State of lawlessness. Digambar Kamat has not taken any hard decisions By Nisser Dias nisserdias at gmail.com SMS to 9422437029
Chief minister Digambar Kamat seems to be getting into combative mood to face the upcoming assembly election next year. His statement to the media that he is not a weak and that he has taken hard decisions seems to have been made in that direction so as to send a message across to the Congress voters that they need to remain with the party. He might try to convince all and sundry that he has a spine, but the general public have judged four years of misrule. We have experienced total lack of administration, complete breakdown of law and order machinery and to top it up corruption has scaled heights like never before. To sum it up in a sentence, Digambar Kamat has been a complete failure as an administrator and thereby chief minister.
Immediately after taking over the reins of the state, he stated he would formulate a new regional plan to replace the draconian 2011 plan. He formed a task force and appointed some of the best Goan planners on the committee to formulate the new regional plan 2021 and then set about dismantling the same. Health and educational projects were kept out of the purview, suggestions by various gram sabhas and village groups were not included, eco-tourism zones made a back door entry into regional plan. The government also delayed in providing genuine documentation to the committee so as to delay the process and give opportunity to builders and developers to continue destruction of Goa’s hills and beach belt and replace it with concrete jungle thereby vitiating the entire process of planning and forcing members of the committee to resign in a huff. Thus, to replace the 2011 version of regional plan was not hard decision as it done with huge element of insincerity and deceit by taking into confidence and forming a parallel coterie of architects of the same plan and providing expert planners with distorted data.
Digambar Kamat will complete his term as chief minister of Goa, nonetheless the rape of Goa’s natural beauty continues unabated. If he was genuine about his concern for Goa, Aldeia de Goa project would not be completed. This project is a deep wound on Goan hills which will never heal and more such have been allowed in various parts of Goa, the latest being in Chicalim. Raheja’s project in Carmona is another example of destruction of our land and rivers. Let us not forget that Raheja’s had also been allotted huge tracts of land to set up SEZ.
Coming to Special Economic Zones (SEZ). Chief minister Kamat also promised to do away with SEZs in the state the moment he took over in 2006. On eve of new year of 2008 he scraped all the SEZs in the state and said that it was a gift to the Goans. However his government’s intentions were not very clean because SEZ policy was scraped a year later after scraping of SEZ. In between Goa government in written correspondence to Union government had stated the state cannot accept SEZ in the present form. Which means chief minister and his comrades in arms had hopes of bringing in SEZ in a different form.
If at all the SEZs have been driven away from Goa, it is not because of the efforts of the Digambar Kamat led government but because of the case filed in the court by the NGOs, wherein they proved to the court that huge tracts of land was allotted to the promoters by skirting the law and violating the procedures for acquisition and allotment. Incidentally most of the godfathers for the SEZ promoters in Goa happen to the ministers of the previous government led by former chief minister Pratapsingh Rane.
Then comes the illegal mining issue that has rocked assembly proceedings so many times. For the last more than three years, opposition leader Manohar Parrikar has been raking this issue. He has gone to the extent of stating that half of the ministers in the Digambar Kamat cabinet are allegedly involved in illegal mining. Why has the chief minister who also holds the Mining portfolio not challenged him to prove it. This indicates there is truth in it. If so why has he not put an end to it. Such rampant destruction would really not be in the interest of the state.
Then comes the Medium of Instruction issue. Because of assembly elections were closing in the government gave in to the demands of the parents wanting English as one of the languages of MOI. As of today it is lying before the High Court while the managements of the schools do not have a clue in which language to instruct. Did the chief minister study the legal implication before allowing parents to make a choice of language. If so why can it not explain to the court and urge for an urgent disposal, so as to allow school management and children to get on with the syllabus in the language of their choice.
Since the last four years Goa has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Various police officers have been allegedly involved in drug trade, fake currency, improper investigation, dereliction of duty. What the government has done is just suspended them. Why has the chief minister not seen to it that departmental enquiries are conducted in a time bound manner and the officers dismissed from service instead of burdening the state exchequer by paying the disgraced officer part salary.
Corruption has become a cancer in all the government departments without exception. Even for a birth or a death certificate money is demanded from the common man otherwise he is made to run from pillar to post. What has the chief minister done to curtail this?
If the chief says he has taken hard decisions, why have there been so many agitations.
The only hard decision that chief minister Digambar Kamat has taken is to subtly override Supreme Court order holding extensions to Cidade de Goa as illegal by introducing Ordinance and regularizing them. This surely is not in the interest of Goa. (ENDS)
======================================================== First published in Gomantak Times, Goa - August 11, 2011
