Land use planning is a fundamental tool utilized for managing our land and our resources. It decides what activities can be carried out and where, with the least damage to the environment. However, in the process of reaching out to the needs and aspirations of the community, it also needs to ensure that natural resources are safeguarded and environmental concerns are adequately addressed. Hence, efficient land use planning demands a Regional Plan that can becomes the guiding policy document governing activities in our State and that covers issues that go way beyond land use. It is only in recent times that we in Goa are beginning to understand the significance and the consequences of the Regional Plan on the social, economic and environmental aspects that define and decide the quality of our lives. The TCP Act acknowledges that the creation of a sound Regional Plan is dependent upon a systematic process through which lands are evaluated and assessed. This evaluation, which becomes the basis for decisions involving land classification and its subsequent utilization, cannot be effectively carried out without relevant and current data on available resources like land and water potential, economic and social conditions, and studies on the environmental fallout of land use and its impact on the community. Hence the TCP Act requires the Chief Town Planner to collect physical, economic and social data of the State before commencing with the preparation of the Regional Plan.
When the present RP 2021 was first envisaged in 2008, the Task Force that was constituted to prepare a draft Regional Plan clearly pointed out the inadequacies in the data in its Report, for which they held government departments responsible. It is a matter of grave concern that even four years after this final report was published and seven years since the task force discovered the informational inadequacies, the TCP has taken no initiative whatsoever to do its duty and rectify this serious lacuna in the creation of the plan. Instead, the TCP has gone ahead and built its plan based on misleading, outdated and inaccurate information, using a GDP chart of 2005-2006 for formulating RP 2021. This misleading chart attributes high contribution from sectors that would require destructive land changes while downplaying the contribution of agriculture, fisheries, forests and animal husbandry together as just 10% of the state’s production, when a systematic and objective study would easily show that these sectors together are over 50% of the State’s economy. The chart has anointed industries as being responsible for 32% of the State’s production, while transport, storage and communications ostensibly contribute 16% and Finance, Insurance and Real Estate are given 15% share.
The irresponsibility of basing the RP on such a specious chart can be envisaged from the fact that the backbone of Goa’s economy, which is foreign remittances that are acknowledged by even RBI figures, is totally ignored along with sustenance agriculture. Chimerical economies of banks, roads, communications and industries (the Task Force had recommended that existing industrial sheds lying idle be used since most of the industrial estates in Goa are sick or unused) have been given highly inflated figures giving rise to justifiable suspicion that this is just a ruse to bestow legitimacy on speculative changes in land use that will further accelerate the deteriorating quality of life that we are already experiencing. In fact, although Census 2011 data has been available for many years now, the TCP has inexplicably based RP 2021 on irrelevant and obsolete Census 2001 data. And needless to say, no studies have been carried out to estimate the carrying capacity of our tiny State.
Just recently, we saw Delhi cut off from its water supply when the state that it is dependent upon for water was caught up in the throes of an intense agitation. Yet, RP 2021 is pushing Goa to this same model of development, where our highly sensitive ‘WATER TOWERS OF GOA’ (our laterite plateaus) are not recognized and are being rapidly destroyed in the absence of any data. It is incredible that despite being labelled as having the highest water scarcity among all states, a fact corroborated by our dependence on the Tillari Dam, no hydrogeological studies have ever been carried out in Goa. Aquifers and other sources of water have not been mapped, thus permitting mindless destruction and pollution of aquifers in coastal, urban, mining and industrial areas. RP 2021 proposes complete and utter decimation of our water resources by marking recharge areas as settlement, industrial and infrastructure areas in direct violation of the National Water Policy 2021 and failing to provide buffer zones around lakes and other water bodies. How then, can we accept a Regional Plan that gives no thought to such a vital issue as the State’s water and food security?
