Is this typical of the ruling party to intimidate people who get in their way ?
Shades of fascism !
From: Robin Viegas <[email protected]>
To:
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2015 6:22 PM
Subject: [Goanet] Claude Alvares..Goa's finest jewel being targetted by
Government and Mining Mafia
From: b sabha <[email protected]>
From: Roger D'Souza <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
http://www.heraldgoa.in/Goa/Mining-MLAs-fielded-by-mining-daddies-to-target-Claude-Alvares/96441.html
Mining MLAs fielded by mining daddies to target Claude Alvares
A similar probe should be ordered on how mining MLAs got funds and manpower to
fight their assembly elections
04 Dec, 2015, (Herald)
So the brutal might of the state has been unleashed on one man, whose
organisation has single-handedly fought against the destruction of Goa and its
resources and stood in the way of its abject loot and plunder, under the
tutelage and duly abetted by the ruling party in government.
The orchestrated, and cowardly move, by the mining MLAs to contemplate an
inquiry against Goa Foundation, (specifically targeting its icon Claude
Alvares), stating that it could be done by the Crime Branch, the CBI or SIT, is
borne out of frustration and also fear that Goa Foundation’s interventions in
court, may well put a stop to all anti people projects backed by this
government.
If the government decides to probe the Goa Foundation, for being “anti
national” and to wants to trace its source of funds, a similar probe must be
made of the growth of assets and wealth of the mining MLAs. The probe should
also cover the source of funds received by these MLAs to contest their
elections and check if mining companies, who these MLAs are batting for, funded
their elections with money and manpower. Nilesh Cabral, Ganesh Gaonkar, Subhash
Phaldesai and Pramod Sawant, are you prepared for a probe into who funded your
assembly elections? Claude Alvares is prepared for a probe into his source of
funding, the results of which will embarrass you. Goa waits for your replies.
These MLAs have no interest in the resumption of mining for the sake of the
mining affected. They want resumption of mining (illegal or otherwise) to
further their personal business interests in mining and for the sake of their
big mining daddies. They want mining which was stopped by their Chief Minister
in September 2012 to start because their businesses have stopped. It was the
petition of the same Goa Foundation which led to the Supreme Court ordering the
start of mining but through a controlled process, under the MMDR Act so that
the State gets full value of its minerals and not mining sharks.
Goa Foundation has challenged the manner in which the State undertook renewals
trying to beat the MMDR ordinance which cancelled all renewals. The renewals
were done under a mining policy which was notified (on January 20) after the
last of the renewals were done on January 12, the day the MMDR ordinance came
into effect. Goa Foundation went to court against this fraud, and not to
prevent mining resumption.
The mining MLAs consider this act as anti-national. If national interest is
‘self interest’ of mining companies, then Goa Foundation has surely gone
against this kind of ‘national interest’. May God give them strength to commit
more such acts.
As an aside consider this. When Goa’s warrior priest, Father Bismarque suddenly
died and there were enough unanswered questions and indications, which
indicated that he was killed, it took a citizens’ campaign with a demand from
the family to transfer the case to the Crime Branch after allowing the
supremely inefficient Old Goa Police to botch up the case in the first ten
days. In this case, all it took a mere request by one mining belt MLA Nilesh
Cabral, perfectly timed to coincide with the decisive hearing in the Supreme
Court challenging the legality of the mining lease renewals, for the Chief
Minister to say he would consider initiating an inquiry against Goa Foundation.
The government is only lowering itself to the last possible point of even
contemplating equating the Goa Foundation and its founders to the likes of
those facing criminal charges of grabbing land in the Serula Comunidade (Dilip
Parulekar), taking bribes from Louis Berger to facilitate a consultancy
contract for a sewerage and pipeline project (Digambar Kamat & Churchill
Alemao) or grabbing land in the GIDC and buying huge amounts of land in Kerala
from ill gotten wealth (Babu Kavlekar). Across political lines, corruption is a
disease and the targets are those who are fighting this.
At the same time there is an absolutely fit case for a probe against this very
government for the manner in which the State Environment Impact Assessment
Authority, issued a prior Environment Clearance to Leading Hotels for their
Tiracol project. This manipulation has been exposed by Herald many months ago
and we shall do so again to remind the people of Goa. The way the land has been
seized from the Tiracol farmers, via negative declarations extracted from them,
violates the basics of the Tenancy Act. The State is a partner in this
violation and the matter is in the National Green Tribunal. Yet the State
Government in its reply to the petition of the Goa Foundation, in its latest
Writ Petition and SLP in the Apex Court, has the gall to say that the Goa
Foundation has “filed several litigations targeting the State’s vital
infrastructure projects such as bridges (Mandovi and Tiracol) and Garbage
Treatment Plant (Saligao), against the interests of the nation”.
