The intellectual migrant has begun the New Year 2012 by singing hallelujahs to
his bunch of patron saints that are claimed to be 'Empowering Goa'.
Coincidently this weekend also happened to be the feast of three kings, but
kings quite different from the egoistic and scheming politicians,
industrialists and their devious media crew in Goa. What may have been
intended as a tribute to his Goan mentors also happens to unearth the truth
about his conflict of interest. While the over ground so claimed empowering
contributions of some industrialists are publicised, the gullible Goan
readership has been kept in the dark about the underground exploits of these
media portrayed philantropists. For the investigative eye, the Master's Voice'
behind the years of tirades in the newspaper against select politicians,
bureaucrats, clergy and activists gets even more clearer.
Goa is a paradise for migrant breed of opinion manufacturers that survive on
promoting interests of certain powerful forces. Talk about this injustice and
you are bound to be labelled a chauvinist, sectarian, xenophobic, ....... and
so on. The words of a senior journalist Bosco de Souza Eremita in his article
'Colonising the way we think' as published in the Herald some time ago reads
thus:
"If you think it's the land mafia alone that's out to ransack Goa, think again.
Obsessed with the shrinking land under son-of-the-soil control, Goans have
failed to see through the game of the new breed of intellectuals settling in
Goa. This breed predominantly either belong to, or are inexorably linked to the
high-and- mighty, who unfortunately are often welcomed by unwary locals,
unaware of their agenda, exploiting their intellectual position and connections
to get their way through."
Who has empowered Goa and who has not can well be witnessed in the mining belt
and the adjoining villages of the capital city of Goa where the earth has been
raped repeatedly and the Goan landscape has been scarred with huge monstrous
structures of concrete over looking the sea or river and affordable only to
migrants. And no one will talk about how super speciality medical treatment
gets provided at exhorbitant costs by the empowered while their medical waste
and sewage finds its way into the the water bodies. It is the empowered few
that can choke the lungs of helpless and innocent villagers and get away with
crime with no costs. They can shorten the life span of the villagers to reap
huge profits and market their cover up and bribing as social development. So
great is the empowerment of these negligible few that even dictate the opinions
to be published in the newspapers for gullible Goans to read and beat their
breasts. Laws do not matter to empowered thugs in Goa who
can alter planning laws at will to get their illegal projects approved and
silence activists by dragging them to court for defamation. And above all, they
have a domesticated lot of intellectuals and media persons, local and migrant,
who can turn a report upside down.
If a Lok Pal is needed to curb corruption among politicians and government
bureaucrats, a similar Lok Pal is needed to tame opportunistic and hypocritical
journalists who are on the beneficiaries list of unscrupulous politicians and
industrialists. Just like politicians are compelled to disclose their assets
to the Election Commission, the journalists need to be compelled to furnish
annual details to the public about favours, whether in cash or kind, received
from politicians and industrialists. This will be real empowerment.
- Soter D'souza
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