CAUTION: It is advisable to check out the identity of migrant labor settled in Goa and at the very least their Aadhar card, especially of domestic maids or other help you hire. Ensure that the person who approaches you for a job has an Aadhar card — though reportedly there is large scale forgery of Aadhar cards!

AND a few stray thoughts for yet another Saturday. For a Saturday following the week when migrant labor seems to have taken over Goa with locals having no rights. For a Saturday following the week when not only the judiciary but senior officials and even military officers were split on the Supreme Court comment on Nupur Sharma. For a Saturday following the week when smart city Panaji was choked and flooded with two days of continuous rainfall. For a Saturday following the week when the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court reserved judgment on reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC).
AND a few stray thoughts on migrant labor who seem to have strong rights over even locals in Goa. The highly educated, the bold and beautiful are amongst the mostsorry residents of Goa. Time and again the Goa Police keeps telling residents, hoteliers and even shopkeepers that they should get police verification of the migrant workers they employ. Over 90% of Goans do not bother and hire whoever approaches them for a job. This is particularly so in the case of domestic maids for whom reportedly there is a dire shortage.
The migrant husband may or may not jave a stable job but his wife can easily earn Rs10,000 to Rs15,000 a month doing domestic jobs in half-a-dozen homes in the same and nearby vicinity of residence. Indeed, domestic maids have a very busily packed schedule, more packed that that of our politicians. Maids work an hour or two per day in half-a-dozen houses and are always in a rush moving from one work place to another.
We have learnt to our bitter experience the cost of our negligence in checking out and verifying various maids who have worked for us. As an editor and journalist of 50 years I should have been campaigning to persuade Goans to get a police verification done of all migrant domestic labor working for them. Even more so now when we are senior citizens in our 70s and hear stories of how senior citizens are even clobbered to death in arguments with their domestic workers.
About a fortnight ago my newly married secretary discovered that her expensive mangalsutra was missing. Which was very strange because she was very possessive and never removed it. She looked everywhere saying it may have fallen off in our home office premises in the bathroom or somewhere while she was adjusting her dupatta. We asked our maid of three months if she had found any jewellery. She had come in and done her assigned chores, we asked her in the evening to do another careful sweeping. She of course swore by all her gods that she had found nothing and taken nothing.
My better three-quarters, Tara Narayan, had been missing some stainless steel vessels, a good knife and other items and wondering where they had varnished. At first she thought she had just misplaced them and kept looking thinking they’ll turn up.
Then Monday, July 4, it was my 75th maha-amritsov birthday. I was born in 1947, the year India got freedom and am one of midnight’s children. We decided to ask a few friends over for dinner thinking it would be like old days and we would enjoy an evening together, although the rain had set in and it had been raining heavily throughout the day. These days none of us in our 70s know how long we may be around.
Instead of meeting at the Marriott as I usually like to do we decided we would order home some food. Their home service is excellent. My wife has a large collection of crockery and this was her chance to put it out on the table, she says she had personally and carefully washed out a set of 12 fine glass bowls personally for use. Later, birthday party over, she had with equal care washed her precious crockery and put it out on the table to dry through the night before putting it away in the glass cabinet where it is all very visible.
Next day in the afternoon she looked and wondered where the bowl set had gone and found half-a-dozen of the bowls missing. Since she was rather fond of these fine crystal bowls she was upset and it looked like only the maid could have smuggled them out in the dustbin – for the maid comes and goes and we pay little minute attention as she goes about her hour’s routine housework.
After some hesitation she thought the maid who had got into the habit of bringing her little girl along with her after school during lunchtime, she questioned the maid. Who had been making excuses to drop of her daughter home and return later to finish her work…she had been behaving strangely and when confronted about the loss of the bowls in the evening when she returned to do some dusting and wash the bathroom, she started denying she had anything to do with the loss.
WHEN I decided to call the police to confirm whether our suspicions were true she started howling and crying with her child and wanted to leave. But we told her wait till the police came. She kept asking us to call the local hair salon owner Guru who would vouch for her honesty for she worked in his house too in the same complex.
I later realized the migrant labor in the area are part of the political vote bank cultivated in the area, also I found it curious to note that my maid was very well clued up and familiar with the law. Plus, her godfather seemed to be familiar with the migrant workers. I am referring to Guru, the late Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s favorite hairdresser at Caranzalen. Guru may also be in control of the local domestic workers’ vote bank! He owns a popular beauty and massage parlor and is also an old acquaintance of mine. We have no doubt he is a bona fide licensee and an honorable human being. Undoubtedly he knows that a maid and her minor child may not be detained in her employer’s house for further investigation beyond sunset and I presume our maid too was aware of this because she started crying and shouting and attracting attention at the windows and door so that the watchman came and a crowd gathered. Since this was a theft charge we were considering we were startled when our friend Guru came into the picture on the phone and informed us via the watchman that we cannot detain the maid against her will.
We said we were waiting for the police to come to help us out with our charges. After 15 minutes a team of police came. My wife said she would like to see some investigation made at the maid’s home. In the meanwhile our former CM’s friend, Guru, we heard had spoken to the police himself through his police contacts. Soon a police sub-inspector arrived.
It seemed to me that the PSI was directed to help the maid servant! However, when he learnt a senior SP has spoken to the Panaji police station the PSI was forced to do his minimum duty, the three police women who had also come with the team took my wife to the maid’s migrant colony behind Swimsea Hotel fronting Miramar beach to check the maid’s quarters.
I have seen many police investigations in the past and how nasty they can be with migrant workers. But in this case our maid was the VIP! To cut an amusing story short of course no evidence turned up at the maid’s jopdi home and it’s another case of innocent if not proved guilty, as it is with so many of these domestic theft cases. With some sympathy for the maid’s quality of life my wife then decided forget the whole affair.
Later I learnt through my own channels of enquiry that my friend Guru was a good common friend of our friend Lata Bhatikar, who is one of his customers at his hair and massage salon. In fact, Lata and Arvind Bhatikar know Guru well too. It seems he called the Bhatikars to speak to me to let the maid go or the police could arrest me and wife — for detaining the maid till the police came and some kind of an investigation could be done.
The maid has lost our trust and job but the better three-quarters says she may come take her pay for the five days she’s worked in July. Also, it is high time the quality of life of migrants’ slum quarters is improved by state authorities and the MLAs concerned who reap the rewards of their vote banks and services of various alert henchmen! Also, take my final advice, don’t make the mistake we have been making so far, it is wise to get your domestic workers’ credentials cleared before you hire them.

