Glenn Costa/ Shweta Kamat/ Vibha Verma
Sanguem, Bicholim and Pissurlem: The silence hits. And the calm unnerves. There is no traffic on the road but a huge congestion of confusion and uncertainty in their lives. The only semblance of a life which once moved, were those trucks, giant ones with four wheels on which the metal torso carried not just ore but lives and prosperity.
The wheels have grounded. And the torso rusty. But they are lined up everywhere, almost outside every house, of various hues and in various conditions. Some freshly painted and some in a really pathetic condition. Amidst the trucks are the heavy machinery – the JCBs and the excavators and the occasional water tanker, symbols of a heartbeat that once was.
In the wide swathe across Quepem, Sanguem and Sanvordem, Sattari or even Bicholim, the people that you meet are all waiting for mining to start.
In some places like Sirsaim, the wait is over, because hope is lost. At least they have moved on. They are now daily wage labourers.
In Bicholim, Mayem, Curchorem, Sanvordem or Sanguem, there are dreams, false ones but dreams that mining will start following the Supreme Court lifting the ban. Villagers at Advoi, Pissurlem and Ovlem wait for mining activity to bring back their heydays and miraculously wrench them out of the financial mire that they are in at present.
However, they are at loss if asked what they have done in the past two years. Actually nothing. Most have not made any arrangements in case this option of theirs petered out.
Two years have gone by since mining was banned in the State till the Supreme Court finally forced the government to acknowledge that there was indeed illegal mining going on in the State. But if the battle against illegal mining was a war, the people in the mining belt have suffered brutal collateral damage. They indeed are the worst hit because there really is no future.
At least the truck owners are getting a dole from the government. The tea shop and the tyre puncture repair folks are gone because they don’t even count, knocked out of a system they serviced from the outside.
The biggest betrayal of these people has been the communication freeze. During the court hearings and after the judgment, local MLAs have made no effort to explain the judgment and its fine print to their people. Do they even know?
No options were given, no awareness was created, and everything has been left in a limbo. The common man has been so pressurized and so afraid that if he raises his voice, even that small dole he gets, hope of a tiny job somewhere, will be lost.
These people have not asked their local MLA for other choices, or even the truth. For they are beyond searching for answers. The judgment is supposed to redeem their lives, but no one has told them that the judgment (in English which they don’t understand) has a fine print which has virtually ruled out mining the way it was for ever.
Either way, in any language they are lost. Lost even with translation.
