Amidst the noise and excitement of what goes as tradition, we Goans fail to see how the ‘Goa lootao’ politicians and the ‘Goa Bachao’ serenaders actually converge to push a tempting enterprise of booze, food and fun under the pretext of promoting Goa’s art and culture.
By | 21 Feb, 2016, 07:40AM IST
This is the only political recipe of indulgence which makes the otherwise squabbling Amar, Akbar and Anthony forget their ‘Bharatiya parampara’ and ‘Hindutva sanskruti’ and submit to the reign of a King Momo who prescribes Goa’s very own booze as medicine, not only for all types of physical ailments but probably also as a politician’s miracle drug for sedating the Goan to an extent of being disoriented on the social and political realities. The magical booze has worked for the colonialists by helping them to rule Goa for over 450 years and it continues to be as effective a tool for the neo-colonisers celebrating a democracy of divide and loot for the last 54 years. The brief bouts of rebellion one witnesses at times seems more from the waning effect of sedation before the next dose gets administered. Some Goans may consider this as too insulting a sarcasm, but how else could one explain this shameless and baffling love-hate relationship displayed between the aggressors and the victims?
Goans seem to be trapped in 365 days of escapades from their reality which gets sponsored by the looters and executed by the serenaders. Such is the gulf between the Goan perception and the Goan reality that some believe Goa to be a model pluralistic society which has not witnessed even a single incident of communal strife. Some real estate developer destroying the coastal belt proudly believes that he too is Saving Goa by investing a certain percentage of his profits to purchase farm land in the hinterland of Goa. Some others instigate the public to protect hill slopes but actually connive with the government to introduce a loop-hole in the law for builders to exploit under what goes as ‘average hill slope’. Such duplicity in behaviour either points to the extent of intoxication wherein one’s mental faculties cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, reality from fiction, or that some in civil society have become such experts at marketing a lie as the truth to an extent which would even outsmart a cunning politician. The public is just kept unconscious of the real facts and taken around in circles. Some among the public have learnt from experience that more the opposition on some issue, more could be the possibility that some politician, bureaucrat or unscrupulous activist is trying to extract a better de
al. Similarly, the absence of opposition on certain serious issues could also be a pointer that the looters and serenaders have had their fill.
If, as often believed, politics has become the refuge for scoundrels, activism too is increasingly becoming a smoke screen for power brokers and extortionists. For this reason we often see no difference between the behavior and means employed by politicians and those employed by activists in Goa. Like politics, activism does not seem to consider it wrong to employ lies and falsehood to bring the rival party into disrepute; it does not seem to consider it wrong to have secret tie-ups and even funding from those with vested interests for raising issues or drowning uncomfortable dissent. And so, while the ‘conflict of interest’ yardstick gets quickly applied to public servants, the same is not made applicable for activism. This is why it is not uncommon to see those with professional or business interests in a particular field also controlling people’s movements and pretending to lobby with Governments on behalf of the people. So we have the villain playing hero and the constituency of activism being kept confined to small sections of gullible Goans to be aroused when the need arises, not for social reconstruction but merely for agitation and partisan campaigning. Unless Goans understand this malaise which is at the root of some people’s movements, keep informed and demand transparency and accountability from activists, Goans can only expect to be kept floating and parading with a false hope.
http://www.heraldgoa.in/Review/Voice-Of-Opinion/The-carnival-of-loot-and-deceit/99170.html
Herald Review, 21st February 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment