‘harmony’ of the state. “I want to remind Goans to be on guard”, he had said then. He seems to have forgotten his own advice. Was Dr Jekyll warning us about Mr Hyde?
The Goa I knew, know and still love despite everything, has degenerated into a Sodom and Gomorrah, a den of thieves, sin, sex, drugs, gambling, crime, corruption in every sense of the word, garbage mismanagement, a land of ‘ kuchch bhi chalta hai’ with very few good men and women still willing or even able to stem the chaotic tide.
From the point of view of history, how will future generations remember Sawant’s tenure as Goa’ s Chief Minister? Will they also want to ‘wipe away’ signs of his (mis)rule?
For all our sakes, especially for the sake of your own legacy, Dr Sawant, leave the reverse gear and rear-view mirror alone. Focus on the bigger picture in front of you in the windshield and take Goa forward, in love and inclusive brotherhood.
To quote an ‘Oasis’ song title –”Don’t look back in anger.” Look forward with love.
Mog asum di!
(Dr Luis Dias is a physician, musician, writer and founder of Child’ s Play India Foundation. He blogs at luisdias.wordpress.com)
