Comedy Or Tragedy?
How sad it is to see signs of intellectual bankruptcy and senility on the part of this government. When Ex-Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar took off to Delhi he also took with him 90% of the brains of the Goa government. SOS: Please come back soon! Ex-CM Manohar Parrikar has said - as reported by our sleepy media - that if the Goa government goes astray he will put it back on track. This government is totally derailed! It is neither Konkan Railway nor SW Railway nor any other! It has, in short, simply gone off the tracks! Our government's vision or better, lack of vision, is pathetic. Do anything to change the status of orchard lands into settlement! It's intention to change even illegal occupancy of land which is not one's own into a legal title is okay? Wow! People who are living in houses built on land which does not belong to them are known as criminals all over the world, aren't they? It is illegal in all democracies, isn't it? But in Goa our perceptions are different, right? What is in it for the Goa government to help people who have built houses on land which is not their own? Isn't this abetment of a crime? Does the government believe if it walks down this apparently golden street - the voter - who is largely corrupt, especially the non-Goan, will blindly and happily vote for the BJP in the coming election? Do politicians want and need migrant votes so desperately they are willing to do anything to get them? Maybe every political party would like to do the same as migrants are the majority in Goa, more than Goans. "I don't need your votes," said a famous MLA Congress politician to the Goan voters a while ago. And as I do not want to be accused of giving too much of credit to the non-Goan voter I need to mention the unsavory role of the MLA pied pipers of Goa's Legislature Assembly who are Goans! Lazy landowners who are also lazy and greedy will be more than willing to supper the government so they can sell their orchard lands to outsiders for ten times the price if it can be converted into settlement. Conversions, and not religious conversions as everyone knows, was the brainchild of the secular Congress Party, the great innovators. The BJP government has decided to take the lucrative Congress model and run with it all the way to the …? If orchard land cannot be converted to settlement then it is bad news and a great tragedy for development? But this government does not even stop here, it also intends to gift land which belongs to the Goan community to non-Goans! Is this comedy or tragedy? Or both? I don't know as I cry and laugh and laugh and cry at the same time! What about you? Orchard land should remain orchard. That, by the way, is a good definition of land use and the basic idea of the Regional Plan, CRZ and so on, to protect the environment and land of Goa for future generations. We need to have sacred and serious zoning laws which protect the land and can be changed after a decade or two after protracted deliberation and not in the spirit of Goa's gambling casinos. We need to have good land use laws so greed cannot dictate the future of Goans and Goa. A lot of people think Mr Manohar Parrikar is Mr U-Turn. Maybe yes, maybe no. What I do know is he gave Mathany Saldhana, my neighbor and friend the Tourism, Environment, and Forrest portfolios after he won the election. I wonder if Mathany Saldhana were alive today how he would respond to the non-application of mind of much of this government's so-called development policies. I remember, as a lot of other people in Goa do, Mathany Saldhana's famous words after he became a minister: Not a single inch of forest land will be given for development! Really?
