Who Changed our Regional Plan? By Venita Coelho
The RP2021 was released and already we have had several reams of newsprint telling us how wonderful it is. Congratulations and thanks have been handed out on all fronts. My question to all the journalists and opinion leaders who were so quick with their responses is this – have you even read the Final RP2021 document? How are you so sure it is good news without taking any time at all to analyse it, and when the plans for the two Talukas haven’t even been released? As the GBA starts the process of studying the final document, there seem to be several worrying issues.
The biggest issue is the ways in which the final Plan deviates from the Draft Plan. The mandate of the State Level Committee set up to finalize the plan was simple. It was to take the existing Draft Plan, look at the village level plans that had come in, incorporate the suggestions made and produce a final plan. What they have done is to fling in some innovations of their own – which did not exist in the Draft RP2021 and which they had no business doing. None of these innovations has been opened to the public for their feedback or been part of any sort of participatory process. Most of these have not been adequately explained either.
The first is the abandoning of the VP3 category. This plan has repeatedly been trumpeted as having ‘people’s participation’ and a key cornerstone to that claim was that villages had been allowed to choose the VP status they would like. Why has the VP3 category been dropped? No proper explanation. How can a category that was part of a Draft plan that had been notified (and so has legal standing ) be dropped? No explanation. When villages have expressly opted for VP3 how can this expression of peoples participation and will be over ridden? No explanation. The question begs to be asked - participatory planning or a compromise with the building lobby?
The Final plan suddenly adds three new categories. Huge chunks of pink appear on the map marked as ‘Zone Plan’. There is no proper explanation of what a Zone Plan is. There is a second new category ‘Non PDA ODP areas’. Again there is no precise explanation of what this is or under what rules and building categories this will fall. The third and most suspicious category that has been added is Micro Industrial Development Zone. This sounds like it is meant to encourage small scale industries until you read the fine print. These will be governed by ‘a unique policy’. So this one could go either way. It could actually be used to encourage small scale industry - or it could be a nice little loophole to bring the SEZ’s back under another name.
The Draft Plan was scathing about the effects of mining on Goa. It recommended that mining leases close to water bodies and other sensitive areas be phased out in three years. And that all mining be phased out in five years. This has gone entirely missing in the final notified RP2021. Instead we have two recommendations that sound suspiciously like they came from the mining lobby. The first is the recommendation that a new four lane ‘State Highway’ be built through the sensitive ghat area. What exactly is a State Highway? How is this different from the Expressway that is already planned? And who will benefit the most from a highway that runs straight to the most densely mined areas? If the Expressway is already being bulldozed in over people’s protests why do we need another State Highway?
The second is the push to add one more rail line. Sounds like good planning, until you learn that in response to an RTI the Rail Vikas Nigam clarified that the line was part of a ‘port connectivity project’. Read ‘to transport iron ore’.
These are just some of the issues that are emerging. It took us months of intense study to understand the implications of the Draft Plan. It was overall a good plan which would have done much to preserve and protect – but now it stands changed. The implications of the changes in the final plan are yet to be understood – do they water down the Draft Plan? Radically alter it? Undermine its spirit? It is very premature to begin the celebrations. On the other hand neither do we wish to throw out the years of hard work that have gone into getting a decent plan by a knee jerk reaction of rejection. All the various business lobbies would love a stay order that would allow them to continue with the rules that currently apply – outdated ones from RP2001.
Once again the original demands of the GBA sound more and more like good sense. Put the Final Plan in the public domain for 30 days for us to give our feedback. Until the final issues are sorted, let the Eco Sensitive Zones be marked and preserved immediately. Let VP3 status stand for all the villages who opted for it until the entire plan is completed and notified to everyone’s satisfaction. Throw all the new innovations in this plan open for debate and discussion. Until the government does this – let’s not celebrate. (ENDS)
===================================================== First published in the Herald, Goa - December 7, 2010
