RE-DEVELOPMENT: Goa can adopt the policy of slum land re-development after the example of the Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation in Dharavi, reportedly the largest slum in Asia.

BY RAJAN NARAYAN

AND a few stray thoughts for yet another Saturday. For a Saturday following the week when Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, expressed his willingness to drop the word “Bhumiputra” from the illegal migrants bill. For a Saturday following the week when the National Congress Party suggested that Goa should adopt the Mumbai model of slum development. For a Saturday following the week when the Central Board of Secondary Education also came up with 100% pass in its assessment of 10th standard students. For a Saturday following the week when Goa is among the only states in the country which has not won even a bronze medal in Olympics since Liberation.

DROPPING BHUMIPUTRA?

AND a few stray thoughts on Chief Minister Pramod Sawant expressing his willingness to drop the word “Bhumiputra” from the illegal migrants bill. Born in Kolhapur and having studied there Pramod Sawant has been forced to realize that he cannot call himself a bhumiputra. If he cannot call himself a bhumiputra, he cannot give the privilege of being bhumiputra to migrant labour.
Perhaps the CM has realised that in his desperate attempt to capture the migrant vote banks, he may lose all the votes of niz Goenkar. Considering that only migrants, who have staying continuously in Goa for 30 years, will be entitled to claim possession of the house they are in illegal occupation of. The percentage of migrant votes cannot be more than 20% of the total number of votes in Goa.
So much so the CM and the BJP will be gifting away 80% of the votes to other parties. Instead of ensuring the victory of the BJP in the 2022 election, Pramod Sawant, will be cremating the BJP like covid-19 patients have been cremated.
Admittedly the migrant vote bank may be huge. It might be as high as 45% or even 50% of the population of the estimated 15 lakh resident population in Goa. But this is primarily because Goans, particularly Catholic Goans, have been migrating to the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries in large numbers.
The hard ground reality is that even Hindu residents of Goa have been migrating to neighbouring states like Karnataka and Maharashtra as there are no job opportunities in Goa. Even the students who opted for mining as a specialisation in the engineering colleges in Goa have been forced to go to Orissa and even Jharkhand since mining was suspended.
There may be as many as five engineering colleges in Goa but the Electricity department and PWD are finding it difficult to find enough manpower. This is ironically true of even the Goa Medical College. During covid-19 peak when the state was desperate to recruit additional doctors, they did not get even a single application.
The overwhelming majority of the migrants in Goa have come in the last two decades. Indeed, migrants continue to come to Goa in large numbers to fill the gap left by migrating Goans. And Goans who do not want to take over the traditional jobs of their parents such as farming or hair dressing or linesmen.
There was a community of barbers in Mala who used to run most of the hair saloons in Panaji. But generation next of the Barberia are not interested in doing haircuts and hairdressing as a profession. With the result that the majority of workers in saloons and the upmarket beauty parlours are either from Lucknow or the North East. Even in the hospitality industry the majority of staff, particularly in five star hotels and even in shacks are from outside the state.
Those who stay in Chimbel and Camrabhat and Moti Dongor and Zuarinagar are mostly migrants who have come to Goa after 2000. The reason why the migrants come to Goa is that they are assured of a minimum salary of Rs8000 to Rs9000. With the mechanisation of agriculture throughout the country there are no jobs for landless labour in rural India. Which is why even people from the upper caste like the Marathas in Maharashtra and the Jats in Punjab want to be included amongst the other backward classes, so that they will get preference for admission to professional colleges and most importantly government jobs.
Since government jobs are the only jobs that Goans are interested in, the Lamani migrants are now even changing their names to get government jobs if they are qualified for the same. So much so the BJP has now obviously realised that it will not benefit from the Bhumiputra Adhikarini Bill. Because even if it is passed less than 10% of the migrant population will be able to produce proof such as house tax, power and water supply payment bills in their name for 30 years.
Goans will not be satisfied with stunts like dropping the word Bhumiputra. Bitter gourd or karela as it is commonly called will not become a mango if you change the name. What needs to be dropped is not the word Bhumiputra but Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and the BJP.

