TOWER RESTAURANT: Will the two revolving restaurants coming up on 125-meter towers on the new Zuari bridge be able to withstand the velocity of the speed of the wind and saline conditions of the vicinity?
By Rajan Narayan
AND a few stray thoughts for yet another Saturday. For a Saturday following the week when domestic passenger flights have already started shifting from Dabolim to Mopa. For a Saturday following the week when the State government approved the Goa app for tourist taxis, providing them with an incentive of two years tax exemption if they joined the app. For a Saturday following the week when the State police claimed that 30% of the drug peddlers in Goa were not Russians or Israelis but niz Goenkars. For a Saturday following the week when the new Zuari Bridge witnessed three accidents on New Year’s Day. For a Saturday following the week when Bollywood star Akshay Kumar celebrated the new year in his house in Goa and took his family to see the circus in Mapusa.
AND a few stray thoughts on a Saturday following the week when domestic passenger flights have already started shifting from Dabolim to Mopa. On January 5, 2023 the first private commercial flight Indigo from Hyderabad will be landing at Mopa airport, alias Manohar Parrikar International Airport officially. Four more flights from Delhi of the same airline are scheduled to land Mopa.
Though domestic operations at Mopa were scheduled to start from January 3, 2023, international and charter flights are expected to start arriving only next month. The passenger terminal at Mopa reportedly has the capacity to handle a thousand passengers an hour. Unlike Dabolim which takes the whole day to handle passengers. Besides Indigo, Goa First, Vistara Air and Akasa are in the process of setting up ticketing counters at the Mopa passenger terminal building.
Vistara and new airline Akasa have set up offices in Panaji when they have already started recruiting ground and security staff. The reason why domestic airlines are shifting from Dabolim to Mopa is because than they can now take advantage of the morning slots available at Mopa. In the case of Dabolim which serves as a naval airport too, no domestic commercial flights are permitted between 6am and 12pm – this time is used for training naval pilots.
However, the majority of domestic flights in the country take off in the morning hours. Every domestic airline has a base such as Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata where the last flights of the day are parked. The next day’s schedule begins on this basis with early morning flights being very popular with businessmen and professionals who can visit a city and return the same day without having to incur expenditure on overnight hotel accommodation.
Flights in Goa only start at 13 hours which is 1pm and by that time you reach your destination the working day is over and for businessman, it is a useless trip. The only flights which are available for those who want to reach the destination outside Goa in the morning are the Air Asia flights which function between 1am to 3am. There are also some international flights which arrive early in the morning and provide connecting links with other airlines. The worst victims of Dabolim airport landings have been the charter flights which are India allotted slots early in the morning, but are not allotted to park overnight and they have to go to Dubai to park.
GOA TAXI APP
AND a few stray thoughts on when the State government approved the Goa app for taxis providing them with an incentive of two years tax exemption if they joined the app. All tourist taxis including the black top or kali-peeli cabs will have to use the app. This has been cleared by the Goa cabinet. The app will be operated by Goa Electronic Ltd and has got clearance with Goa Miles as a partner.
The private tourist taxis which agree to participate in the app will get tax exemption on road tax and other fees for two years. For those who may not be familiar with an app, it is an aggregator device which shows you the details of all the taxis available in the vicinity and you can not only book your vehicle but even pay for them on google play or any similar payment gateway. It is not clear whether as in Mumbai the app-driven tourist taxis will only drop the passenger or may be retained for return journeys.
We need to explain how the app system operates. If you have the app on your mobile of any company, you may call for the taxi and pay online. The charges will depend on the position of the cab when you book it. If it is close by you are lucky but if it is 10 or 15km away you have to pay for being picked up also. On the same day to attend a function at Bandra, I have to pay double the fair to the Ober taxi app operated by way of return fare from say a marriage venue. A lot of hype exists about these app operated taxi services and not all are foolproof for there are many rules attached whereby losses have to be suffered by passengers and in some cases the taxi app service provider.
The issue is not the app but the charges and if the tourist taxi has the digital meter. Even now there are many taxis without operational meters which have been subsidized by the Goa government but which the taxi-drivers refuse to keep them operating or abide by meter readings. So it is possible that although Goa’s tourist taxis may agree to join the app-operated service they may continue to demand whatever they fare they see fit to charge.
There has to be a system of fixing fares for distances covered without any room for arguments between taxi-drivers and passengers. The app is only an instrument like your Zomato and Swiggy deliveries whereby you order food at home. But as in the case of Zomato and Swiggy the delivery charges add on substantially on the bill itself.
Goa Tourism authorities should make public all the details of the app released by including the minimum and maximum fares applicable, plus additional fare per km added on as also night applications which can be quite exorbitant and arbitrary with freewheeling taxi services.
