The shrink-wrapping of Goa By Rahul Goswami (Independent journalist and researcher based in Goa.)
Goa's chief minister and senior administrators have become adept at parading a dubious set of indices to pretend that high literacy, overflowing bank deposits and stunning scenery make the year-round holiday destination India's most coveted living space. Today, Goa's midland villages are anything but that. The tourism euro has passed them by, and their fields have either been rendered uncultivable by the wastes from iron ore mining or are being gobbled up by property developers and promoters of industrial zones. In desperation and outrage, village groups began banding together in 2006 to confront the problem. First, they documented the acquisitions and listed the likely impacts of unplanned industrial development in which they were neither considered nor consulted. Next, they petitioned government and local authorities. Then they agitated. Finally, they physically stopped such work on their ground, being forced to take over an important responsibility of the state government. The closing weeks of 2007 again brought the people of Goa out into the streets to protest the threat of widespread dispossession of land. This had happened early in 2007 too, when the state-wide agitation against the now-scrapped Regional Plan 2011 peaked. There have been attempts to politically neutralise the anti-SEZ groupings by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party just as much as the ruling Congress has sought to soft-pedal the issue by calling for the three notified SEZs to be denotified and the remainder to be rejected. The anti-SEZ groups remain wary however, for the Regional Plan experience is still fresh: for months the state government ignored continuing land use violations that effectively took forward the massive property developments envisioned in the scrapped plan. The re-awakening of the "don't touch our land" sentiment within so short a period is an indicator of much deeper problems that simmer in Goa, a number of them shared with communities elsewhere in India that face the industrialisation-urbanisation onslaught. On December 10, 2007 the Federation of Gawda Kunbi Velip Dhangar (Gakuved), a social justice combine representing Goa's scheduled tribes and indigenous communities and comprising 12% of the state's population, held a public meeting in the southern taluka of Quepem. They spoke out against human rights abuse and the excesses of illegal mining. Three days later, on December 14, a public meeting called by the SEZ Virodhi Manch in Madgaon (south Goa district headquarters) was emphatically responded to by urban and rural Goans alike. Finally, on December 19, which is Goa Liberation Day, resolutions opposing SEZs were passed by a number of gram sabhas across the state. Goa's current administration has sought to deflect criticism and blame by assuring citizens that SEZs will not be built. Yet the same state has through a statutory corporation -- the Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) -- favoured SEZ promoters, as uncovered and documented by the SEZ Virodhi Manch. More at: http://infochangeindia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=705 2&Itemid=112 ~(^^)~ Avelino