How can we accept a Regional Plan that has been blissfully drafted without a semblance of data on flood prevention infrastructure of Goa – both natural and manmade, or the impact of railways, roads, other filling of low-lying lands, loss of retention areas, loss of drainage channels, concretization of walls of nullahs & lakes (higher velocities), hardening of recharge/ catchment areas (increased runoff) or mapping of new flood water levels? Does the TCP not think that we must learn from the lessons of Chennai? Recent data on global warming has brought dire prognostications by experts on its disastrous effects through rising sea levels, shifting precipitation patterns, increase in the intensity of floods, droughts and storms. This data could certainly not have been considered in RP 2021, because this is the same Plan rejected by the people in 2006 and inexplicably brought out of cold storage and served up to them again by the TCP and the BJP government, who had also rejected it when it was in the Opposition. Hence it is imperative to ask ourselves if a Regional Plan created on a shaky foundation of outdated, skewed and inadequate data can be acceptable to the people of Goa and whether it can hold within itself any scope for rectification, or if it needs to be scrapped in its entirety and proper, authentic data collected before venturing into the crucial and delicate endeavour of devising a new Regional Plan.
However that brings to the fore yet another problem. Is it possible that the present TCP department will be in a position to give us the sound Regional Plan we so badly require, given the clouds of doubt and suspicion that hover over its integrity and capabilities? In many villages, the TCP’s unique brand of planning has added settlements on steep slopes and forest areas in total violation of accepted environmental standards and safeguards. Plateaus, water recharge zones, flelds and agricultural lands, even World Heritage and Archaeological Sites – nothing of value to Goa and Goans has been spared.
In Cavelossim, Benaulim and Varca villages, settlements have been added on khazan fields, water bodies and sand dunes in the CRZ. Cavelossim in fact, has been bestowed with eco tourism, settlement, 20 metre roads and parking all on sand dunes in the CRZ. Alorna also has its natural cover, fields and water bodies in the CRZ marked as settlement and roads as has Reis Magos, where steep slopes, plateau and CRZ have been transformed into settlement and roads. Settlements and GMS have been added on the edge of the Heritage Sulabhat lake in Goa Velha. The World Heritage Site of Old Goa, archaeological sites at Chimbel and Carambolim have been marked as settlement. These, among many other glaring incongruities in the Regional Plan give rise to well grounded suspicion that this Regional Plan has been specifically tailored to meet the needs of vested interests and speculators at the cost of ordinary Goans, traditional communities and occupations and environmental safeguards that our ancestors had so carefully put in place and that have served us so well over the years.
Indeed, it was no less a personage than Manohar Parrikar himself, who as Chief Minister of Goa confirmed on the floor of the Assembly in August 2014, the rampant corruption in the TCP as he declared “I will have to empty the whole department… not a single town planner will be left in the department, everyone’s name is tainted with something or the other… I am saying it”.
Sadly for us, it appears that in this case at least, Mr. Parrikar has been proved right. Of course, it is quite another matter that Mr. Parrikar seemed to be blissfully disconnected from the fact that it was precisely to address and rectify such problems that the people of Goa armed his party with a clear majority in 2012. In fact, Goans will recall that the notified Regional Plan 2021 figured prominently in the BJP’s 2012 election manifesto as one that was unacceptable – with the addendum of a promise that it would be scrapped if the BJP was voted to power. It is now four years since the BJP was catapulted into the seat of power on the major issue of corruption. By now, we would have expected it to go way beyond mere identification of problems and move to the second stage of taking steps to set its house in order. And the TCP department would be a good start to this process.
In any case, it is now an indisputable fact that the TCP’s planning does not meet up to the standards, genuine needs and expectations of the collective Goan community. The TCP seems to have forgotten that Goa is made up of agricultural, fishing, tribals, tenants, and various other traditional communities, who are equal stakeholders in the Regional Plan.
Hence the shoddy, ruinous and one sided Regional Plan 2021 presented by the TCP, must be denotified without further delay and a moratorium placed on all except single dwelling construction until an equitable, environment friendly Regional Plan based on authentic data, that safeguards the ecology and environment and takes into consideration the rights and needs of all sections of Goan society can be formulated. The people of Goa must stand up and be counted once again, or else, in due course of time, we shall be nostalgically and regretfully reflecting on the words of Oliver Goldsmith.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
Where wealth accumulates and men decay
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade
A breath can make them, as a breath has made
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride
When once destroyed, can never be supplied
