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TRI Continental Film Festival - Dona Paula, Goa, Sep 28 - Oct 2, 2007
http://www.moviesgoa.org/tricontinental/tricon.htm
For public viewing
Registration at The International Centre Goa Ph: +91 (832) 2452805 to 10
Online Media Partner: http://www.GOANET.org
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GOA’S POWER
By Valmiki Faleiro
Goa seems self-sufficient only in garbage. For almost everything else, we must
turn to
neighbouring states -- food grains, pulses, veggies, fruit, milk, meat,
manpower, name it.
We depend, in varying degrees.
Even for fish, this littoral land of rivers, assorted fresh and brackish water
bodies, and
the Arabian Sea to its entire west, depends on imports from Andhra to Kerala to
fulfill its
needs, both on- and off-season. Ibrahim and his brother merchants at Goa’s
wholesale
fish market at Margao will disclose how much fish is imported annually.
We do not generate any electric power, and are entirely dependent on the
national
power grid. Even if during colonial times Goa’s principal towns had diesel
power plants,
courtesy Ratnakar Rau, a Mangalorean.
For a place with its own governance in the last 44 years, this is an
unflattering reflection
on the calibre of Goa’s political leadership since 1963. One of India’s
smallest territories,
with central funding in the first 24 years, and as full-fledged State in the
last 20, Goa
should have today been India’s glittering showpiece. But, that’s a different
story.
Without its own power, save two small private power mills, Goa’s politicians,
bothered
not about the State’s self-sufficiency but their self-enrichment, licenced
power-guzzling
and power-thieving industries in the 1990s. Check the Cuncolim Industrial
Estate. Such
industries have enriched Goa only with huge bribes to then Industries and Power
ministers, hordes of migrant workers, and deadly effluent ground water
pollutants. At
least one, at Assolda-Quepem, borrowed crores of public funds and vanished,
leaving
behind a fake identity and address. While inviting such crooks to set up
power-guzzlers,
no thought went to the legitimate power needs of Goa’s homegrown ‘Aam Aadmi.’
Credit for bringing some semblance of order to Goa’s power scenario, by plugging
transmission and fiscal losses and turning round the department into profit --
without
raising tariffs -- goes entirely to Manohar Parrikar’s BJP regime and its Power
Minister,
Digambar Kamat, the current Chief Minister.
Faced with a severe 40 to 50 Megawatt (MW) peak time shortage, Kamat
successfully
argued Goa’s long overdue case with the Prime Minister. Two midsized (250 MW
each)
thermal power plants were sanctioned. Thermal plants feed on coal and we already
know the kind of atmospheric pollution in Vasco from mere handling of imported
coal in a
fraction of the quantity the two thermal plants would need. What’s worse, burnt
coal
produces fly ash, a pollutant infinitely more difficult to handle than ordinary
garbage.
Hats off to Aleixo Sequeira, the current Power Minister, for dropping coal and
instead,
pursuing the idea of gas-based power plants. Other than hydro and atomic fuel
(renewables like wind, solar and ocean energy are impractical on this scale),
natural gas
is the cleanest, environmentally. And the cheapest. Luckily for Goa, India’s
public sector
natural gas behemoth, GAIL, is laying a gas pipeline from Dabhol in Maharashtra
to
Bangalore, passing close to Goa.
Aleixo is a friend and before I attract charges of bias, I must say without
favour that like
his Chief Minister, he bears his head on his shoulders. Given a chance, men
like Aleixo,
Digambar and Parrikar could work wonders and fill the gap of the last 44 years
for Goa.
Given a chance, that is.
Aleixo is also the first in the current cabinet to translate Kamat’s ‘Aam
Aadmi’ policy to
practice. A slew of entirely illogical procedures in the Electricity Department
that hassled
the common man from pillar to post, have now been fused (done away with.) A home
user, for instance, will no longer have to pursue circuitous bureaucratic
routes for adding
some extra bulbs or fans in his house. If only more ministers would emulate
Aleixo and
cut the garbage of meaningless processes in their departments, which breed
corruption
and harass the common man, Kamat’s government could don at least the pretence
of an
‘Aam Aadmi’ administration!
CHURCHILLIAN CHARM: Here was a newbie to Goa PWD’s myriad styles of work. He
hardly became minister, when five S.Goa Asst. Engineers proposed he transfer
them to
particular posts for a period of two years. They would pay Rs. five lakhs each.
Our hero’s
eyes bulged. He may be poor in English, but not in arithmetic -- nor in
resourcefulness.
Some quick sums and the Executive Engineer, who has been at his post for years,
was
summoned. Pay up Rs.50 lakhs or face immediate transfer, he was told. That’s
the story
of a rapid-fire 75 lakhs, not counting any paid by the Superintending, Chief
and Principal
Chief Engineers. And we think our ministers are dumb! (ENDS)
The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330
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The above article appeared in the September 16, 2007 edition of the Herald, Goa