We answer each of these myths floated by the State that these litigations are
against national interests.
A) Is the Tiracol Golf Course project, villas and the bridge in the interest of
the nation? Or in the private interest of Leading Hotels and the politicians
who brought them here – Pratapsingh Rane – and those who nurtured and allowed
them to prosper – Digambar Kamat (for introducing eco tourism projects, which
are backdoor entry points for real estate projects like Tiracol) and Manohar
Parrikar and Laxmikant Parsekar for ignoring local pleas, pressurising the
Forest department to manipulate records to allow the cutting of trees as well
building the Tiracol bridge at State expense only to benefit access to a
private project.
B) Does the Mandovi bridge construction conform to all environmental
parameters? Does it not include construction in areas which are ecologically
fragile? Has a proper and credible Environment Impact Assessment been done? Is
it financially viable with the State having to resort to heavy borrowing with
no central funds coming for it? Isn’t it in national interest to ask these
questions and approach the courts of answers are not given?
C) What is the national interest in making the taxpayer pay Rs 399 crore for a
garbage treatment plant for 100 tonnes of waste, when it can be done at 5% that
cost? The hoax that the private company is investing Rs 146 crore has been
exposed. Against this sum, the State has to pay a Gross Annual Operations
Support Grant in equal instalments of Rs 29.90 crore annually for the next 10
years as the amount has to be paid back to the promoters with interest, which
comes to Rs 299 cr in 10 years, more than double the amount invested. The State
will also pay the promoters Rs 1562 per tonne of waste handled at the site,
which comes to Rs 9 crore annually, which would total to Rs 90 cr at the end of
10 years. So at the end of 10 years, the State would actually have paid the
promoters an amount of Rs 389 crore. So why is the government calling it a Rs
146 crore plant and not Rs 389 crore plant?
Is challenging all this against national interest?
These mining MLAs have committed a political blunder which will expose them
completely. Nilesh Cabral says, “I feel only anti-national people might (sic)
be with him (Alvares)”. Mr Cabral is not personally at fault. He is only the
voice of a government which has alienated itself completely from the people it
was elected to serve.
=======
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/1P5V4SptPe1ZwGUQEi1zYL/Norma-Alvares--Claude-Alvares--The-power-of-two.html
Norma Alvares & Claude Alvares | The power of two
This duo is one of the foremost reasons Goa retains its charm and a good
measure of its environmental heritage
________________________________
Vivek Menezes<http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Author/Vivek%20Menezes>
[Claude (left) and Norma Alvares at their North Goa home. Photo: Assavri
Kulkarni]
Claude (left) and Norma Alvares at their North Goa home. Photo: Assavri Kulkarni
Freedom from plunder | Norma Alvares & Claude Alvares
Looking back on four decades of marriage and an intensely close working
relationship with his wife, the Padma Shri awardee Norma
Alvares<http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Norma%20Alvares>,
twinkle-eyed, fiercely moustachioed Claude Alvares
<http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Claude%20Alvares> says: “We do not
know what it is to have a domestic fight. We have not had a fight for these 40
years.”
The serenity in this partnership—quite evident to anyone who visits the
couple’s relaxed, hospitable home in the north Goa village of Parra—is the
cornerstone of an extraordinary record of ferocious battles and activism that
is one of the foremost reasons India’s smallest state still retains
considerable charm and a good measure of its environmental heritage.
Starting in 1987 with Goa’s first-ever public interest litigation to save the
coastline’s once-pristine rolling sand dunes, the Goa Foundation, spearheaded
by this couple, has won famous victories—from forcing the withdrawal of
US-based multinational DuPont (which had planned a factory) to the stunning
2012 decision of the Supreme Court disallowing the billion-dollar state mining
industry until its unchecked, rampant illegalities were brought under control.
“As one monster bites the dust, another rises like the proverbial phoenix,”
says Claude, 66. “We have an intense appreciation, like most other people, of
the natural beauty of Goa, so we will fight to protect it as long as it takes.”
And so the silver-haired, austerely elegant Alvareses spend their morning walks
hotly discussing Goa Foundation strategies for the “significant challenge” of
preserving 1,000 sq. km of open forests (more than 25% of the state’s land
mass) or its forthcoming lawsuit against the state government’s plan for land
use.
“Not many people decide at the inception of their married life to do something
different from the prescribed format,” says Norma, 62, “so naturally, spending
one’s life as full-time activists appears to be unusual, though the experience
of our independence movement will show hundreds of individuals who simply threw
up a treadmill life for revolution.”
