*Do you not know the drug traders in your backyard, Mr CM of Goa? (Herald)*
18 Dec, 2014, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, hasn't yet learnt the art of audience mapping. He easily ends up speaking in the same voice to a group of college children in Pernem, as he does to a group of journalists, and other professionals in a workshop in Panjim. On Tuesday this week (two days ago), the Chief Minister told a gathering in a workshop that some tourists come to Goa "only for drugs". He then had his eureka moment, or that moment of epiphany that Thomas Alva Edison had when he discovered the light bulb, when he said "I am aware that the drug trade has reached coastal areas of the state and through some foreign tourists, drugs are sold and youth are becoming victims of drug addiction" It almost seemed that Parsekar had gone back in a time capsule to the 1960's when the hippies- free spirits that they were, entered Goa to live a life of peace and hedonism in equal measure and consumed substances openly. They and the society at large co- existed because they led parallel lives. There was no sale, there were no peddlers and the police led their own lives because these free folks disrupted no lives. The change happened when this became a business worth millions of dollars and Goa became a hub for the inward movement of drugs from Latin America through the Gulf and Europe as well as the focal point of Indian drugs from Manali, for sale and consumption in Goa. To cut a very long story short, the menace of drugs moved through different arteries of the state to choke the social system. And when this sad transformation happened, locals politicians and their local boys played a part. Mr Parsekar is fooling no one when he pretends that this is some tourist's picnic project. Successive politicians have created, nurtured and controlled local indigenous drug gangs, who have played different kinds of roles. Some became pushers at the end of the drug supply chain, some became hoarders, who stored drugs. Others let out their premises to store drugs for days. Then the police got in. From being protectors, they became a part of the nexus, thus completing the drug dealer-police-politician triangle. The police again played different roles. That of a watchdog with a difference. They kept a watch on drug gangs and affected seizures but under reported the quantities seized and ploughed back the remaining amount back in the market for a price. At times the deal was stuck on the spot where only part was seized and the remaining paid for by the dealer to the cops. The other more widespread role of the police has been to allow drug dens - nightclubs and infamous coastal shacks to continue unabated, the violation of every law in the book, to openly sell drugs and allow its consumption on their premises. These places are owned, not by some foreigners, as the Chief Minister would like us to believe but by Goans, including those who have been sarpanchas and panchas of the same villages where these illegalities go on. The drug trade is not a foreign film but a local production, whose protagonists are our own sons. The people who were arrested for the murder of a Nigerian national more than a year ago were a part of a local rival drug gang and one of those arrested is related to a veteran former Congressman. The Chief Minister is therefore trivialising the issue by making it out to be an isolated problem which has been quarantined. As some publications have repeatedly exposed, many politicians across parties, from former Home Minister Ravi Naik to BJP's Culture Minister Dayanand Mandrekar have been charged of being a part of the nexus. Congress spokesman Sunil Kawthankar went to the extent of telling journalists on Tuesday "Mandrekar and Parsekar (CM) have been a part and parcel of the drug trade" If Parsekar wants to prove otherwise a mere denial will not suffice. He needs to give a time frame by which inquiries will be conducted against all policemen and officers who have been involved in the drug menace, and punitive action will be taken, which should be nothing short of dismissal. He needs to announce a multiple stakeholder team which will inquire into all establishments along the northern coast where drugs are sold and consumed and shut down those establishments for good. Thirdly he needs to form a crack force along the line of the 'grey hounds' established in Andhra Pradesh years ago to deal with naxal terror- who will take orders from one trusted command and not answer to any other politician or police. Parsekar needs to show will but he will not. Till then he will pretend to be out of the system, gingerly looking in and making what he thinks are right noises, but do nothing to rattle the cozy existence between all in that belt, where life is a breeze and neither the law nor the ones who are paid to protect it, come in the way.
