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By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA
Most people in Goa are only too aware of the great many problems resulting from Goa being a tourist destination and the host of all kinds of international events. But one cannot miss the possibilities of leveraging the wide reach that this brings. The amount of discussion generated by the statement of Nadav Lapid, head of the Jury of the International Film Festival of India 2022, is a case in point. (more…)
By AMITA KANEKAR
Aren’t the casinos enough? Apparently, no. According to A Study on Human Trafficking in Vulnerable Districts in India, a nationwide study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), partly funded by the union ministry of Women and Child Development, and completed in 2019, Goa is a major destination (as well as a source) for sex trafficking; and – surprise, surprise! – the tourism industry of Goa is the main reason for the trafficking of both women and children for the sex trade as well as other illegal activities. Interestingly, the report, though ready three years ago, was published by the union government only now. Not just this, the report was also taken down from the government website just days after being released. What could be the reason for this cover-up? Could it be the focus on the tourism industry? (more…)
By AMITA KANEKAR
It is two years this month since Dadu Mandrekar passed away. He died on 28th November, which is Constitution Day, the day of the document that he had spent a good part of his life explaining and celebrating. There is much for which Goa should remember Dadu Mandrekar – his prolific and award-winning writing; his passion for the ideas of Dr Ambedkar, visible in his writing, activism, even casual conversation; his conversion to Buddhism, coupled with a stinging critique of the caste- and gender-specific superstitions rampant in Goa; his resignation from a secure government job to focus on the struggle for social justice. It is proof of our casteist social set-up that such a versatile and radical intellectual, who viewed the world from a very different location than the privileged folk who dominate all public fora, and who had managed to become a well-known writer after immense personal struggle and sacrifice, was rarely given the space he deserved, either in the media or in literary events. It was the Marathi press, not only that run by Ambedkarites but also others, including the Marathi edition of O Heraldo, that published him fairly regularly, and made him a familiar name for readers in Goa and outside. (more…)
By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA
When the news first broke out about proposed amendments to the Goa Land Development and Building Regulation, 2010, it seemed like a Déjà vu: one because much of the so-called development envisaged through those amendments had already been resisted many years ago, and therefore not carried out. This time around it had come in a new bottle that was called Proposed Amendments to the Goa Land and Building Constructions Regulations, 2010. (more…)
By AMITA KANEKAR
So Goa is among the states with the highest number of government employees per capita of its population – as per the census report of government employees from the state government’s department of planning and statistics. The finding was reported by the press in shocked tones. There is one government employee, they said disgustedly, for every 25 residents in the state. (more…)
By Albertina Almeida
When the news first broke out about proposed amendments to the Goa Land Development and Building Regulation, 2010, it seemed like a Déjà vu: one because much of the so-called development envisaged through those amendments had already been resisted many years ago, and therefore not carried out. This time around it had come in a new bottle that was called Proposed Amendments to the Goa Land and Building Constructions Regulations, 2010.
In the late 1990’s, the Tourism Department of the Government of Goa, had proposed to acquire land under the then Land Acquisition Act for golf courses. This had been spotted by way of an advertisement in national newspapers. It must be noted that at that time, none of the national newspapers had a Goa edition. When an application for information was made to the Department of Tourism, Government of Goa, asking what is the area of land proposed to be acquired for each of the golf courses proposed to be set up, how the water requirements of each of the golf courses was to be met, a copy of the environment impact assessment report as regard each of the proposed golf courses, the response was 6.40 lakhs at Verna Plateau and 10 lakh square metres at Naqueri and Quittol villages in Betul, and that the promoters were supposed to make their own arrangements for water, and further that the golf courses would be ‘improving’ the sites which are both rocky and barren.
Inherent in this reply of June 1993, was a vision of development that did not look at people’s participation in decision making processes, or at the actualisation of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India, or at development from the perspective of the people and the users and uses such as land grazing that the land had been put to over long long years. For the struggle to fructify, it then took several actions and lobbying, drawing lessons from other Asian countries like Thailand, where such golf courses had already been set up, and solidarities with and from movements at the international level, to enable an understanding of just how golf courses were disastrous for the environment, apart from the local issues of land use and availability.
The water bodies, with the toxic chemicals that would be ingested for the lawns, and the water-guzzlers that golf courses were, was critical knowledge for rejecting the golf courses. The Village Panchayat of Verna and its gram sabha, at that time, strongly resisted the golf course at Verna, based on information of environmental impacts of golf courses which was provided to them, and the knowledge that a golf course was coming up in their area (from information given by the Tourism Department to Bailancho Saad). The entire momentum with an all-Goa movement against golf courses, finally compelled the Government to retreat on its golf course plan. Yet in 2022, the Government seems to have come around a full circle, and proposed golf courses, which means that they would now descend into the fields, as the fields are almost the only big flatlands left, or were they thinking of flattening the rocky areas? Further, they now said they would only use organic fertilizer, without explaining that a 6-inch thick layer is required during the period of one year, which would mean 75000 to 112500 cubic metres of organic manure each year. Would they have been importing this quantum of manure? Pray, what will be the next new avatar of the golf course in the name of development?
