There’s a new Goa we are living in and it definitely is not better than the old one. Land reforms of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party – the Mundkar Act and the Land to the Tiller Act – may have watered down the arrogance of the bhatkar, perhaps even completely sidelining the landowner, but electoral politics has created a new bhatkar – a powerful breed that roams around in shiny cars with tinted glasses and thick gold chains around their thick necks and rings on their fingers, sometime slapping those who don’t give them the right of way on the road.
These are the men or the women who believe that they not only represent the people of the constituency or ward, but also own the land, the air and the people too. The bhatkar’s land was what he rightfully owned, the politician’s playing field is bigger and unrestrained by land titles; the bhatkar’s land was used for agriculture and the mundkar was there to reap the harvest from the land; for the politician the land is for everything except agriculture and the constituent to be bought at election time and then forgotten. And this change has come over the past decades so slowly that the realization of this was not entirely felt and has taken time to emerge.
Through the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, the focus was on the changing face of Goa. Starred hotels were springing up along the shore encroaching on the high tide line, the real estate boom was breaking into Goa, Gulf money was buying everything in sight.
Then came the industries and the gated complexes and cash from North India replaced the Gulf remittances. Along with that cash came a certain brash quality and suddenly the face of Goa was no longer changing, it had changed. A large parcel of land was sold in the village and a small flat was purchased in the town. Families moved from the rural area to the urban area. The quaint Mangalore-tiled houses gave way to concrete structures, the cycle on the road to BMWs and Mercedes.
But, it was not just the architecture and mode of transport that changed. With it all there also came a change in the people and the politician. Politicians believed it was their right to demand bribes and the people felt that they had to make that extra payment to the local MLA to get their job done.
Corruption became institutionalized and politicians turned into demagogues. They strutted about, literally throwing their ample weight around believing that they were a class above the ‘lesser mortals’ of the land.
And now, Goan politics has joined the mainstream. There was a time when Goans wryly smiled when they read on the newspapers of the chief ministers, or former chief ministers, of Bihar and Tamil Nadu going to jail. Today, how different is the situation in Goa? There is one MLA, who is a former minister, in jail; another, who is a former chief minister, is out on bail but only because of a technical reason; and another former chief minister has been in judicial custody for a month now.
This is the first time that legislators, the very persons that the man on the street would call up when the police came knocking on their doors, have discovered that the law can catch up with the lawmakers too.
In December 1963, in that first election after Liberation, Goa voted for a non-descript tea stall owner, a poor farmer, a mine owner, a doctor, a lawyer, a businessman and so many others. Democracy had made everybody equal.
Five decades later Goans are still voting for powerful tea stall owners, rich farmers, mine owners, doctors, lawyers and businessmen. The difference – in 1963 the person who was elected as MLA actually believed and acted like a humble servant of the people; in present day Goa, the MLA believes and acts like the dictator. None of those elected in 1963, and there are four still alive, would have ever imagined that those who followed them to the hallowed hall of the Legislative Assembly would also be caged in jail for acts committed during the period they swore in God’s name to uphold the Constitution of this country.
The 2012 State Assembly elections were fought and won on the issue of corruption in government, with the then opposition party, the BJP, promising to have those involved in corruption behind bars. Ironically for the BJP, the first politician to go behind bars after that election was a minister in their current government, although he was a member of an alliance partner, who quit the cabinet before he surrendered to the authorities. His crime was not corruption, but a physical assault on a government engineer.
The year 2015 has woken up Goa to the changes that have taken place in the State, especially the changes to the moral fibre of the people who are the lawmakers. The lessons of 2015 would be well-learnt if the politician amended his way of being or the people changed the way they voted.
The former is always unlikely to happen, the latter only time will tell. But, should there be no change, Goa will continue to slide further into the morass of corruption and illegality. The tragedy would be if no lesson was learnt for that would present the political establishment an unbridled path to further plunge the State into moral turpitude, and that is something Goa can’t afford.
(The writer is Executive Editor, Herald)
