By Rajan Narayan

AND a few stray thoughts for yet another Saturday. For a Saturday following the week when the veteran wrestler Vinesh Phogat floored Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Paris Olympics. For a Saturday following the week when all the major real estate barons are setting up mega super luxury projects in Goa. For a Saturday following the week when Atanasio Babush Monserrate emerged as the new saviour of Green Goa. For a Saturday following the week the crises in neighboring Bangladesh. For a Saturday following the week when Right Wing groups rioted all over the streets of Britain.
AND a few stray thoughts on veteran woman wrestler Vinesh Phogat flooring Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Paris Olympics. Vinesh Phogat who had to struggle with the authorities to be selected for the Paris Olympics shocked Cuba’s Yusneulis Guzman, the Olympic gold medal winner in the Tokyo Olympics by winning. The Cuban world champion wrestler had remained unbeaten in the last 82 wrestling box.
Vinesh Phogat had joined other wrestlers to protest against sexual harassment by Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the senior BJP leader who was the president of the National Federation of Wrestling. Vinesh slept on the pavement in Delhi for 40 days when she was on an indefinite hunger strike demanding the resignation of the BJP leader. She was beaten up and dragged by the police along with other wrestlers protesting in Delhi in January 2023.
Vinesh. who has won the bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics, has threatened to immerse all her previous medals in the river Ganga in anguish and despair. Indian Wrestling Federation president, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, was a close confidant of Narendra Modi. The BJP government at the centre headed by Narendra Modi refused to sack Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh after his sexual passes at the wrestlers. It is only after the Supreme Court dissolved the Wrestling Federation that Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh was forced to step down.
Vinesh Phogat had undergone knee surgery in the run-up to the Paris Olympics. She had to wage a very tough battle to be selected for the Paris Olympics. Vinesh, who had won national and world medals in the 60kg category had to compete in the 50kg category in the Paris Olympics. Nobody expected her to win any medals at the Paris Olympics.
The entire focus was on PV Sindhu and Neeraj Chopra. While expectedly Neeraj Chopra qualified for the finals of Javelin throwing, it came as a very pleasant surprise that Vinesh Phogat defeated the unbeaten Olympic champion to enter the quarter-finals in women’s wrestling. She defeated Cuba’s Yusneylis Guzman to enter the finals for the gold medal, the silver was already hers.
Vinesh Phogat has defied the Narendra Modi government and his chamcha friends to dramatize that truth always prevails. In an earlier interview with the Indian Express during the women wrestlers common protest against sexual passes by Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Vinesh Phogat declared that she believed in fighting for her rights. She said she was her mother’s daughter, she got her courage from her mother Premlata, who was widowed at 32 years of age.
Her mother had undergone cancer treatment. Speaking about her fight to get justice for female wrestlers against sexual abuse, Vinesh Phogat declared “If we wrestlers don’t speak out today then all the struggles of my mother Premlata would have gone to waste.” Vinesh said that she has picked up a habit of being a straight talker from her parents. “I speak straight and honestly and say what I feel. It has been misunderstood. Some feel “Arre yeh toh muffat hai,” (she is for free).
The social media and even the mainline newspaper are full of images of Vinesh Phogat being brutalized by the police alongside her entering the finals of the 50kg category women’s wrestling at the Paris Olympics. Truly, a daughter of India has been ill-treated by brute Indian authorities.

LUXURY PROJECTS
AND a few stray thoughts on all the major real estate barons setting up mega super luxury projects in Goa. Leading the reality gang are the Delhi-based Lodhas. The Lodhas are promoting themselves as Goa’s best luxury housing developers. The Lodhas have the arrogance to project themselves as imperial developers from Delhi, giving the impression that they have conquered Goa’s real estate business.
The Lodha builders are marketing a super luxury housing project at Reis Magos, spread over 20 hectares. The cost of the 150 sq foot plots are being quoted at Rs99 lakh per sq foot.
Super luxury villas in a gated colony are priced at over Rs40 crore. The Lodhas have another project at Bainguinim which was the site of the waste treatment plant at Kadamba Plateau, Old Goa. Another real estate project is been promoted by Bhutani and this is spread over 50 acres in Sancoale. Among the other mega housing projects being promoted are a super luxury complex in Anjuna.
The land for this project has been sold by the Goa Tourism Development Corporation. The real estate sharks have not yet got over their greed for land in Dona Paula. A new luxury building is coming up with prices quoted over Rs10 crore. Goa is being promoted as another Singapore and Dubai in online brochures. From the sound of it Goan builders have been wiped out by builders from Delhi and Mumbai with bottomless deep pockets. Needless to say all these real estate barons hoping to make a killing in Goa think nothing of razing Goa’s coastal and Western Ghats hills to build their luxury villas.