Similarly, the Goa SEZ policy 2006, provided that the State Government will take appropriate steps to declare the SEZs as Industrial Townships to enable the SEZs to function as self-governing, autonomous municipal bodies. Hence the Government visualised industrial townships in which the 73rd and 74th Amendments would be given a go by, and the townships were in fact like gated areas, whose operation could not be questioned by the people or the local self-government bodies, and would/could, in effect, have become the preserve of the elite descending in Goa from India and abroad. Apart from the fact that the employment it would generate would require importing of labour from other parts of India seriously resulting in breach of Goa’s carrying capacity in terms of land, water and other natural resources, and amenities. Therefore, again civil society groups bandied together to oppose the SEZs, as a result of which the Government of the day led by then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat assured that the SEZ policy would be withdrawn and eventually his cabinet formerly withdrew the same in June 2009. There was also a bio-technology policy under which the biotechnology parks were supposed to be SEZ like. Presumably that also stood withdrawn to the extent of being SEZ like?
Prior to that, the industrial estates, which are also outside the bounds of Village Panchayats, were also set up on the pretext of providing employment and generating revenue. Is there any study of how much employment these industrial estates have generated and for whom, considering that the fields that were forcibly acquired were under cultivation by the local tribal community? Again, now in 2022, in respect of the proposed amendments to the Land and Building Regulations, the Chief Town Planner was quoted in the press as saying that the amendment would have helped create a lot of employment opportunities for Goans. This time in 2022, the proposal had assumed the garb of film cities, film studios and golf courses, and mega-farmhouses (obviously in fields, silly as it may sound) to prepare for mega industry read as huge corporates, to now take over the last bastion of Goa’s environment, the fields.
How long will the successive Governments keep rehashing the same plans and the same development model? How long the same wine in a different bottle? The Government must get the message loud and clear that people’s voices have to be heard through gram sabhas and local self Government bodies, when going to the drawing board, and that the technical experts (such as architects, economists, lawyers. environmental engineers), and representatives of civil society must be aids in this process. At no stage, must anyone be in contravention of the Constitution of India as is, according to which diversity of genders, of profession of religion, of abilities, of occupations and professions, must be able to reside and live shoulder to shoulder with equality and with dignity, while maintaining inter-generational equity. Not simply the most recent movement has been called Goenchea Fudlea Pidge Khatir (For the Future Generation of Goa).
By Amita Kanekar
So Goa is among the states with the highest number of government employees per capita of its population – as per the census report of government employees from the state government’s department of planning and statistics. The finding was reported by the press in shocked tones. There is one government employee, they said disgustedly, for every 25 residents in the state.
But what’s actually shocking about this? If government jobs are the best-paying and best-regulated jobs in the country, doesn’t it make sense to have more of them? It’s become the norm to sneer at Goans for wanting government jobs – with one of the biggest sneerers being the Chief Minister of Goa. Pramod Sawant regularly comments disparagingly on how Goans “hanker” for government jobs, which is ironical since he holds the top government position in the state himself, and shows no intention of giving it up. Goans should be more self-sufficient, declares the man whose whole existence – from lavish residence and plush car, to expanding entourage – is paid for by the Goan people. But, he insists, it is just not possible for everyone to have a government job.
Why not, is what we would like to know. If it is okay for him and others to be on the government payroll, why is it impossible for everyone else as well? Surely there is plenty of work that needs to be done in Goa. Almost everywhere one turns, you can see under-staffing of institutions, and overloading of existing employees, even in life-and-death situations like at the GMC and the other government hospitals. So why not create more jobs?
Because the government has no money, is the usual answer. But why doesn’t the government have the money?
What Sawant will never admit is that a big reason for why the government doesn’t have money is because of the way the government wastes money. An infamous example is the swearing-in ceremony of his own government which, according to the RTI enquiry filed by Aires Rodrigues, blew up an unbelievable Rs 9 crores of public money on just the one single event. Another area of waste is incessant, lavish, and unnecessary construction projects – like the recent decision to build a new Raj Bhavan, the ghastly ‘beautification’ of Miramar beach, etc. But perhaps the biggest problem, because it is a regular and ever-expanding one, is the cost of the current employees – and not all employees, but particularly the fattest of the fat cats on the government payroll. A good example here is how Sawant’s predecessor, Parrikar (celebrated in the press as a ‘good administrator’) hiked the government payment to Goa’s then attorney general, Atmaram Nadkarni, to up to Rs. 8 lakhs per month, making him the highest-paid state attorney general (serving the smallest state), earning more, apparently, than even the President of the country.
