------------------------------------------------------------------------
* G * O * A * N * E * T **** C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S *
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Goa with Love - Three unique Valentine Day packages from EXPRESSIONS
Say "I Love You!" in style this year
For details, photos and pricing check out:
http://www.goa-world.com/expressions/valentines/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I received a private email below which does not have a very hopeful view of Goa
but offers
critical insights, some of them controversial. Name withheld since it was a
private email.
*****************************************************************************
George,
Goan public life is a den of iniquity - perhaps one should be a little more
circumspect in
offering unequivocal support to any group or public movement. In every public
movement lie hidden
moles of the vested interests. The problem continues to worsen to this day.
We're bereft, George.
The rape and pillaging of Goa is far, far worse than GBA or the public is
aware. It's roots lie in
the mineowner community, a band of about 6 families, who've savagely destroyed
Goa unseen in the
past four decades, and now that the ore is running out and mines collapsing,
put together and
funded this master plan 2 dozen years ago, to carve up Goa for themselves. The
politicians and
media are merely their tools - every Govt. in Goa has been secretly made or
broken by this lobby.
Worse, there isn't an honest or unimpeachable Goan to be had. As I've seen for
myself, everyone in
Goa can be bought.
I've noted an insidious, disturbing trend over the last dozen years or so.
Transgressors in large
or small ways, when thwarted, quietly gravitate to populist movements, where
they slowly turn
vociferous. They will transform GBA in time by offering sops, satiating them.
Chilling. Crusading
'journalists' will be silenced!
Goa is a small place, and those in a public movement are 'quietly connected',
not only to vested
interests, but those in power. Not just the politicans and their lackeys or the
mining and
real-estate lobbies, but others try to 'grab and loot', pillage and plunder,
away from the public
eye. Sadly, you must trust no one, not even public movements.
As far as my memory stretches (and it's pretty elephantine!), the looting saga
is to 'amass and
allot' prime riverfront areas to themselves, whilst the politicos, mining and
real-estate sharks
were plundering beachfronts, natural habitats, real prime. Operating around the
Dona Paula area,
they quietly made a huge grab for a vast chunk of the Betim riverfront
somewhere in 2003, under
the guise of 'social watersports' for the hoi-polloi! When their nefarious
designs unexpectedly
came to light, they appear to have beaten a hasty retreat, crying foul (if I'm
not mistaken),
that, as 'social activists', their intended good works were being thwarted by
the criminal demands
of the Betim panchayat for a 20 lakh bribe! Are any of these people in the Save
Goa movement? Why
is the 'River Princess' unable to be moved by successive govts. and who is the
rescue company of
choice?
If we (you and I) intend to 'save and preserve' the Goa of our antiquity, the
'rescue' package
needs a deeply-thought out and carefully planned white paper. The cancer we're
facing has a war
-chest running into hundreds of millions of dollars. Inevitably they must
triumph - its an
inexorable law of nature. The GBA is a motley rag-tag utterly powerless
movement - in a little
while they must go back to their jobs, their travails, earning a crust. Not
only are the
powers-that-be chortling at this, but utterly rolling in the aisles at the way
they continue to
fool Goans with mere sleight of hand. Even an anti-Marcos type movement to oust
the present govt.
will only result in President's Rule, and the Delhi-directed wholesale
pillaging will continue
unabated. As I said before George, we're simply bereft.
The monster we're facing is extraordinarily evil, very, very 'big business'.
The only force that
could take them on is 'big business' again. A populist movt. might have worked
if the cancer, and
the war chest, was limited to Goa itself. GBA is facing a mutant hydra
pipelined from all over the
world - Russia, the Golden Triangle, Europe, the Middle East, South America,
and ultimately,
Delhi. Their tentacles have spread far beyond Goa, into the interior of
Maharashtra, and south
past Canacona, into Karwar and Karnataka. A few 'activists' ain't gonna stop
'em!
