IMPRESSIVE BJP REPORT CARD ON PAPER! It was a moment of arrival for the ruling party when BJP national leader J P Nadda released the party’s glossy report card, summing up the party’s achievements for the last ten years, at a function held in Panaji on December 22, 2021. Nadda-ji was full of praise for Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, who he said is making
the late Manohar Parrikar’s vision of a developed Goa come true. After the function various dignitaries flagged off Sankalp Rath Yatra vans which will be traversing Goa and sharing with the public information on various government programs which they could avail of. The rath yatra will also collect feedback from people for further inputs in the party’s eventual
manifesto. Present were Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, former chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar who is the chairperson for the BJP State Manifesto Committee and Sadanand Tanavade, Shripad Naik, Deepak Pauskar, Nilesh Cabral, Jennifer Monserrate and others including special invitees for the event.

ANOTHER YEAR, another Christmas to remember Jesus who died on the cross for being human and humane, the saviour of Christians in the Roman empire so long ago. The king of Jews whom all Europe included Hitler of Germany resented and hated for God alone knows why! Your god/gods or goddesses – I have no gods except those who live in you and me. And so it is another Christmas time in Goa and I always tell my friends that if you want to come to Goa come at Christmas-New Year time when Goa has a very special ambience to remember, go around taking in all the Bethlehem nativity scenes laid lovingly and creatively inside or outside most Christian homes.
The pinching cold is here and what’s there not to like! I must confess though these last two years I have had my fill of sad stories or sob stories real and unreal. In general I’m not in a mood to buy or eat or celebrate anything. Not even the Goa BJP sarkar’s Goa@60 celebrations of achievements in the last seven years are worth trumpeting about. I’ve lived in Goa for the last 20 years and I know the ground realities better…how the lies turn into half-lies and promises and guarantees which rarely walk the talk either before or after electoral victories. Most politicians are drunk on power and simply think – ahhh, what a lucrative business politics is and …er…what is corruption? Or democracy for that matter!

CARROT & STICKS
WE, the people get fooled and trapped most times with the carrots and sticks games of our democracy, which is rapidly turning into a loot-maar sarkar’s autocracy. I think my friend, that most perceptive of Indian-American inventor, scientist, entrepreneur, observer extraordinary, Dr Shiva Ayyadurai is right when he says over and over again that we must learn to understand and deal with the entities he calls the “not so obvious establishments” of powers that be, who concentrate on developing their own infrastructures of colossal wealth first before the needs of the people who voted them into power.
Ming-boggling patterns of corruption are one thing but now we also have religious communalism on the rise…I do believe that if we don’t learn from history, history will repeat itself. Aam aadmi will of course go for a toss and become enslaved in various political traps…rarely have I seen politicians giving back to the people when in power or for that matter even when out of power. It’s like taking away 32 of our teeth and returning two or three teeth generously so that we need not suffer the effort of digesting anything!
The game of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata-didi’s “Khela Hobe” talk of today’s politics is called the carrots and sticks game. Mr Ayyadurai observes, with his own experience of discrimination, manipulating and bullying to silence him in the USA while seeking the jobs of senator or governor – today, elections has degenerated to selections. We no longer have good old-fashioned elections when the will of the people ruled…not to mention all kinds of godi media playing middle men in lucrative trade-offs.
Politics is increasingly becoming a sordid story of undercover scams, frauds, lying, cheating, stealing and so on and so forth. A distinguished BJP friend of mine at the recent BJP function held at a five-star hotel to release with fanfare their document of “A Decade of Stability and Development” had this interesting observation to make: “Look, I’m a BJP man but I don’t go along with the BJP on everything it thinks and does! As far as I can see today all we have to do is to choose between pickpockets and dacoits!”
WOW, so who are the pickpockets and dacoits? I asked, and he said with a disarming smile, work it out for yourself or go ask our friend Satish Dhond (the general secretary of the BJP) who treats politicians including the chief minister as puppets on a string!
(Sigh) Some will say the way to hell is paved with good intentions in a sickening rigmarole of staying in power by hook or by crook. I’m one of those who believes that the BJP did not get the people’s mandate to form the government in 2017, the Congress did. Even if it screwed up the opportunity of forming the government thanks to Manoharbhai’s quick wits and who seized the opportunity to give the Congress a tight slap…then those shameless ten defections took place and the rest is Goa’s part and parcel of political history.
DOUBLE-ENGINE SARKAR
THESE days we’re hearing a lot about “double-engine government” and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s talk of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s Swayampurna Goa…. the BJP’s “A Decade of Stability & Development” brochure lists all the mind-bending schemes of development and social welfare programs of the government, but in the same breath Goa’s CM talks of re-building temples destroyed by the erstwhile and long since departed colonial government Portugal!
With a current political liability of something like Rs26,000 crore I ask you how much construction is possible at the expense of destruction of evergreen moral values? So much for Goa@60 Liberation Day celebrations…filling the people’s minds and hearts with fear, insecurity and stress and especially with the Covid-19 pandemic threatening our lives anew, is not good news. Life has become a vicious cycle and I don’t know how we are going to come out of this fountainhead of nightmares!
Still, all this is by way of food for thought and don’t just think, do something to make your life count for the good of all, genuine good, not make-belief and pretence and protecting ourselves individually in various clouds numbered 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and plus, plus. Sooner or later soft, white, sunshine-filled clouds have a tendency to turn to bitter rain storms and cyclones and earthquakes, to bring us all down to the womb and bosom of Mother Earth. Which our civilization should nourish instead of destroy with our obscene, warped mind-sets and ever-increasing technologies!
On that note it’s time to say think about all this and don’t just think. And that note it’s avjo, poiteverem, selamat datang, au revoir, arrivedecci and vachun yetta here for now!

— Mme Butterfly