<The very first press note issued on December 7, 2006 by the GBASave Goa Campaign and signed by the convener, Dr Oscar Rebellomakes interesting reading. It says, 'Besides the calamitousdestruction of Goa's natural beauty, her culture and her heritage,we are set to witness an unprecedented social disaster if mega5-star projects, townships, condominiums, golf courses, resorts,etc take root in our precious land. Besides being greedilyresource intensive, all these megalomaniac projects envisaged inthe Regional Plan 2011 will trigger a wealthy and powerful newwave of migrant influx who have the potential to relegateindigenous and already settled Goans into a politically irrelevantminority in their own land.'>
If it is accepted that the Mopa airport project in its present form is indeed one of these "megalomaniac" ones, then it is imperative that it is cut down to size in order to prevent the demographic problems anticipated by the GBA convenor. The need of the hour is to formulate a 50 year plan for the airport to grow from a MODEST facility, into a full fledged international hub, which functions in tandem with Dabolim civil enclave. We dont want a 6 million passenger, so-called 'international', airport (especially when there are hardly any worthwhile international flights on a daily basis at present), which would simply suck all traffic (especially domestic), from Dabolim and leave it completely at the mercy of the military and create serious economic problems for the state.
