https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/Editorial/A-prayer-for-Kerala-or-Goa ’s-wakeup-call/134903.html
What happens when even the Gods don’t help? It’s that which has played out in God’s Own Country, Kerala and if you compare it with what is happening in Goa, the time bomb of development is ticking away here too. And the consequences will be no less fatal. A few decades back Kerala stormed on to the world stage as India’s first ever 100% literate State. Literacy, we always thought, went hand in hand with intelligence and sensibility. Every advertisement campaign of Kerala would take us through lush green forests, pure and tranquil back waters and a mysticity of ancient wisdom that is associated with conservation and respect for the elements. Despite the Left and the Congress ruling it intermittently, Kerala was always the poster boy of how development should be. Their Town and Country Planning Act was built on the edifice of people’s participation, scientific town planning, inclusion of environmental and heritage laws amongst others. Just everything was picture perfect. Just everything. Only the law was written and the statute implemented, to sustain development, too late and too little. Kerala today, is paying that price. Probably our lawmakers don’t read the newspapers. Probably our farming trained minister in charge of country planning has no clue that developing real estate is not the same as farming. Agriculture nurtures the Earth, ‘development’ ruptures Earth. As Goa watches with horror, the development in Kerala, maybe our Town Planning Minister who wants to reopen and reinterpret the ODPs of Vasco, Mapusa and Panjim in the light of the back door entered Regional Plan 2021 is a final nail in the coffin of sense and sensibilities in Goa. The reopening of ODPs in three BJP constituencies represented by ‘sick’ and ailing MLAs seems more about political continuity than setting the record straight. Mr TCP Minister, despite being the guardian minister doesn’t even know the simple fact that ODPs have to be a part of the Regional Plan because cities are as much a part of the State as the rest of Goa. Resistance is failing and falling in Goa. The monsoons have sent the warriors against ODP indoors, the warriors against CRZ playing to empty galleries and the political parties after failing to roost in the Assembly content with their regular press releases and press conferences and made for press events, if Goa gets flooded, seems landslides, witnesses coastal flooding it is the people of Goa who have to blame themselves for being led around like sheep by those who give them petty benefits. Dear Goenkar, while you were sleeping with your eyes wide open the following happened. (1) The MLAs of Valpoi, Sankhali and Poriem looked the other way (had they just seen Google Map of the last decade they would have found out) while the neighbouring State turned the source of our Mhadei away (2) Goa government hogwash that it cares for Goa’s environment was exposed by the Mhadei Tribunal Judgment which laid bare the fact that the Goa government failed to provide scientific evidence that Goem could be facing climate change or depletion of water resources or even permanent impact on its fragile ecosystem due to the Mhadei diversion. The hailed victory was just another sellout by the State government to another State just as our TCP Minister wants to gift away every possible piece of Goan land to the builders lobby or the Revenue Minister would like to gift away our comunidade lands to marauding immigrants all in the name of regularisation of unauthorised structure. What is happening is that the ruling as well as the opposition dispensation wants to create mini states of vote banks in Goa at the expense of town & country planning and Goan’s owned land. So what is the connection with Kerala? Here it is. In Vasco, the natural catchment area of storm water runoff – the games paddy field of Maimollen is being filled up to make way for permanent settlement. In the mangroves stretching from Santa Cruz to Merces, the once famed mangroves are being filled to widen old footpath trails and soon all that natural water surge control would create new floods that would be uncontrollable. As we Goans would say, aiz temkam, faleam amkam. The menace is here, are you going to stop it or live a tragedy to realise when it is too late? -- DEV BOREM KORUM Gabe Menezes.