Sujay Gupta
CURCHOREM & SANGUEM: If we take winning and losing, and an audit of the powerful and the weaklings out of the poll equation, the landscape is full of people who are actually putting in all they have with absolutely no notions of political grandeur and power, in these elections. It is in the countryside where chance or choice or both have propelled some “good fellas” on the poll stage, who are in it, to simply prove a point, i.e. that a good fight is worth it, if the cause is good.
Curchorem and Sanguem are political wrestling pits. This is where political muscle dominates all matches and in Nilesh Cabral and Subhash Phaldesai, there’s no dearth of raw power. Their word is normally law, the local bodies the Curchrem and Sanguem Municipal Council’s run as their fiefdoms and quite naturally, they are already calling these elections as if that’s the most natural thing to happen, in the course of nature. After all they think they are born to win.
In Curchorem, the Swastik café, steps from the Curchorem-Sanvordem railway station, is the sanctum sanctorum of political talk, whispers, gossip and spying on each other. The cut throat town rivalry is however between Nilesh Cabral and the Goa Suraksha Manch. The Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM) is clearly the parking place for all BJP elements disgruntled with Cabral. An energetic group of GSM members are ensconced at Swastic café chatting with us, a lot which has broken away from the BJP. A garrulous Anand Prabhudesai of GSM, announces that his only mission “in life” is to see Cabral’s ouster as MLA.
Noble ambitions indeed, but we suspect that looking for answers to silly questions like the ones we are going to ask, is, well – silly. But we do not give up. Do they have a plan for Goa, where do they see the state five years from now, how should mining be regulated and controlled and why does the town not have a full fledged functioning hospital with adequate staff and doctors. These are questions that are not being asked and therefore not answered.
Literally a few steps away from the café is the railway station. Really neat, spruced up and a lot let noisy than the days when this was the hub of coal and ore arrivals by rail from Karnataka. This station has seen the fortunes of Shyam Satardekar, the GSM candidate leapfrog, as he did transportation business of ore. According to local lore, Satardekar and Cabral, foes now, met on a mine. Satardekar, was a mine sampler, while Cabral had a higher supervisory job. At the station, waiting for us was the ever smiling James Fernandes. A teacher from Tilamol now teaches maths and science to students, but his immediate calculations are on how to get the magic number of votes and win the seat for the Aam Aadmi party.
Seeing frequent sights of people getting crushed by speeding trucks carrying iron ore, Fernandes was one of the key figures who led the agitation for a mining bypass to keep the trucks away from the towns. “One accident happened in front of me. A girl was crushed with her head stuck in the truck tyre. I couldn’t take it anymore”.
The agitation itself turned into a mission at a time when the AAP made a decision to enter Goa. The rest, as they say is history. And work is cut out.
There are many who have died on the way to GMC because there are no doctors, medicines or oxygen to treat heart attack victims. And the promise to have health care, better schools, round the clock doctors are what brings out the tears, in people, especially women, the tears of a land and its people, who the rulers of the land do not know anymore.
Cut to Sanguem: Before we moved from Curchorem to Sanguem, “Sanguem” was waiting for us at the quaint Flora restaurant in Curchorem, an old Portuguese house, run by Joaquim and Charlie Afonso. The man from Sanguem, who was waiting for us there was Prasad Gaonkar, an Independent candidate from Sanguem.
Once we settled down, we realised that this was the same guy who was once in our office, passionately speaking about his agitation against the beer factory at Amdai which would destroy paddy fields and coconut trees. It was Gaonkar and his comrades who spurred Herald, into investigating the Amdai beer and alcohol factory project, a few kilometres from Sanguem town and how anti people and anti environment it was, with the local MLA Subhash Phaldesai an active participant and partner of that project.
As we reached Sanguem, another foot soldier, who we shall only call “Gaonkar” – and we’ll tell you why in a bit, told us, “If you are here, come to Amdai and see why we are so pained”. But he requested that his name not to be mentioned for the fear of a backlash from “powerful people” if they knew that he had escorted us to the beer factory spot.
Amdai is a symbol of how Goa’s heart is being pierced. Over one lakh square metres of palm tree laden countryside with fertile land on which paddy fields once flourished has been invaded. The Uguem river will be tapped to supply water to this project, depleting water resources for irrigation. But why here? Why can’t a beer factory be in an industrial estate? And why can’t elections be more about these questions.
As we drove away, hearts heavy but also with hope that good people have still not lost hope and are willing to prove this by actually contesting against the big guys. Ravindra Vellip, a fierce anti mining activist from Cavrem-Pirla who had to spend time in jail where he was blind folded and attacked. And why was he in a lockup? Because he protested against the illegal transportation of ore. And have those who attacked him been identified and punished? What a question?
Ravindra Velip’s decision to contest these elections means that for all the wrongs, there are people with clenched fists who will not just protest on the roads but fight for the right to be elected so that they are carriers of the voices of disadvantaged people into the biggest hall of power – the State Assembly.
