TUESDAY TICKLES by ASHLEY DO ROSARIO [GT - 23/11/10] NH diversion stir: National, or anti-national?
NGOs, activists, politicians and a section of the aam admi are at it again: agitation. The reason: the National Highways cutting through the length, and partly breadth, of Goa, are being widened, damaging in the process homes, businesses, real estate investments and what not. So, all those affected, and even those not affected but who could potentially corner political dividends have gone on agitation mode. They are demanding that the alignment of the highways be changed to skirt the densely populated regions and thus save some of the structures, for which the government will pay no compensation if destroyed. Two decades ago, Goa witnessed a similar agitation, perhaps of a greater intensity than the current Highway agitation. I had then just entered the journalism profession as a greenhorn reporter. It was also around the same time that Opposition Leader Manohar Parrikar was cutting his teeth and agitations were his prime political occupation. The reason for that agitation was the Konkan Railway Project. Farmers who were losing their fields, those who were losing their homes and businesses and others who feared a demographic deluge because of the KR project were at the forefront of that agitation. Like the agitation against the highway now, then too the demand of the agitationists was not to scrap the project, but for the realignment of the railway line from the densely populated coastal areas and their khazans, to the hinterland. But unlike the Highways now, the agitation against the KR alignment then, did not get the support of politicians like Parrikar. On the contrary, they launched a counter-agitation favouring the project and accused those agitating for the realignment of a "national" project like the Konkan Railway "ANTI-NATIONALS". By the same yardstick, are the National Highway diversionists also anti-nationals? A million dollar question this.
