Nerve centre of Art & Culture needs comeback performance

NESHWIN ALMEIDA

neshwin@herald-goa.com 

Ravindra Bhavan, Margao may be on the road to a revamp, but its present condition brings into sharp focus why this revamp is so urgently needed.

At 5pm when you walk into Ravindra Bhavan, a massive space with sprawling gardens and lovely sit outs you expect to unwind. But the cultural hub of the commercial capital is rather unwelcoming in nature. An incomplete building, walls with paint peeling, fixtures stolen from the toilet, broken doors and loose pavers that makes walking and parking impossible in the Ravindra Bhavan itself besides a desolate look and no programmes is a sad sight at this venue. But the just eight-year-old venue has undergone too many political tussles and now lies in shambles.

Saish Palondikar, a Konkani musician by profession who’s the newly appointed Vice Chairman of the Bhavan meets us at the back of the Bhavan and pours out his thoughts. He remembers how he successfully along with a few friends organised a World Konkani Music Day programme in 1999 bringing Remo, Alfred Rose and others on one stage and he says it was then that Digambar Kamat decided to setup a Ravindra Bhavan at the venue.

“Then itself I distanced myself from the Ravindra Bhavan idea because I felt Charles Correia or someone of that competence should have been involved in setting up this Ravindra Bhavan.

Digambar Kamat was CM from 2007 onwards and he revamped the Ravindra Bhavan in 2011 to host the International Film Festival opening in Margao and got stars like Shahrukh Khan, Jackie Shroff, Madhuri Dixit and the then Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni to Margao for the opening. And as part of that opening ceremony lots of funds to the tune of Rs 14 crore were sanctioned and a building was constructed and 90% work was complete.

Damu Naik, the ousted MLA of Fatorda then came in as the new chairman in 2012 and recommended a Vigilance inquiry and initiated a court case regarding the new building and that work was stalled.

Ravindra Bhavan ran into bad blood with the PWD (which faced the brunt of the vigilance inquiry and the court case). With PWD refusing to complete the unfinished work of the new building, the Bhavan could never start its activities of a music school like Kala Academy, Panjim.

Moreover, small things make a difference. Palondikar says, “Small things like signage are which say, outsiders not allowed is a deterrent which I have taken down. I cleared the stores of the Bhavan and realised great artistes have conducted programmes and workshops and donated paintings that are in the store room which I have pulled out and started putting up across the Bhavan,” explains Saish.

Saish tells us how the structure with over 9 feet long gates and no sit outs in the garden spaces besides no music, like in the past at the municipal garden, is unwelcoming which he wants to revive at the Bhavan.  The winds of positive change may now be finally blowing. Ghumat, mouth organ and all other kinds of musical workshops including roping in Bondo for a percussion workshop will restart.

 Newly-appointed Chairman Prashant Naik of the Goa Forward Party says, “We have asked the CM to hand over the incomplete building to us and we will finish the work including the studio, which remains locked for over five years and is infested with termites.”  

The Bhavan has only a funding of Rs 1.20 crore from the Directorate of Art and Culture and earns revenue of around Rs 1 crore from its earnings which mostly come from hosting of tiatrs. But the major chunk of expenses is diesel bill for the generators, air-conditioning maintenance, salaries to contract staff, security personnel, housekeeping and other maintenance of fixtures.

 On the Vigilance inquiry on the construction of the new building, Damu Naik says that Manohar Parrikar initiated the Vigilance inquiry in April 2012, while he joined in August. Naik also said “The Bhavan had difficulties in getting funding and repairs and maintenance approvals since the file moved from Art and Culture to the PWD to  Finance and then finally to the CM’s office”.

Sridhar Kamat, who was Vice Chairman of Ravindra Bhavan, during the tenure of Digambar Kamat feels the Ravindra Bhavan and its committees have deferred from the objectives of the Bhavan and hence all this mess.

All that the former Chief Minster and Margao MLA Digambar Kamat had to say was that it’s for the people to judge who’s worked for the residents and who has played political games.