Category: Popular Essays

Popular Essays

Déjà vu at Sancoale

By AMITA KANEKAR

Doesn’t the news that a puja was conducted at the old Sancoale church frontispiece bring back memories? The choice of a religious space of a minoritised religion for the ritual. The justification that there was a Hindu temple there earlier. The selection of a ruined shrine, so that it can be argued that the place is not an active religious space at all. The focus on a precious monument, so that the message hits home to all and sundry, causes deep offence, and can become a powerful political issue. (more…)

Popular Essays

The Meaning of Liberation in 2021

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

This is not the first time that Goans in large numbers have questioned if Goa is truly liberated. But this is the first time when a large number of peaceful citizens, including children, were detained by the police, for creating awareness about the destruction of Goa, right on 19 December, the day Goa was liberated from Portuguese rule! The recent protests, in a long history of protests in Goa, were sparked by the Government’s decision to promote the double-tracking of the South Western Railway, and a power line and a new National Highway through Goa’s lush green Mollem forest on its southern frontier. That the state government has received a grant of 100 crore rupees for the year-long celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of ‘Liberation Day’ only added to the irony of the situation. (more…)

Popular Essays

So what is this thing called Choice?

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

One is often non-plussed by the way the word ‘choice’ is used, be it by Hindu nationalists, by corporate fundamentalists, casteists and sexists. Whether it be in the rhetoric of the anti-farmer laws, or in the ‘Love-Jihad’ law, or Goa’s relationship with the Union of India and the citizenship of Goans in India, the term choice is used in completely different frames. (more…)

Popular Essays

A Refusal to Break Bread

By AMITA KANEKAR

It was widely reported – in practically all the Indian media reports on the farmers’ protest in Delhi of the past week – that the farmers’ representatives had refused the central government’s hospitality, even water. The protests, against the new farm laws which will open the doors to big corporate players in agriculture while ending the miniscule government support now available to farmers, started in Punjab months ago but garnered no response from the centre. With the protests having converged massively on Delhi now, and promising to become bigger and more widespread, the government has started talks with representatives of the farmer unions, but these talks, of which five rounds are over, have, according to the farmers, offered nothing. Except water, tea and lunch, all of which were refused by their representatives. They made do, instead, with refreshments brought from the langar at the main protest site at the Delhi-Haryana border. (more…)

Popular Essays

Intergenerational Equity: The Old and the New

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

The end of a calendar year often makes us reflect on the ‘old’ that we leave behind and the ‘new’ that we hope for. When most of the economic, social, and political problems that Goa faced last year, or even over the last few years, remain firmly in place, it makes little sense to hope for a better 2021. The pandemic, of course, gives us reasons to be even more pessimistic. We really do not know how 2021 will unfold, especially because the government everyday reinforces its spectacular inefficiency in handling the pandemic. It is for this reason that, rather than offering the usual clichés about a new calendar year, it might be better to reflect on some of the positive changes over the last six months. (more…)

Popular Essays

Remembering Dadu Mandrekar

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

I met Dadu Mandrekar sometime in the late 80s. It was shortly before Dadu along with a group of Dalits converted to Buddhism. I also remember that, although invited for the conversion ceremony by Dalits to Buddhism, I did not go for it. It stemmed from my limited knowledge then. I thought this is yet one more religion, and, if they are abandoning one religion only to join another, I am not going to be endorsing such an endeavor. I was of course pulled up by Dadu in his characteristic way, and that began a decades-long association that had a lasting impact on me. (more…)

Popular Essays

Institutional Murders and Government Jobs

By AMITA KANEKAR

Even God cannot provide government jobs to all, declared the wise Pramod Sawant, making it clear that he at least has no ambition of even trying. Government positions and incomes are for a chosen few like he himself and his cronies. But he would like, he says, unemployed households to have an income of 8000-10,000 rupees a month, for which he has a scheme which will provide – not jobs – but suggestions for ‘self-reliance’. Can his own household survive on such a princely income? Obviously not. Is it what government jobs pay? Nowhere near. So, basically, our CM wants to ensure that those unemployed today earn starvation incomes tomorrow. (more…)

Popular Essays

Coal route: The New SEZ

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

As we know SEZs are, by the Government’s definition, supposed to be foreign countries within the country, for the purposes of trade operations and duties and tariffs, with special rules for facilitating foreign direct investment. This means that the Panchayats or Municipalities in whose jurisdiction the areas covered by the SEZs lie cannot take a call with respective to any approvals within those areas. In 2008 Goa awoke to what was called a New Year gift, that SEZs would be scrapped. Rather the SEZ policy would be scrapped to imply that there would be no SEZs. However, SEZ-like set ups continued to exist in Goa. Information Technology Parks and Biotechnology parks continued to be possibilities as the IT Policy and the Biotechnology Policy , which make these possible, as they speak of SEZ like parks, were not scrapped. (more…)