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Goa Sudharop Annual Awards
January 5, 2011 - 3:45 - 6:30pm
Hotel Mandovi, Panaji, Goa
Details at: http://bit.ly/GoaSudharop2011
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To cut through the rhetoric and anecdotes, it is best to read well-researched
and well-sourced books and articles on historical and contemporary issues. Many
of these are now freely available, or can be loaned/purchased, on the internet.
If one does not trust historians for whatever reason, one should have even more
reason not to trust what is posted in internet forums by non-historians. As I
have said before, when one is skeptical of a factual assertion made by anybody,
one has to try to confirm or refute it by referring to multiple independent
reliable sources.
Regarding the Ph.D. dissertation on health and hygiene of Gracias that I
mentioned, it gives us better information about sanitary conditions and hygiene
in Goa, both long before 1961 and just before 1961 - certainly much better than
the wild claims, anecdotes and fantasies posted on Goanet. Unfortunately, it
does not have pictures to compare with those of Rajan. But to me the point is
not to simply compare, or worse, to blame someone and look for excuses. The
important thing is to try to learn from our history to seek answers to the
following questions, so as to enable us to arrive at the right practical
solutions to our problems:
1. What happens when there is overpopulation and overcrowding in a Goan city or
village?
2. What happens when the government is indifferent to environmental conditions?
3. What happens when the infrastructure and resources are not adequate?
4. What happens when there are no proper laws and regulations, or when they are
not properly enforced?
5. Are native Goans different from other Indians in terms of concern about
hygiene and sanitation?
6. What measures work and what measures don't work in solving the problems of
sanitation and hygiene?
...and so on and so forth.
Cheers,
Santosh
--- On Mon, 1/3/11, J. Colaco < jc> <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 3 January 2011 03:42, Rajan P. Parrikar <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> [1] The standards of public hygiene in what are today
> considered clean
> and hygiene-conscious countries of Europe and the West
> WERE
> sordid in the past.
> [2] (The) rich housewives in Mumbai are known to offload
> garbage from
> their plush Breach Candy apartments onto the streets
> below.
> [3] And let me guess - it is the Goans who should assume
> the blame for
> not anticipating the bowel movement needs of the Patna
> Express crowd.
> [4] Finally, I leave you with this sequence -
> http://www.parrikar.org/images/ghatification/slides/panjim-06.html
> http://www.parrikar.org/images/ghatification/slides/panjim-07.html
> http://www.parrikar.org/images/ghatification/slides/panjim-08.html
>
> jc's comment:
>
> It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.
> Rajan's pictures
> are worth an entire sewer system.
>
> To those who refer us to books by Goa historians and the
> unhygienic
> conditions in Goa from 1510 to 1961, I'd say the
> following:
>
> a: That is a 450 year spread. What was the situation in
> 1961?
> b: Please see [1] above from Rajan
> c: Please see [4] above from Rajan
> d: With due respect to the Goa historians, was the
> situation in Goa
> 1961 akin to [4] above from Rajan
> e: Are not apples different from oranges?
> f: The noise apart, do you see an amelioration/worsening of
> the
> situation with new constructions (and new 'ghatis') in the
> pipeline?
>
> Perhaps, the one 'beneficial' part to all this may be
> organic fish and
> vegetable farming. Who needs those artificially fed farm
> coriander,
> fish and prawns when so much organic farming wealth is
> being donated
> by our visitors.
>
> Yuck!!
>
> jc
>
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