The Seven Wonders of Goa Posted on 2008-08-30 - The Navhind Times Letter to the Editor
NDTV has come up with a novel idea to make Indians and of course those who visit our great country know more about it by starting an all India exercise to name the seven wonders of the country. Just as there are seven wonders of the world, the seven wonders of India will be chosen so as to show-case the seven most magnificent architectural structures as well as natural sites. According to Dr Prannoy Roy, the exercise will involve people from all corners of the country. Initially, each state will be asked to nominate seven wonders of their respective states and from this list the seven wonders of India will be announced. Undoubtedly the state of Goa too will have to go through the exercise of naming the seven wonders in the state. On my part, I tried hard to name the seven wonders of Goa and came out with the following list. The first wonder of Goa is the Selaulim pipeline for the number of times it has broken down. All taps in South Goa go dry every time the Selaulim pipeline bursts. The second wonder of Goa would undoubtedly be the short life span bridges. The old Mandovi Bridge has already taken a plunge and the Zuari Bridge is showing signs of collapsing. The Borim Bridge too is showing signs of wear and tear. The third wonder of Goa is its roads. Probably nowhere in the world will you find roads developing potholes after just one year of being laid resulting in the need to be hot-mixed every year. The fourth wonder is that Goa can be called as a land of twos. We have two bridges over the Mandovi River. Very soon we shall have one more bridge running parallel to the Zuari Bridge. We shall also have one more water pipeline running parallel to the Selaulim pipeline. And of course the tiny state of Goa will soon be having two airports. If our state had been as big as Madhya Pradesh, Goan politicians would probably think of having as many as eight airports in the state. The fifth wonder is our politicians. In fact we probably have lost count of how many Chief Ministers the state has had in the past ten years. The sixth wonder is that though we have the second highest literacy rate in the country, yet we have thousands of educated unemployed youth in the state. How this can occur is indeed a wonder. And the seventh wonder is that in a few years from now there will more non-Goans and migrants in our state than the number of Goans. And there is no more wonder as to how this is taking place. Goans are selling their land to outsiders and all too soon Goans will be strangers in their own land. ADELMO FERNANDES, the writer, is a social activist residing in Vasco. -- Roland Francis Toronto +1 (416) 453.3371
