REVOKED: Thanks to the agitation by Goa Bachao Abhiyan led by Dr Oscar Rebello and Dean d’Cruz and fully supported by the Goan Observer, the then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat had to cancel Regional Plan 2010 drawn up by Atanasio Babush Monserrate.

AND few stray thoughts for yet another Saturday. For a Saturday following the week when I remember clearly how I introduced investigative journalism when I came to Goa to change the Portuguese OHeraldo. For a Saturday following the week when I fought for Konkani to be made the official language of the state. For a Saturday following the week when I discovered the chaos of the first ten years of statehood where there were the 13 governments in ten years. For a Saturday following the week when I quit the OHeraldo and started Goa’s first independent newsweekly. I have worked with three generations of journalists and this is for the benefit of the millennial generation which does not know anything about my contribution to Goan journalism.
AND a few stray thoughts on when I introduced investigative journalism when I took over OHeraldo. When I came to Goa on October 1, 1983 there was only The Navhind Times. It was the pro-government Hindu paper. If any Hindu wanted to buy a paper at home they bought a Marathi paper. At that time Catholics were 45% of the population. They did not get any coverage. They did not have any voice. As I have pointed out elsewhere every editor today has to be a marketing person. He should know how to increase the sales of the paper. A paper is like beauty creams or shampoos or soups. It is a product that is to be marketed.
My positioning of the Oheraldo as a Catholic opposition paper met with great success. There was a minor problem with the then Chief Minister Pratapsingh Raoji Rane. He wanted my publisher AC Fernandes to sack me as I had made some comments about his wife Vijayadevi Rane. Senior Rane asked my patrao to sack me. To his credit the humble man that AC Fernandes was, who thought of himself as just a small businessman, told Rane “I pay his salaries. I will decide who I should sack and who I also hire.”
My most significant contribution was introducing investigative journalism. I already had over five to six years of experience in Mumbai. Unlike the department of information-based journalism, investigative journalism sought to go beyond the scenes and check what the actual reality was at ground level. There are two decent examples for Goa itself.
It is taken more than three years for the Goa government to discover that there is a huge scam in the registration of plots. Lawyers acting in collusion with mamlatdars in the Revenue office and the land records division, have substituted the names of the original owners with names of third parties. They have been so thorough that even the inventory proceedings have been manipulated. There is no estimate yet of how much land has been grabbed by crooks in and outside Goa.
The latest example and scandal was that the Archaeological department, which maintains records, was a party to the manipulation. The shocking part in all this is that police knew about it but did not or could not take any action. Now the matter has been given to a special investigation team.
This reminds me of a classic case of in-depth investigative reporting by a former colleague, the late Norman Dentes. The Churchill brothers had transferred huge plots of land where Varca beach resort now is located. They tampered with the records and claimed that the land was owned by two sisters in their 80s and 90s, one of whom was blind and the other was deaf. The Portuguese maintained a typed system of checks and balances. There were matriz records which registered all transfers, the property for the living, the inventory.
Then there was the registrar of records where the names of the old owners were removed and the new owners were substituted. Every panchayat and civic body collected a nominal land revenue and maintained records of it. Then there were the inventory proceedings which were before a judicial registration. Norman Dante spent hours in one dingy dust-covered office/godown where the files were maintained. Finally, it was discovered that the matriz records exposed the scam. It took him three months to investigate the story. But the result was that the registration in the name of Churchill has cancelled.
More recently we have the Vigilance commissioner filing a case against Goa Medical College & Hospital Dean SM Bandekar. The case is actually against Health Minister who has recruited thousands of so called multi-utility workers in the GMC without any government sanction. It is not widely known that ministers have no executive authority. They can only order the Babu to do their job. There have been scams about Goa Public Service officers.
Unfortunately, none of today’s investigative journalists go to the root of the public scams. Which is that there are too many mantri who do not know how long they will remain mantra or ministers. So they grab as much fortune as they can while they can. When I was at the GMC recently, every one of the ward attendant staff would say “ami babache log.” I was shock that one of the attendants even refused to take a tip claiming that he was paid for his job.
TAKE the case of the Atal Sethu bridge, the dream project of the late chief minister, Manohar Parrikar. He hired the best engineering company not just in India but the world, Larsen & Toubro. The company has an outstanding record of executing international quality public works. But in Goa they were forced to sub-contract to Venkaiah Rao, the close relative of Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu. Road and bridge mess in Goa is largely due to this Venkaiah Rao. Goan roads are full of potholes. They get flooded during the monsoon rains and passing rainfall. Instead of being a legacy the governance of Manohar Parrikar has become a disgrace as far as road contracts are concerned.
Nobody is willing to talk or take any action because Venkaiah Rao is a holy cow. Now that Venkaiah Naidu is no longer the president may be things will improve. Before I joined OHeraldo people accepted statements made by ministers on face value. I forced a reporter to investigate the reality of government talk. If it had said that it had put up a thousand electric lamp poles I ordered for a counting to find out how any were functioning. I taught many of my journalists in Goa how to think when it came to reporting the government’s sins of omission and commission. This is my greatest contribution to journalism in Goa