MONSERRATE, GREEN SAVIOR
AND a few stray thoughts on Revenue & Waste Minister and Panaji MLA Babush Monserrate emerging as new savior of Green Goa. The new amendments in Town & Country Planning conferring total discretion to the government on conversions, have been withdrawn. The TCP amendment moved by T & C and Health Minister Vishwajit Rane had sought to put the conversion of agriculture and orchards into settlements outside the purview of the courts. Which effectively means that that the judiciary could be bypassed in the matter of converting Goa into a high rise concrete jungle.
When Vishwajit first proposed a bill to bar judicial review of conversion, Babush Monserrate was the first to object. Subsequently, Vishwajit claimed that Babush had agreed to the amendment bill. Apparently, this was not true. When the bill was introduced in the ongoing assembly by Vishwajit Rane it was strongly opposed by Babush Monserrate and Rohan Khaunte. We learn that Babush and Rohan had opposed the bill in the cabinet also. Vishwajit Rane was forced to withdraw the TCP amendment bill.
Vishwajit Rane tried to shift the blame to Minister of Law Alexio Sequeira. He claimed that the provision for keeping the amendment out of judicial review was suggested by Law Minister Alexio Sequeira.

BANGLADESH LESSON
AND a few stray thoughts on the crises in neighboring Bangladesh. Prime Minister and dictator Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh was forced to flee her country to take refuge in India on August 5, 2024 following an angry students protest which turned into a free for all political orgy of looting and shooting.
Unfortunately for Hasina the government of the UK has refused to grant her asylum. The military regime which has taken control of Bangladesh is a bitter rival of Hasina and has now released the imprisoned former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia. In the political chaos and anarchy let loose in Bangladesh the minority Hindu community, temples and businesses have been targeted by crazy mobs of Islamist fundamentalist groups. The ISKCON temple has been broken in and laid to waste. There is a lot of public damage and people are on a looting spree.
With Hasina forced to flee for her life the violence in Bangladesh took a nasty communal turn with an estimated 440 killed. There are claims that Pakistan’s ISI and China conspired to topple the Hasina’s dictatorial government. It started with Hasina declaring 50% reservations for the veterans of the 1971 liberation war and this was strongly opposed by the students of Bangladesh.
It would appear that the opposition parties in Bangladesh took advantage of the students agitation to compound the larger cause of Islamic fundamentalism. It’s claimed that thousands of Hindu families are packing up and seeking refuge in Chief Minister Mamata-didi’s West Bengal…the new Bangladesh military regime has asked Nobel prize awardee, Mohammad Yunus, to head the coalition government as adviser.
Yunus is much respected for reportedly he started the Grameen banks to lend money to the poorest of the poor and earned himself the title of “banker of the poor.” The overthrow of Hasina is bad news for India for she claimed to be committed to secularism. With the new regime now it seems there is a strong anti-India movement in Bangladesh headed by the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party.

UK ON FIRE
AND a few stray thoughts on Right Wing groups rioting all over the streets of the United Kingdom. This is in response to the knifing of several children in a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class in northwestern England on July 29. Three of the children named Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9 died in the knife attack by a 17-year-old migrant resident.
There has been a strong movement against UK’s migrant settlers by the British Labor class. The growing migrant community is being accused of stealing the jobs of local native Britons. As in the case of Bangladesh the anger is directed at Asian Muslim migrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Anti-migrant feelings have been growing not only in the UK but across Europe after some nasty events in which second generation migrants were involved. Many European countries including France have voted for far-right parties which want to curb migration. The paranoia especially about Muslim migrants is so strong that the young person, arrested in Southport for the death of three young British children, was mistakenly identified as a Muslim at first.
The earlier government of Rishi Sunak had deported illegal migrants to the African country of Rwanda. A great concern for us in Goa is that there is a large contingent of Goans settled in the UK. Goans migrated to the UK when it was part of the European Economic Community. Goans used their Portuguese visas to get jobs in the UK. With the exit of the UK from the EEC this window is closed.
However, Goans may continue to go to Ireland which is part of the European Economic Community.