STORM IN TEACUP?
AND a few stray thoughts on not only the judiciary but senior officials and even military officer whose opinions are split over the latest Supreme Court’s comments on Nupur Sharma. It would appear that polarization of India on communal lines has already taken place. Dismissing an appeal by Nupur Sharma, who had made inappropriate comments about the Prophet Muhamad, SC bench has passed severe strictures against her in the case. The SC judges accused her misusing her position as political spokesperson of the ruling BJP.
The SC is extra surprised as to why she has not been arrested so far when several others and particularly Muslims have been promptly arrested for their Facebook posts? The Alt News fact-checking agency co-founder Muhammed Zubair was arrested within hours of allegedly making a post. When Nupur’s lawyers pointed out that she had apologized, the SC bench forcefully declared that she should apologize to the entire country. That she was consciously and deliberately trying to destroy the secular, democratic republic principles of the Constitution.
Though half-a-dozen states have issued notices against Nupur Sharma none have arrested her. In the beginning only a few people came out openly in support of Nupur Sharma. But after the barbaric beheading of the tailor who had supported her remarks on the Prophet, support for Nupur seems to have zoomed. She seems to have successfully managed to do what Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have done so far.
Shockingly, a group of not only retired judges but bureaucrats and even senior military officer on Tuesday (July 5), wrote an open letter to former Chief Justice Ramana criticizing the bench of Justice Suryakant and Justice Pardiwala for not protecting the rights of the criminal Nupur Sharma. The 15 retired judges, 77 retired bureaucrats and 25 retired officers of the armed forces, claimed that the fundamental rights of Nupur Sharma had been violated. They accused the SC Bench of breaching judicial ethics by making “unfortunate and unprecedented remarks against Nupur Sharma.”
Never mind that the SC Bench which blasted Sharma for her remarks on Prophet Muhammad did not include any of the very harsh criticism in the final order. Last Friday the SC bench had in its oral judgment insisted that Sharma’s outburst during the TV debate was responsible for the beheading of the tailor in Udaipur. The court said Sharma’s “loose tongue” has set the country on fire and asked her to apologize to the whole country. Signatories included former Chief Justice of the Mumbai HC Kshitiz Riyaz, former judge of the Gujarat HC SM Soni, former judge of Guwahati Court and the Rajasthan HC, all BJP-ruled states.
Fortunately, the vast majority of secular democratic India are not keeping quiet. An appeal has been made to the Attorney General KK Venugopal, who must be one of the senior judicial officials seeking consent to initiate criminal contempt against the former Delhi High Court Judge SN Dingra, for calling the Nupur observations irresponsible, illegal and unfair. Similar action has also been taken against a senior BJP lawyer like Aman Lekhi.

CHOKED, FLOODED PANAJI
AND a the few stray thoughts on smart city Panaji being choked following two days of continuous rainfall on Sunday and Monday. The road named after the Goa Revolution, 18th June road has always got flooded with heavy rains in recent years. Traditionally, the area around the Kadamba Bus Station and Don Bosco School also gets flooded as does the Campal promedade which is the premier road of Panjim.
This time the much praised modern business center of Patto Plaza was flooded with knee deep water for people to wade through. Perennially incomplete infrastructure makes things worse. A Campal resident complained to me that his car almost drowned. Most of the development work in Panaji city, including the filling of the potholes, is outsourced to agencies from outside the state. The person who gets the largest number of construction contracts is M Venkata Rao of Infra Project Pvt Ltd, he is a close relative of the national vice-president Venkaiah Naidu.
Fortunately, this may be the last term of Venkaiah Naidu, as the new president and vice-president are for election anew. In the normal course repairs or digging work by any department, whether it is to do with water supply or electricity or the cable operator, it is not permitted during the monsoon months. All work has to be finished before the monsoon sets in.
However, this time around the whole of Panaji has turned into a concrete jungle with exposed pipelines, open pits and mounds of kichaad and garbage. Either the drains are not constructed properly or they’re choked with dead leaves and garbage. Panaji MLA Babush Monserrate has warned strict action against contractors who have done a shoddy and sub-standard job. But even Babush cannot take any action against Venkata Rao. There is a fight going on between PWD department and GSIDC, CCP and smart city project staff — on how to best destroy the capital city of Goa.