Parrikar’s largesse (at public cost) was not restricted to Nadkarni, but extended to all the MLAs, ministers, governor, and himself, given the fact that he presided over two massive pay rises for all these worthies. Just to give one example. Goa’s governor saw a salary rise from Rs. 13.20 lakhs per annum in 2015-16, to 28.2 lakhs in 2017-18, i.e. more than double. To this was added Rs. 67 lakhs for travel, including 10 lakhs for foreign travel. Along with this were discretionary grants of Rs 20 lakh, up from Rs 5.45 lakh in 2014-15, i.e. a hike of nearly 400% in 3 years. All these figures will have climbed much higher by now. Add on all the other big earners – MLAs, ministers, judges, IAS officers, directors of government bodies, etc, etc, not to forget the attorney general – and you understand why the Goa government has to regularly borrow money for salaries.
This kind of spending is especially disgusting when there are thousands of people struggling to make ends meet in Goa, despite working full-time and more. They even include government employees – except that the government does not consider them as employees. Working in government institutions as anything from gardeners, cleaners, watchmen, to clerical staff, librarians, and even professors, these employees earn less than half the official salary, or even less than that, depending on whether they are on contract, or daily wages, or hourly rates. Thus, for the same hours of work, a professor on permanent tenure might earn over Rs 2 lakh a month, a professor on contract might earn 60,000, a clerical employee on permanent tenure might earn 30,000, while a cleaner on contract might earn 10,000 – all in the same college. How can such huge differences in pay be justified?
What is even more interesting is that it is the people earning the most, the Grade-A category, who decide the salaries for everyone, including themselves. That is why there are regular pay commissions for the permanent staff, which have taken Grade-A salaries to astronomical heights; the Goa government has admitted that one reason for its financial debt is the last (7th) pay commission. But the same commissions provide nothing for the non-permanent.
With the government itself running this kind of top-heavy, discriminatory, and exploitative employment system, it is hardly going to ensure anything better in the private sector. That’s why nobody listens to Sawant when he advises Goan youth to look for jobs in the hospitality sector, where, he claims, two lakh jobs will be available over the next two years. Two lakh jobs paying what salaries? Offering what conditions of work? What dignity? Employment conditions in the private sector are so poor and unregulated for most employees that many prefer contract jobs in the government, hoping to one day become permanent.
So, there is no need to feel ashamed about the high percentage of government jobs per capita in Goa. In fact, this high percentage, along with remittances from NRI Goans, is surely what makes Goa a comparatively well-to-do society. And there is no need to castigate Goans for wanting government jobs either. They are not aiming to earn as much as Sawant does, nor to live in the lap of public-funded luxury. All they want is to earn enough, and with dignity, to make ends meet.
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A shorter version of this article was published in O Heraldo, on 15 October 2022.
By JASON KEITH FERNANDES
Late last month the leader of the RSS Mohan Bhagwat affirmed that all persons living in India are Hindus. Given that this assertion is a core part of the RSS imagination, he has not been the only person to say so, with one of our former Chief Ministers having also stated that Catholics in Goa are culturally Hindu. At the time a number of Goan scholars jointly offered a nuanced response to this latter assertion, indicating that, in fact, Goans were culturally Catholic. It would be fair to say, however, that while many Goans were culturally Catholic, nowadays, with the rise of Hindu nationalism, this cultural constitution is changing, and with scary consequences. (more…)
By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA
The news of the remission of life sentence and consequent release of the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, sent shock waves down many a person’s spine. How could people, who had gang raped multiple times, committed multiple murders, and killed Bilkis’ three-year-old child in front of her eyes, be released? Worse still, how could they be feted when they were released? What signals was that sending? Wasn’t it about some men enjoying impunity? Wasn’t it conveying that it is heroic to murder and rape persons of the minority communities? (more…)
By AMITA KANEKAR
The Chief Minister’s response to the almost-daily reports of rampant illegal sand mining across Goa needs to be framed and put up on the walls of government offices, because it could be the motto of his government. So, an environmentally ruinous practice, increasingly violent and criminalised, as well as socially destructive, is flourishing under his watch, despite the repeated complaints of local communities, and revealing the complete failure of law enforcement agencies? The CM’s solution: legalise it. ‘With sand and laterite in shortage for construction activities,’ this is, apparently, the urgent need of the hour. (more…)