BUDGET GIFT: The Sate government, which has got an unexpected `300 crore to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Goa’s Liberation, should use the money for providing cheap mass transportation and building safer roads with no exhibition of potholes

BY RAJAN NARAYAN

AND a few stray thoughts for yet another Saturday. For a Saturday following the week when the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman, offered Goa Rs300 crore to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of its Liberation. For a Saturday following the week when Senior Counsel Advocate Arvind Datar revealed that the State government had instructed him not to object to the notification of the Mhadei tribunal award. For a Saturday following the week when the so called Revolutionary party has started a campaign against outsiders. For a Saturday following the week when hundreds of journalists lost their jobs either because of the shutting down of media houses or downsizing. For a Saturday following the week when Covid-19 cases in Goa are going up again with 106 cases reported on Tuesday, February 2, 2021.

Rs 300 gift to goa

AND a few stray thoughts on the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman gifting Goa Rs300 crore to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Liberation. Apparently like everyone else in the country, the Union Finance Minister also thinks that only Goa is fit for celebrations. May be she feels that Goa would need money to celebrate Carnival and Shigmo too. The bitter reality is that there are no jobs available for both qualified and unqualified youth in Goa. Mining has been suspended. The charter tourists from the UK, Russia, Ukraine and other countries did not turn up due to the Covid-19 contagion. No arrangements have been made by the State or Central government to compensate the several lakh migrant contract labour, who lost their jobs during the lockdown and had to walk back to their home states.
To add insult to injury the Centre has slashed the tourism budget by 19%. This will further affect the tourism industry which is already in a very bad shape. The shacks are empty as they were patronised primarily by Charter tourists.
Nirmala Sitaraman is probably not aware that Goa has no proper public transport. That all young working people are forced to buy at least a two-wheeler to travel to work. The already high petrol prices will now go up by another 3.5% because of the infrastructure tax levied on petroleum products.
People in low paying jobs, who stay far away from their place of employment, may find that they are spending more on petrol than their salary. Mobile phones were historically considered a luxury. Now with e-learning it has become a necessity. Perhaps, Nirmala does not have children who are e-learning, as she has raised not only the duty on mobile phones but also on chargers and power banks.
One of the main reasons why domestic tourists come to Goa is because the cost of liquor is lower in the State compared to neighbouring states. Now even domestic tourists will stop coming as the excise on liquor has been increased. Inflation is already very high and Nirmala does not have any sympathy for housewives. The price of pulses (dal) is all set to shoot up again. Along with that of edible oils which every household uses.
The only products which will become cheaper is ironically, nylon clothes, leather goods including shoes, gold and silver. Considering that the interest on FDs has come down to less than 4%, taking TDS into account, it would be sensible to invest in gold and silver. You can also buy all the stainless steel vessels that you want.
Pramod Sawant had asked only for a Rs100 crore for the celebration of Goa’s 60th Liberation anniversary which has already started. The Union finance minister has given the Goa CM three times the amount he asked for, allotting Rs300 crore for the celebration. But Goa does not need any more celebrations. It already has IFFI, Serendipity, Carnival, San Joao, Shigmo and a dozen of jatra and feasts.
What it desperately needed is not renovation of the Adil Shah Palace but better infrastructure. The Central government has no right to increase the price of petrol when the roads are so bad. The Rs300 crore can be used for setting up a suburban metro railway as in Mumbai. In fact, the Konkan railway had offered to set up a sky-bus project and had even built a model.
The Rs300 crore can be used to set up a Metro, which will connect all major towns and tourist spots in Goa. The most expensive item in the budget of the tourist who visits Goa is transport. Which can be more than the room rent or food. Which is why our friends from Karnataka come in buses with their own provisions and cook and have their lunch and dinner in an open space.
The 300 crore can be used to strengthen the e-learning infrastructure. At the moment the majority of the government schools do not have laptops and computers and have to rely on the cheapest smartphones. Even smart children find smart phones difficult. Their parents cannot help them as they know even less about smart phones. Given the history of the BJP government, it will probably waste the300 crore on unnecessary beautification projects. Like renovating the Cabo da Rama fort and even Aguada jail.
The government can use the money to switch to electric buses which will operate 24 hours a day like in Mumbai. In Goa, particularly in tourist locations like Calangute, Baga, Colva and Benaulim in the South, the last bus is at 7pm. So anyone who wants to enjoy the vibrant night life of Goa has either to hire a bike or spend a fortune on cabs. We should all demand a clear cut plan from the CM as to how the `300 crore gifted to the State is going to be used. Besides the Rs300 crore for celebrating the Diamond Jubilee, Goa has got nothing out of budget. On the contrary it has been further burdened by the reduction in the national tourism budget and the cess on petroleum products.

MHADEI DOUBLE CROSS

AND a few stray thoughts on the shocking revelation that the Goa government did not instruct its senior counsel in the Supreme Court, Advocate Arvind Datar, to oppose the notification of the Mhadei river waters. The notification favoured Karnataka, permitting it to draw more water than had been agreed upon from the Mhadei river. The Mhadei river is the lifeline of Goa as it is the source of the Mandovi river. Earlier when Atmaram Nadkarni, the former advocate general was representing Goa before both the tribunal and the SC, he fought in the interests of Goa.
But successive BJP governments are responsible for the diversion of the Mhadei river water. Already Karnataka has built a dam at Kankumbi near Belgavi to divert the water to its Malaprabha basin. The criminal negligence on the part of successive BJP governments is because of the Centre’s desire to ensure the victory of the BJP in Karnataka. It is the late Manohar Parrikar, who started it all by writing a controversial letter offering to permit Karnataka to exploit the Mhadei, only for dealing with the drinking water shortage in Hubli and Balgavi. The bitter truth is that farmers in Karnataka have been switching to sugarcane which consumes huge quantities of water.
The impression given to the people of Goa, who have repeatedly warned that any diversion of the Mhadei river will be the death of Goa. But while the government was claiming to protect Goa’s interest it was secretly conspiring with Karnataka. The cat came out of the bag when Water Resources Minister Filipe Neri Rodrigues, admitted in a written reply in the on-going session of the assembly, that the counsel did not oppose the notification. He sought to blame the counsel Arvind Datar for this major lapse. This provoked the senior advocate to reveal that it was on the instruction of the State government that he did not oppose the Tribunal Award in favour of Karnataka.

