For a long while now, we have been hit by questions after questions in newspapers on where Goa's morals, values and politics is heading, through their edits, articles and letters to editors, people's courts and what have you. And on deep introspection that I engaged myself in, recently. as to why I have been, sort of, ignoring these valuable write-ups completely for quite some time now, only to cursorily go through the names of the authors and the subject matter, when I have been regularly paying for these newspapers, a cold realization descended on me taking me back to 1999 when something like this was portrayed in the newspapers on a regular basis which had made me sit up and do something about it. And after six long years of trying to roll that something which I helped to put on the road, thinking that it was the very thing that the people of Goa needed badly, like a very potent medicine for a terminal cancer, I wouldn't say I have been disappointed or hurt to see that instead of that something rolling itself by its own steam, we, the very few people who got around to put it in place as a brand new model on the road, had to, and are still literally pulling and pushing it from time to time to shift its location in order to keep its wheels from rotting and falling off, only in the strong belief that 'the time is not yet come' and it gives us the strength to keep it going and not dismantle it and sell it off to the scrap yard.
That something which prompted me to go to the designing board, to cajole and coax other Goan brains to come out with a phenomenal political vehicle for our beloved Goa was the series of articles published in the Navhind Times by Mr. Rajesh Singh, the then assistant editor, captioned 'The GOOD GOVERNANCE Series'. I well remember the day when the ex Army Chief of Staff, Gen. (retd) Sunith F. Rodrigues (now Governor of Punjab) was featured in these series. It got me mad and furious that he should say what he had to say, so much, that it prompted me to put in a call to him (though I had never met him personally or had ever interacted with him) to ask him a few pertinent questions. And, having got him furious too, only short of shouting mad at me, the chart paper was laid on the design-board for the exemplary 'good governance' model to be designed for Goa's political roads. And it took a lot of bringing together of concerned heads for a prolonged period of time to come out with the versatile, well planned, the best political vehicle for the Goan roads, .the 'Goa Su-Raj Party' - (Su meaning Good) And I have been hearing a lot of misguided talk from a lot of nincompoops who believe themselves to be the political pundits in Goa, often, not even of Goan origin, discussing with me about Goan politics. At best my response to these pundits have been to tell them that I have grown from the red-goan-soil and that I am expected to know more of Goan politics then them. I say this because I look for a tell-tale of 'self-sacrifice' in what they tell me and none is detected. I look for tough decisions and none are found. But it was hard for me to listen to a neo-political pundit of Goan origin the other day, telling me that he was 'dejected' when I came forward to file my nomination papers for the last Taleigao Constituency's by-elections. I interpret this 'dejection' to sound something like " Do something for Goa, because, something must be done, or Goa will be Goa no more. But don't come forward to do it yourself. It is not right" With this rabid political thinking, it seems to me that Simao Sirineu, who came forward to relieve the burden of the heavy Cross on Jesus' bruised and battered shoulders should not have come forward but should have found some lackey to do just that and loiter on the sidelines. And better still, this smacks of the thinking that Jesus Himself should have stayed in the background and take the world through some complying lackeys. Is this the reasoning?? It never fails to surprise me. And the other day, I was talking to the most enterprising person in Goa, trying to convince her that she should come out to lead in the next assembly elections. But then, the response was an undecided 'No'. Why? She felt that we in Goa need a new generation of younger leaders to lead us. We must somehow train them, she said. That was enough for me to come out with an appropriate response. "Why don't we set-up a college to train such new generation leader?" "We have" I said "our law college which trains younger generation leaders to be murderously murderous" "Come out" I said to her "lead yourself if you want new, younger leaders to come out to follow you. You need to set an example. But you cannot train them" " If you train them, they will be experts, but perhaps rotten to the core" I am sending a message here, to Goans at large, in response to all the cribbing and crying that is going on to portray that GOA is sinking, that GOA is at the end of the CLIFF, that something must be done. Yes. It is true that something must be done. Otherwise we are all going to lose and lose out badly, especially our children and their children in turn. And the blame will come bouncing on our heads because we wanted to do 'something' about it and never got around to do it. But let us put a name to that 'something' that must be done. Otherwise it will always remain that un-identified 'something' that we wanted to do. Let us take that challenge to do that 'something' which has been identified by Goans who want to say 'enough is enough'. Go on to retire all our sitting MLAs, some of them who have lead us for donkey's years and have grown old to forget the very meaning of being a leader. You want to help clean the existing rotten politics? Then, by all means, come forward without looking back to see if your own father, your mother or the minister you have helped to put on the chair will be hurt. You have the rotten, stinking gutter in front of you. You wish it to be clean? Then don the gloves and put your hand in it to remove the clog. And don't forget to throw the gloves away in the understanding that the gutter will always remain clean and never be clogged ever again. For this to happen, just don't clean the gutter. Study why the gutter is getting clogged. Rectify the fault once and for all. Put these corrective decisions in a blue print to last forever so that generations will remember you through the blue-prints. It will serve you to remember that 'spoken words' spread thin and ultimately vanish. But written ones remain for ever. JOIN THE PEOPLE'S RALLY AT MARGAO (11th. September, 2006) and at PANJIM (12TH. September, 2006) to show that you care for Goa and that you want to do that precious little 'SOMETHING for YOUR GOA' [Say qualified 'NO' to 2nd. Term for MLAs] [Say qualified 'NO' to Outside High Commands in Goa] End. _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