Such aspirations were never on the cards for this idealistic couple, who became
partners soon after they met at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai. He had grown up
in Khotachiwadi, Mumbai, and studied philosophy, and she was a history student
from Mahim. Their initial goal of working in Bihar gave way to Goa, where they
had friends, and after a relatively unsuccessful stint trying to will an
ambitious rural development project into existence, Claude did steady work for
the Pritish Nandy-edited Illustrated Weekly Of India while Norma studied law as
they raised a family of three boys. Then the Goa Foundation was born.
Says Norma: “There have been some disappointments, strategies which didn’t work
out, but that is intrinsic to all public interest work. Since social activism
is something we chose—as opposed to being academics, which both of us were
prior to getting married—we have enjoyed our involvement with issues of a
public nature,” says Norma.
But legal challenges are only one aspect of their work together. The Goa
Foundation’s Green Goa Works Environment Company provides services to treat and
convert garbage into manure, and sewage into a resource for plants. In 2008, it
took over Goa’s largest garbage dump at Sonsoddo, to construct a landfill and
clear out accumulated waste (the project was later terminated owing to
political opposition) and has been entrusted with the installation of
eco-friendly, cleanliness systems at Margao’s main marketplace.
"Not many people decide at the inception of their married life to do something
different from the prescribed format..."
More than 25 years ago, Claude, and Norma also “wanted to do something about
the fact that while European and American publishers succeed in filling up our
book stores with their titles, we know very little of the view of people from
Africa or other parts of India and Latin America, simply because their books
are not available, despite the fact India has much more in common with those
countries than the West,” says Norma on email.
Thus was born the most unique bibliophile haven imaginable: Mapusa’s Other
India Bookstore, crammed from floor to ceiling with publications “exclusively
from the global South”, a “one-stop shop for books on environmental issues”
with hard-to-find treasures on every shelf, and thousands of loyal customers
served by mail order. In 1990, its companion, the Other India Press, came into
existence—it is now “the single largest publisher of alternative literature in
India, including organic farming, home-schooling, environment and wildlife”says
Norma.
“Claude and Norma motivate and guide a whole lot of us who are now working on
environmental and social issues,” says Nirmal Kulkarni, a 34-year-old
herpetologist who is on the state wildlife advisory board, and only one of the
scientists and environmental activists who credit the Goa Foundation with
setting an example to follow.
Kulkarni says, “One goes to them not only for legal advice, but questions and
concerns about all larger and smaller conservation issues, for what I would
call a very significant conservation philosophy on why we do what we do, with
what motivations.” He is particularly appreciative of the “hard-core study and
documentation” side of the Goa Foundation’s contributions, especially its
landmark 1993 “citizen’s report on Goa’s ecology and environment”, Fish, Curry
And Rice.
Though they have perhaps done more than anyone else to preserve their home
state’s environmental blessings, the Alvareses are not hopeful about its
long-term health.
Using the Goa Foundation’s David-versus-Goliath win at the Supreme Court as
illustration for their prognosis, Claude points out that the verdict grants
ownership of huge iron-ore assets to the state, which could yield tens of
thousands of crores in income over the coming decades. “But the chances of that
happening are slim,” he says, because “Goa’s tragedy is that it has
run-of-the-mill politicians, who are simply driven to convert our natural and
built-up assets of natural greenery, hospitality, and the fantastic image of a
tourist destination, into cash for ego and party politics.”
Norma says: “The government of India we inherited with our independence has not
changed its character or spots even after the transfer of power from the
British. It remains a foreign institution, an exotic implant. It has no
connection with our political or justice traditions, our cultural history.
Thus, while it is required to enforce a constitutional mode of development, it
continues by way of habit to implement the older colonial form of development
whose interests have always been contrary to the country’s interests.”
United in unflinching commitment to their work, and their lives together with
three grown sons, the Alvareses readily admit they are like yin and yang, with
strongly contrary energies that flow together to become formidably
complementary. Claude says: “She is so much better balanced, sober, articulate.
She prepares herself. She leaves nothing to chance. I am just the opposite. But
somehow, this basket of qualities has taken us so far. We respect each other’s
strengths, we make up for each other’s weaknesses.”
Norma agrees. “When we sit on the balcao on a sunny day, we know that when we
decided that ‘this is the person we want to live our life with’, we did the
right thing, so there is never a twinge of regret.”
Vivek Menezes is a writer, photographer and founder and co-curator of the Goa
Arts and Literary Festival.
