Towns change with time. And with people. Beverly Hills will be half the town it is without its famous pin code “90210”, the home of the biggest celebrity actors.
In Goa, talukas have held the Beverly Hills kind of an aura for political reasons. For long, Salcete was known as a taluka, where, if you threw a stone it would land on a Chief Minister or a Minister. There was a time when if you travelled from the deep recesses of South Goa to the Verna junction, every constituency would have a minister.
Power has since then shifted and how with Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar and Speaker Rajendra Arlekar from the taluka. Many believe that Pernem is prepared for exponential growth. But that belief is more from the outside. In the VIP town and taluka, caught in an early eighties time warp, change is a forgotten word.
Even a visit to Pernem town – the city centre – as one could call it, reminds one of a place that has been caught in the 80s. It looks as if the hectic development that has hit the rest of the State has sort of just slid past this still rustic town.
Now with the Chief Minister and the Speaker of the State being from this taluka, the focus on the area should be obviously more and there has been talk of Pernem becoming a political power centre as it would automatically pick up some political clout.
How that translates into development of the area is to be seen; especially given that the Chief Minister is a three-time MLA from the area and the BJP has had two stints in government – one a five-year stint and now it is halfway through its second term.
However, people of Pernem across the board say that there has been no development at all in this area for the past 20 years. Across parties, they grumble. Both businessmen as well as locals complain that even Pernem town hardly sees any activity after 7 pm as there is nothing to do – no business and no life.
Before Parsekar and Arlekar, there were MLAs like Manohar Babu Azgaonkar and Jitendra Deshprabhu, and Ramakant Khalap who even went on to become a Union Law Minister. But whoever came, the plight of the people remained the same – no infrastructure, no development and no job prospects. Most people in the area have to go to Mapusa or the neighbouring industrial estate at Karaswada to get any sort of a job.
The only exception is the beach side villages of Arambol and Morjim. But these have a different type of business model and not something an average Pednekar would get into. Also there is a golf course coming up at Tiracol and the proposed airport coming up at Mopa. But these are in the future. And as of now – it is still the dusty village life of the 80s that dominates Pernem.
“Nothing has happened in the past 20 years in Pernem. The town does not even have a toilet,” says a local Avinash Pednekar (name changed) who has a business in the centre of the town. Others grumble that there is nothing to do and politicians have made no efforts to try and develop the area.
Pernem does not even have a proper bus stand and the one under construction is being built on a filled up water body. When asked about the proposed Greenfield airport at Mopa – the site is around 5 kms from the Pernem town centre – and whether it would help in developing the taluka, most of the locals are sceptical saying that it might develop the area around the locality, but generally it will not have much effect on locals. But they say that they hope that they are wrong and development will indeed come to the rest of Pernem taluka.
In fact Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar had said that his main priority was generating employment. Hopefully, Pernem will benefit from employment generation and development, now that the two most important persons in government are from both constituencies located in this taluka.
