The plot for the Carmona villagers against the Raheja housing project appears to be getting lost amidst emotions, rhetoric and designs of politicians and other opportunists. One needs to be conscious of the fact that Goa’s Assembly elections will be due over a year from now. Political aspirants and agents are scouting for issues to popularize themselves and win acceptance among the people. So, all the forces diving into the Carmona people’s struggle may not necessarily have come with clean hands. Exciting the mob to target persons in authority or public office is politician’s play. But let us not forget that ‘dalals’ of politicians are also emerging within the gram sabhas to exploit these forums for blackmailing builders and real estate developers. And so, when it comes to Carmona, everyone seems to be ducking a question as to whether there were other commercial housing complex projects which were allowed a smooth sailing in the village after the anti-Raheja struggle began. If yes, then how come?
Whether it is the people’s struggle against the Regional Plan, golf courses or gated-housing complexes mushrooming in villages, what gets targeted are the symptoms and not the root of the problem. Time and again experts have tried to drive sense in the public that the obsolete Town and Country Planning Act along with a compromised Panchayati Raj Act are defeating the people’s struggles to save their villages. Instead of joining the public’s protest at the Senior Town Planner’s office, the Benaulim MLA should have been pushing the Government for necessary amendments to the laws. Unfortunately lessons do not seem to get learnt by people and so opportunists continue fishing in the pond of public ignorance.
The claim of those justifying the helplessness of Carmona Panchayat by citing the failure of the Orlim people’s struggle against mega projects is far from the truth. Deficient laws, legal technicalities, mischief by politicians and authorities, improper legal guidance, or pending court cases delay justice to the people. The absence of holistic village and district development plans for panchayat areas is being exploited by politicians, government bureaucrats and the real estate lobby. Whenever the builder cartel is check-mated, the government dilutes the building rules or enacts another conflicting law without any rationale or scientific basis. Inefficient or corrupt panchayat authorities who often monetarily benefit from such confusion misguide the public by pleading ‘not competent to reject construction permissions which have been cleared by government agencies’.
The people are perfectly right in expecting the panchayat body to defend the village interests and not act as agents of the government. It needs to be understood that neither the Goa Panchayat Raj Act nor the Town and Country Planning Act can supersede the letter and spirit of the Preamble, Article 40 and Articles 243-243O of the Constitution of India. Nothing prevents the panchayat body from subjecting such faulty and deficient State laws to scrutiny before appropriate courts. The powers of the panchayat institution have been amply pointed out in one such historic Supreme Court verdict delivered in a dispute between Village Panchayat of Calangute and the Addl Director of Panchayats and Others.
The SC has reminded in no uncertain terms that “Parliament has ensured that the panchayats would no longer perform the role of simply executing the programs and policies evolved by the political executive of the State.” Further it held that, “The conceptualization of the Village Panchayat as a unit of self-government having the responsibility to promote social justice and economic development and as a representative of the people within its jurisdiction must be borne in mind while interpreting the laws enacted by the State which seek to define the ambit and scope of the powers and the functions of panchayats at various levels.”
So panchayat members should stop behaving like servants of the State government and defend the interests of people who have elected them. The gram sabhas must invest their time and energy in getting properly informed and striking at the root of the problem instead of, dancing to music in the market place, being led on a wild goose chase by politicians or getting sucked into a merry-go-round by a crafty panchayat secretary.