=======
letters to the editor
05 Dec, 2015,
Claude Alvares..Goa's finest jewel
In a world ravaged by climate change, now brought to stark reality by the
horrors of the Chennai floods, it is horrifying to see the Goa government, in a
fit of rabid rage, targeting Goa's foremost environmentalist Claude Alvares
with such brazen impunity. Single-handedly this passionate warrior has taken
the fight to the ruthless mining mafia and trounced them hands down in a court
of law, by all legitimate means. Since they couldn't buy out Claude and the Goa
Foundation, they've decided to declare him mad and seditious and " shoot” him
down, not with reasoned arguments but by state inspired bullying.
True, the government wants to restart mining to keep the economic wheels
chugging in the hinterland, and that's a fair premise because the problem of
alleviating the suffering in those areas is the headache the government has to
confront and not Claude .
But this is not the way to address the issue. Intimidation, raids, calumny and
bullying increasingly look like the only weapons the government has in its
arsenal to win the argument. That is a completely unacceptable position to take
in a democracy
Fight Claude and the Goa Foundation by all means in a court of law and beat
Claude with the merits of your legal arguments.
It is hoped the Supreme Court would take suo moto cognizance of this attempt to
muzzle the voice of Goa's most priceless diamond who has made it his life's
mission to protect Goa's environment from the horrendous greed of itself
rapists.
As for the good people of Goa who hopefully will not remain silent at this
shameless outrage, it will be wise to remember that most rapacious miners and
builders and casino owners build their homes on higher ground. The aam aadmi
who lives down below will be the first to be drowned when the next flood
decides to hit Goa.
Gasping out for Claude then may not be enough to keep you alive.
Dr Oscar Rebelo, Panjim
======
Goa not safe for activists
Goa may be a safe destination for tourists but not for activists. Fr Bismarque
has already paid the price for his activism. Now Claude Alvares, whose Goa
Foundation has single-handedly taken on the big daddies of the mining industry
is being targeted. Politicians have demanded a CBI investigation into the
funding of Goa Foundation. This seems more of a stratage to silence activists.
Personally, I support investigation of funding of all public trusts and public
servants. Claude Alvares is open to any investigation of Goa Foundation. But
before such an investigation is initiated those who seek such an investigation
must also agree to have their earnings and assets investigated.
Let him who has not sinned be the first to throw a stone. Indeed, we should
initiate a 'Swacch Goa' campaign by demanding a mandatory CBI investigation
into the sources of income of all politicians. After all they are public
servants and all their dealings including financial dealings must be public.
Prof Robert Castellino, Calangute
======
letters to the editor
05 Dec, 2015,
Truth is often bitter
Let’s ask the MLAs who accuse Goa Foundation of being anti-national some very
simple questions – let tougher questions like their own source of wealth and
election funding wait for another day!
If the Goa Foundation (led by Claude Alvares) is indeed anti-national as
alleged by the Agents of Mining daddies who pretend to represent us, why would
the Apex court rule in their favor? Is the Supreme Court of the country also
anti-national? If big projects are stalled by court proceedings is it not
because of merits in the objections/cases filed? A fair margin of profit in any
legitimate business is 15-20% but a gentleman well acquainted with Goa`s mining
business tells me that the so-called Goan mine owners are used to nothing less
than 75% and that perhaps also explains the lack of enthusiasm on their part to
restart Business… Truth is often bitter, it may not have many takers, but the
good thing about truth is that it can stand on its own without support!
Jesuin George Fernandes, Cansaulim
=====
letters to the editor
06 Dec, 2015,
Don’t shoot the messenger
Goa is one of the progressive states in India with a higher literacy rate and
higher level of activism. The people of Goa chose the present BJP Govt on the
promise of zero tolerance to corruption and the promise of development.
However, what we are witnessing today is hundred percent corruption and
destruction of the environment.
Goa Foundation and Claude Alvares is at the forefront of this struggle to
protect the environment but the Goa Govt wants to investigate the Goa
Foundation for corruption. There are so many corrupt ministers, politicians,
builders, industrialist etc who can be investigated for ill-gotten wealth.
Besides there are so many persons who are crying for justice like the families
of Fr. Bismarque and Cipriano. However, our CM has time to target and
investigate those who are fighting to save Goa from destruction.
The top two letters dt. Dec. 05 by Dr. Oscar Rebello and Prof. Robert
Castellino have brought out the angst of the people against the present corrupt
and spiteful Govt. who is not only destroying Goa but also shooting the
messenger. We the peace loving people of Goa must stand by Claude Alvares who
is also being targeted by this Govt. just like our departed martyr priest Fr.
Bismarque Dias.
Matias Lobo, Oman
=========
