For Cotigao, life itself is a daily conflict between forest department and forest animals.
Cotigao panchayat with below Rs 17,000 annual income is one of the poorest village panchayats in Goa and being at a distance of over 30 kms from the closest town of Canacona and non existence of basic facilities in the village, the life itself for the villagers is a daily struggle to survive.
The Cotigao village has a population of about 4000 people consisting mostly of schedule tribes and very few families from general category.
With over 90% of the population belonging to the ST community it looks like a perfect setup for lots of developments that can be funded from tribal sub-plan but if one looks at the ground reality apart from well tarred roads and underground electrical cabling, the village has not seen much development.
The main occupation for all of the 850 households which keeps them busy only during half of the year is agriculture with paddy being grown in the rainy season and cashew harvesting done for three months on the hills all around the village. Some farmers on the either side of River Talpona passing through the village have opted for sugarcane cultivation as a cash crop. Being located in the Cotigao wild life sanctuary the life everyday is a clash between the forest department and forest animals, say locals.
Some 131 families, who were allotted plots belonging to the forest department, totally admeasuring about 13.5 lakh sq mts in the 60’s by the then chief minister of Goa Dayanand Bandodkar have made numerous representations to the authorities alleging the forest officials are obstructing their movement through this plots and are not allowing development of infrastructure including fencing, wells, house repair, sanitation, roads etc.
In the absence of a water filteration facility in the village most of the wards in the village have to contend with conventionally filtered water for their daily drinking and cooking use, still there are a few wards in the village who rely on the raw water from spring and river as they are located in the forest land and the forest department is not allowing them to dig well they complain.
With 7 primary and one high school in the village so many youth of the village fighting poverty managed to get themselves well educated with some fighting all odds have studied up to post graduation but with no private or government job opportunities have remained jobless.
The unemployed youth and others from here feel that this village comprising of mostly tribal population should be either adopted under central government schemes or developed by using the unspent funds from the tribal sub-plan to alleviate the sufferings of the poor community of the village which has remained as it was since the then chief minister of Goa Dayanand Bandodkar visited just after liberation of Goa.