MAKING KONKANI OFFICIAL
AND a few stray thoughts on how I fought for Konkani being made the official language of the State. Even after the Opinion Poll, Goa remained a Union territory. This was because Goa did not have an official script. The states in India were organized on a linguistic basis. Since Goa did not have an official language it could not become a state. The situation was further complicated because the then Chief Minister Pratapsingh Raoji Rane and half his cabinet wanted Marathi as the official language.
Over 90% if not more of the population spoke Konkani, though the Portuguese discouraged it. The bhatkar and the paklo called it the servant’s language. I felt that there was a huge demand to make Konkani the official language. For three years I shouted and screamed “Konkani amchi mai bash, Konkani amchi rajbash.”
For three years I urged people to stand up and fight following the rejection of Luizinho Falerio’s resolution, making Konkani the official language. Unfortunately, in the process, I created the two biggest monsters of Goa. Namely Churchill Alemao and Luizinho Falerio who supplied the muscle and the money power.
The pressure was so much that Rajiv Gandhi directed Pratapsingh Raoji Rane to move the official language bill in the state assembly. Rajiv did not trust Rane and sent Central Observer RL Bhatia to be present at the assembly. The bill was finally passed but did not make anyone happy. It specified that Konkani in the Devenagiri script will be made the official language but Marathi could be used for all and every public purpose. No surprisingly Churchill Alemao came with a huge bunch of goons and wanted me to carry the heading “Konkani mai betrayed” in the next day’s edition of Oheraldo.

13 GOVERNMENTS IN 10 YEARS
AND a few stray thoughts on the chaos in the years following statehood in Goa when there were 13 governments in ten years. Statehood was a remedy much worse than the disease. Immediately after Goa got statehood the Rane government was toppled by Churchill Alemao who made Proto Barbosa the chief minister. The alleged smuggling of gold by Alvernas Alemao took place when Churchill Alemao was the chief minister.
Proto Barbosa was toppled by Dr Wilfred D’Souza, who persuaded the remaining seven MLAs led by Ravi Naik, to join the Congress into heading the government. Ravi Naik was disqualified by the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court. He had to step down in favor of Dr Wilfred D’ Souza. Even more strangely the Supreme Court set aside to disqualification of Ravi Naik. Then governor Bhanuprakash even without consulting the Congress government at the Centre removed Dr Wilfred and appointed Ravi Naik as the chief minister. The Centre sacked both the government and Ravi Naik who was chief minister only for five days.
The elections that followed for the first time saw Luizinho Faleiro as chief minister and the BJP bought four seats. The BJP combined with Francisco Sardinha and toppled the government and Manohar Parrikar became the chief minister in 2000. This was the beginning of BJP power in Goa.

QUITTING `OHERALDO’
AND A last stray thought on when I quit OHeraldo and started Goa’s first independent newsweekly Goan Observer. I have worked with three generations of journalists and this is for the benefit of the millennial generation which does not know anything about my contribution to Goan journalism. The above 50s particularly in the South consider me a hero and grow up reading my editorials and Stray Thoughts. The post-2000 generation does not know anything about my contributions to Goa and my unique interaction with investigative journalism in Goa. I am proud to say I trained most of the senior journalists in all the newspapers in Goa today, including those in The Times of India.
Indeed, most of the Gulf papers are run by graduates of the Rajan Narayan school of journalism in investigative reporting. My colleagues from my 20 years in the OHeraldo are now in China and Singapore in better paid and more rewarding media jobs.