GOAN DRUG PEDDLERS
AND a few stray thoughts on when the Goa State police claimed that 30% of the drug peddlers in Goa were not Russians or Israelis but niz Goenkars. The historical impression is that Israelis and Russians are the kingpins of the narcotic trader. This is still true as dramatized by the Atala case. The foreign drug kingpins specialize in synthetic drugs like Mandrax.
It may be recalled that film star Shilpa Shetty’s husband Raj Kundra was allegedly accused of setting up factories for the manufacture of Mandrax. Admittedly, Goans are involved in the drug trade and this includes a large number of police constables and officers. In the coastal belt the school dropout rate at the 8th standard and above is very high, they have to earn a living and they are lured by drug peddlers. Nobody suspects these Goan children of being drug peddlers.
The tragedy is that in the process of drug peddling they become drug addicts themselves. There are also many rich and upper middle class young people from Mumbai and the rest of urban India who think Goa is the place to go to for getting trance party drug experiences and highs. Unfortunately, they are not educated or well-versed with the range of narcotic drugs some of which may be adulterated or very damaging to the organs of the body. Nor do they know about drug sources and how they have to be used or are used. They are open to tutoring and soon pick up the drug intake ways with tragic consequences. In Goa which does not make the national media headline too often, it is easy to sweep the drug dirt under the carpet and cover up any political sins embedded in the tourism drug industry. It is a good idea for hotels to have a drug expert who can educate tourists who come for the drug trance party experience to Goa and the risks involved. A rudimentary lesson on drug use and abuse would go a long way to show first timer tourists how to protect themselves from drug tragedies.
NEW ZUARI BRIDGE ATTRACTIONS
AND a few stray thoughts for a Saturday following the week when the newly inaugurated with political fanfare Zuari Bridge witnessed three accidents on New Year’s day. A large part of the Atal Sethu bridge has closed to enable L & T to completely re-surface the bridge on the advice of IIT-Chennai. However, the new Zuari Bridge built by Buildcon, a Uttar Pradesh company close to UP Chief Minister Yogi Aditiyanath, was inaugurated by the Goa government on December 29, 2022 with almost the entire Goa Cabinet in attendance.
Never mind that the much-touted tourism attractions of the new Zuari Bridge are still to come up, a new gift came with three accidents taking place on the bridge on New Year’s day itself without taking into account the latest add-on tally. The irony is that accidents have started happening on the new and as yet unfinished Zuari Bridge which is going to be a tourist attraction like no other in the country according to Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and Goa Chief Minister Pramod…the bridge will soon have the tourist attractions of a revolving restaurant to be set up on a 100-meter tower installation towering high in the air over the Zuari river.
What if the entire restaurant with tourists get blown away because of changing weather patterns and heavy blowing winds? Unlike the Goan PWD engineers or even the Union Ministry of Transport headed by Nitin Gadkari, the Goa government does not understand the effect of wind and salinity on the construction of bridges.
Which is why the bridges and causeways built by the Portuguese, like the Ribandar causeway, endure for 400 years, but not our patriotically built Indian bridges perhaps. In sharp contrast a portion of the roads close to Azad Maidan and near police station has shrunk and sunk and look like remarkable tourist attractions of another kind.
AKSHAY KUMAR IN GOA
AND a last stray thought on when Bollywood star and “Pad Man” Akshay Kumar was in house in Goa and took his family out to watch the Superstar Circus running in Mapusa. According to our reports Akshay Kumar himself is more famous for performing acrobatic stunts in his films, and he was keen to attend a circus with his famous celebrity columnist wife Twinkle and their two children.
Of all our contemporary film stars Akshay Kumar is the most modest and does not put on airs like our Shah Rukh Khans or Salman Khans. Akshay Kumar’s social awareness was dramatized in the film produced by Twinkle Khanna called “Padman.” The film is about the need to make sanitary pads available to women across all sections of society for the sake of better hygiene and less infection which women from the lower strata of society suffer endlessly due to their monthly period and the traditional use of cloth rags or cotton. Most can’t afford the expensive sanitary pads of the market place which better off women use. The film revolves around a women’s co-operative to produce machine-made sanitary pads locally and for rural distribution to women at economical rates.
Incidentally, Akshay Kumar is a citizen of Canada, although we don’t know if he still is or has renounced foreign citizenship (the government of Canada has now strict enforcement rules about outsiders buying up property in Canada). His wife Twinkle is the daughter of yesteryear superstar Rajesh Khanna and Dimple Khanna who later left the ageing star whose glad eye wandered to wooing other women. Twinkle, we are told, is a very talented writer.