BETTER SLUM DEVELOPMENT

AND a few stray thoughts on the suggestion from the Nationalist Congress that Goa should follow the Mumbai model for slum re-development. Mumbai has the largest number of slums including Dharavi which is considered one of the largest slums in the world. In every posh area of Mumbai whether it is Malabar Hill or Cuffe Parade there will be a slum in the vicinity.
This is because the wealthy classes who stay at Altinho or Dona Paula or other elite residential addresses in Goa need maids and drivers. They need carpenters, electricians, plumbers, AC and washing machine mechanics. They would ideally like these service providers to be close to their residential areas.
Of course politicians are always interested in slums whether it is in Mumbai or Delhi or Goa, because slums make for very reliable and loyal vote banks. The relationship is there will get all the documents needed by slum dwellers like ration cards and aadhar cards, also subsidized cooking gas connections, in return for their votes. Slum dwellers also know that the bold and beautiful and the rich and the powerful cannot survive without them.
The best guarantee is for a slum’s survival is that it should be named after Indira Gandhi, or if the BJP is in power it may be called Modinagar or Pramodnagar. These slums would never be demolished, the names are like an insurance policy along with the votes.
Having realised that it is not possible to demolish all the slums or even a single slum, the Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation has come up with an idea of re-developing the slum colonies, so that the residents will get a decent roof over their heads, without huge quantities of land being occupied illegally. Slums in their present form can also be a great security risk.
In the case of Mumbai, the Pakistani terrorists who attacked the Taj Mahal Hotel and Oberoi Hotel, landed in a fishing boat in a slum colony at Cuffe Parade. Since new migrants keep coming to slum areas, the terrorists were not identified as Pakistani nationals. Not only slums but even chawls built by textile owners to accommodate their workers have been re-developed. Chawls are two or three-storeyed blocks of tenements offering single room accommodation of less than 300 feet, with common toilets for use by all at the end of the corridors. The chawls have disappeared in recent years; what used to be Lower Parel, once dominated by textile mills and their workers, is now called Upper Worli, a a posh high rise area.
The logic was very simple. Since slums spread horizontally and encroached on more and more government and private land, it was decided to literally push them up. Not into heaven but into high rise buildings where they would have the same amount of space or a little more with an attached toilet and kitchen within a total area of about 300 to 400 sq feet.
The big builders of Mumbai offered incentives to put up these high rise buildings to accommodate former slum dwellers. In addition to the land on which they put up high rise buildings for the slum dwellers, they were given additional land or higher floor area index in other areas, to compensate them for offering economical accommodation to the slum dwellers.
To give an example, builder Joe Mathai who built the huge Ocean Park complex of 1,500 premium flats costing Rs1 to 5 crore in Dona Paula, could be permitted to build two storeyed complexes instead of the present maximum of eight storeys. He could be asked to build 20-storeyed buildings of small 300 to 400 sq ft homes for the residents of Odxel and Aivo village which are virtually slums.
Similarly, in Chimbel and Zuarinagar and Moti Dongor and all other slums, high rise re-development could be done with the co-operation of builders. In a re-development scheme like this everyone benefits whether it is the migrants in the slums or the wealthy and powerful.
In the 70s I used to do social service in a huge Dalit slum colony near the Worli Sea Face called Mayanagar. When I visited it about a year ago, in the place of the dirty sprawling, unhygienic slum, stood a 20- storeyed building accommodating the former slum dwellers. If Goa adopts this pattern all migrants regardless of having stayed for 30 years or three years will be able to get affordable accommodation, without encroaching on communidade, government or private property.

EASY COME PASSES!

AND a few stray thoughts on the Central Board of Secondary Education which runs all the Kendriya chain of schools following the example of the Goa Education Board. At least in Goa all the students of the 10th standard in the Kendriya Vidhyalaya schools run by the CBSE have passed. There are more than half-a-dozen central schools in Goa set up for the benefit of Central government employees subject to transfer and the armed forces.
So there are Kendriya Vidyalaya schools at Verem, for the benefit of residents of the Naval Academy, and in Vasco and Quepem among other places where there are large numbers of defence personnel. In addition to children of the Central government employees, including the defence forces, local children are also eligible for admission in these schools.
Shikha Pandey, who is a Wing Commander in the Air Force and a member of the Indian Cricket Team, studied in the Verem Kendriya Vidhyalaya, where her father was a Hindi teacher. We can understand the State Board and the Cambridge schools declaring all their students passed even without any exam. As in the case of the boards and the Cambridge schools students were passed on the basis of internal assessment.
There are 469 girls and 529 boys studying in the 10th standard Kendriya Vidhyalaya schools in 2021, all have been declared pass. The mass passing of students without exams will undoubtedly seriously affect the quality of education. We have to admit that e-learning is not working as we do not have the infrastructure for the same. Passing students without exams is leading to unhealthy competition amongst schools and boards.
Not only to pass all the students but to confer a huge number of first classes and distinctions. It is already becoming clear that all the students who have got distinction are not able to maintain their high record in competitive entrance exams. This is dramatized by the fact that in the Goa Common Entrance Test held for the benefit of 10th standard students, who want to joined the science stream in the 11th standard, students are getting much less marks than they got in the 10th standard where there were no exams.
A section of the press has cited the example of Swatit Rau Valaulicar, clearly a Goan, who got only 131 out of 150 in physics and maths. In the case of physics the number of marks dropped to 59 out of 75 as against 75 out of 75 in the 10th standard exam. The chairman of the GCET exam committee may claim that many students have not attempted questions in the multiple choice exams. If the performance is so poor in GCET one can imagine what will happen in the much more difficult competitive exams like the National Entrance Eligibility Test (NEET) for medical students and the Joint Engineering Exam (JEE) which is the basis for admission to engineering colleges. Worst still for the Goan students who were gifted marks beyond their actual performance in NEET.

NOT EVEN BRONZE!

AND a last stray thought on Goans and Goa not having got even a bronze medal in the Olympics. Admittedly there have been Goans located in Mumbai and other parts of India who have been members of the gold-medal winning hockey teams in the Olympics. But Goa’s favourite sport is football and unfortunately it is not one of the games that are part of the Olympics panorama. This is disgraceful as girls from the North East have been winning gold medals in the Olympics.
The most outstanding is the North East sports person Mary Kom who has won several gold medals at the Olympics, but was unfortunate this time around. This time also Mirabai Chanu and Lovlina Borgohain, both from very poor families in the North East, won silver medals for India.
Similarly in the previous Olympics athletes taking part in the archery competition, have been constantly winning medals, though not this time. Contrary to expectation PV Sidhu, the Andhra badminton star, who won silver in the Rio Olympics, could only win a bronze this time. She is the only Indian to have won two medals in the Olympics.
Our greatest legend in Indian sports is PT Usha from Kerala who has reached the finals of the Sprint events in four successive Olympics. The only Indian male who reached the finals, and missed a medal by a fraction of a centimetre, was the great Milka Singh who died recently. The reason why Goa has not produced any sports champions who have made it to Olympics level, is because of the lack of encouragement for the sports.
Goa, which was awarded the National Games slot two years before covid-19 happened, has not been able to complete the infrastructure needed for the National Games event which is limited to Indians only. The only representative of Goa in the Tokyo Olympics was Lenny D’Gama, who accompanied the boxing team as a technical advisor. The only sport in which Goa excels is in defections.