ANTI-BHAILE CAMPAIGN

AND a few stray thoughts on the Revolutionary party campaign against outsiders. They have also come out with the concept of People of Goan Origin (POGO). The implicit objective seems to be to drive all migrants out of Goa. Ironically, the so called president of the party, Manoj Parab, himself is alleged to be a bhaile! The problem is to define who is a bhaile and who is a bhitorle.
Waves of migrants have been coming to Goa since Liberation. Since the Portuguese did not promote education, particularly technical education, all the engineers of the PWD and electricity department came from Karnataka and Kerala. The first chief minister of Goa, Dayanand Bandodkar, imported thousands of Marathi teachers to staff the hundreds of primary schools he started in the very first year of his chief ministership. At the time of Liberation, Muslims were less than 2% of the population of Goa. In the 2011 census they constituted 8.34%. It is believed that in 2021 their proportion to the total population is expected to be around 15%.
The first Muslims were brought to Goa by the than Vasco MLA, Shaikh Hassan, to work in the docks at the Mormugao Port Trust. There has been a steady increase of Muslims from Karnataka over the 1970-1980s decades. Most of them are now third generation Muslims permanently settled in Goa who speak better Konkani then locals. The definition of locals according to the Central and State government is that a person claiming to be a resident of Goa must either have been born in Goa or lived in Goa continuously for 15 years.
A large number of Hindu and Catholic migrants from Karnataka and Kerala have also settled in Goa. Which is why you find that at least 40% of the nurses in the GMC are Malayali-speaking. Let us be very clear that the migrants have come to Goa because they can find jobs in Goa readily. The migrants do the jobs that Goans are not willing to take up in Goa. They may be willing to clean toilets at the Heathrow airport in London. But will not do so in Goa.
There are few if any Goans involved in door-to-door collection of garbage. There are hardly any Goan maids, who are normally the wives of migrants in Goa working as watchmen, electricians, plumbers, carpenters or masons. Migrants in Goa like migrants anywhere in the world are willing to work for much less salary than the locals. So you have a situation in Goa where the locals, particularly the Catholics, migrating to the UK and other countries, with migrants both Hindu and Muslim filling the vacancy in Goa.
Muslims find Goa the safest state to settle in as all communities live in harmony here. The only bone of contention is some stray disputes over land, as predominantly Catholic villages in the South of Goa are reluctant to part with land for masjids, madarassa and burial grounds. Without the migrants the Goan economy would collapse.
As far as the POGOs are concerned, they are quite happy in the countries they have migrated to. The only Goans, who have a problem are those who went to the Gulf countries where they are not given citizenship. The Gulf countries do not offer citizenship to outsiders unless of course they are very rich. So the only thing to do is we have to stop the Revolutionary party from attacking migrants in Goa.

MEDIA IN DISTRESS

AND a few stray thoughts on the damage that both print and electronic media have suffered since the BJP came to power. Several hundreds of newspapers and TV channels have either closed down or downsized dramatically. The state of the media is best dramatized by Tavleen Singh, who historically has been a strong supporter of the BJP. She has pointed out, in one of her recent columns, that the agitating farmers have so little faith in the Godi media that they have started their own newspaper. Godi media is the term used to describe sections of the press which are willing to crawl when merely asked to bend. The classic examples are Arnab Goswami of Republic Television and Shubhash Chandra of the Zee TV group. A question was asked in the just concluded session of the Goa Legislative Assembly on whether the government had any information on the large number of journalists who had lost their jobs in Goa.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant who is also the Minister for Information, confessed that the government had no information on the number of publications which have closed down or the number of journalists who are unemployed. The Gomantak group owned by the Sharad Pawar family shut down Gomantak Times’ a few months ago. Every newspaper in the State has downsized. Staff have either been sacked outright or told to come on alternate days or once in three days. Media has been reduced to contract labour as they are not paid for the days that they stay at home. The revenue of all the major newspapers has fallen dramatically, compelling even theTime of India’ and The Navhind Times’ to impose a salary cut.The Goan’ has sacked more than half its staff. The media community is in terrible shape in Goa. While revenue had gone down, the cost of production has risen steeply. The GST on paper and printing are 12% each taking the total to 24%. The cost of paper has gone up and during the lockdown there were problems getting newsprint from the factories making it. The ground reality is that the Narendra Modi government will only allow media unfavourable to it to survive.

COVID-19 CASES UP

AND a last stray thought on the Covid-19 figures going up. This may be because the State government has relaxed all restrictions. Theatres like INOX multiplex can run to full capacity. There is no limit on guests at social and religions functions. The schools have starting working physically instead of the e-learning that they were engaged in till February 1. Which is perhaps the reason why the number of Covid-19 cases rose to 106 on Tuesday, February 2. We only hope that the government will hurry up with the vaccination so that there will be no second wave of Covid-19.