While the responses to Herald’s Independence Day piece ‘Each family will have a minimum of Rs 50,000 per annum if mining profits remain with government’ have ranged from pleasant surprise to absolute shock and awe, it is important that this peoples’ plan for mining is properly understood, propagated, canvassed and informed to the people of Goa. For the first time, a plan has been put forward, worked on by Mr Claude Alvares of the Goa Foundation and his associate Rahul Basu and supported by Herald, where we are made aware that the millions of tonnes of iron ore and other minerals lying below the surface of the earth is actually ours and does not belong to mining companies.
For years the ruling class of Goa, starting with the Pratapsingh Rane and all successive Chief Ministers have worked with mining companies and not with the people of Goa. Which is why, not one of them has ever told the people of Goa that there is a different way to do mining. There is a cleaner way to do mining. There is a way to do mining, where the profits come back to the people from a fund established. There is a way to do mining where ten percent of current excavation can give us more profits. It’s a system which brings money to the people, gives due profits to mining contractors who extract the ore (which could be any mining company) and gives it back to the State.
Chief Ministers and political parties do not wish this to happen. They from Rane to Digambar Kamat to Manohar Parrikar to Laxmikant Parsekar, are the ones who have not only promoted a handful of mining companies and families but have cheated Goa by working towards maximisation of profits for mining companies and minimising the profits of the State. Even if mining companies can argue that the maximum share of their earning s goes in taxes to government, the peoples’ way offsets all disadvantages. Since the ore is with the government, the government has the responsibility of selling it, and giving profit to people and the cost incurred by those who extract with a bit of profit to mining contractors.
Yet, till the very end, the shocking manner in which the government went overboard to renew 89 mining leases in a manner not known to law had the tacit support of the opposition since the Leader of the Opposition Pratapsingh Rane has not made a single statement questioning the renewals.
Therefore it is time that a people’s movement starts for the true ownership of our natural assets with the government a mere caretaker of what is ours. That will be our real swaraj – our Birthright. That will be our real freedom.
(See the full plan in the Fly on the Wall, column on page 2)
