Almost ten years ago (on October 16, 2008), he told us that “One reason why Goa is in this condition is because Goans are disunited. Pettiness is pulling us down. Unless we unite even the 25% of what is remaining of Goa, will be gone”. Half a decade later he was taken through an unprecedented media trial both in traditional as well as social media. The man who sang to Save Goa at the peak of Save Goa campaign was abandoned by the same soil he sang for. Recently, when the tarnish was removed by the courts, no media could undo the damage that it did to Remo Fernandes, India’s first and only true blue Padma Sri popstar. This ironically is the way we respect our icons. This, shamefully is how we abandon our heroes.
Yesterday when BJP abruptly brought down the curtains over the half a year-long political crisis in the state of Goa, we missed Remo. For it was he who in 2004 wrote that stinging protest against the way Goa was being governed in a local daily against then CM Manohar Parrikar and then rocked hundreds of people in a concert where Parrikar too sat in the first line. That in-the-face standing up against the establishment was not visible in the past six months against the governance paralysis in the State. So many shocking attacks happened on Goa’s democratic beliefs over the past six months.
There was the absence of four key Ministers, including the Chief Minister, but Goa’s warriors seemed to have developed feet of clay when it came to addressing this unprecedented situation where Goa was (and still continues to be) ruled by a faceless system of governance where the voice of Big Brother was heard through carefully calculated and friendly communication networks but not physically accessible to the common man.
Goa has, despite what the Ministers keep on defending, become an aristocracy ruled by these ruling elite who ‘say’ but don’t ‘hear’. But Goa’s regular brand of warriors neither took to the streets nor approached the courts.
So much happened. A gang rape on the beach and a few more molestation of minors across the State, while the Home Minister was ill and undergoing treatment for an unspoken health condition. But Goa’s human rights warriors found no fault in that. The fact that a Home Minister was missing and the State’s Police hid behind that and hence neglected its duty was never challenged. The Police weren’t even in the know when a deadly date drug manufacturing facility was found operating in the Home Minister’s own political colleague’s premises. The silence was telling. Even worse was the Home Minister’s own defence of his party colleague and the Police looking haplessly. None of the State’s human rights and law and order warriors challenged it.
Thousands of trees are being hacked by to make way for an unwanted and unviable airport in Mopa. The warriors are divided and don’t seem to notice that the environment minister is the forest minister, is the aviation minister, is the minister who is ill and in bed for the past six months whilst the levels of plunder and attack on Goa’s fragile environment has increased. Add to that the sanctioned coal pollution of Vasco by the same minister or the redrawing of the high tide line to enable more reduction of our coastlines. Did the brilliant cross activist and political combine protect our CRZ notice or challenge this?
The people of Goa were desperately seeking their guitar strumming, coastal village visiting heroes to lead them to make the environment minister report to the office. The followers were disappointed as another people’s movement turned into another made for a social media event and died its death there.
Over the last two weeks, an estimated Rs 300 crore worth of government bonds have been sold to raise some urgent working capital in the State. While the Cabinet Ministers would like to divert the attention to how others can’t govern and everything is all right with the State, what none of them has been able to explain is how does the Finance Minister of a State who can’t attend office rely on a small coterie of believers. A coterie who fed him information enough to sanction over Rs 700 crore of government bonds sale in the last six months alone. The interest for which will be paid by Goans in the future. Where are all those intellectuals and Facebook/WhatsApp/Twitter warriors who give us the doomsday scenario every day? Why doesn’t someone step out of the virtual world and step into the real world?
Five days ago, despite the illness of the Law Minister, the Goa Regularisation of Unauthorised Structure Act, the amendment of Goa Land Revenue Code was gazetted. Goa’s warriors were busy fighting their own little battles and being content looking at their own little domain of victories and despair but failed to look at the larger picture. While they were protecting a land here or a coast there, the marauders of Goa were regularising all the usurpation of Goan land by unregulated waves of migration that promises to change Goa into a cosmopolitan ghetto.
There will now be government backed usurpation of Goan lands to feed the coffers of a selective few. The smaller picture and a reluctant activism are killing the hopes of an alternate and robust in-spirit Bangarachem Goem.
The past months have created an unprecedented situation in Goa. The people of Goa may have been beneficiary of government doles or voted some of the most notorious lineups of Cabinet Ministers and MLAs but feel insecure by the very idea of democracy. They cheer every time an activist wins an NGT case to protect Goa’s environment or celebrate when another activist stops the government in its ill-begotten plans.
Goa’s activists forget the fact that they raise thousands of hopes and protected millions of Goans’ (in India, in Goa and overseas) dreams. They might not be Ministers, MLAs or influential governmental heads but the fact that they stop the gradual decimation of the idea called Goa. It doesn’t matter Khoincho Avaaz (Whose voice) to them as long as it is Goencho Avaz (Goa’s voice).
Maybe it is time for Goa’s civil society, its activists, its intellectuals, its academics, its ideologues to get out of their well-entrenched comfort zones and step out in the streets. They must not forget Mark Twain’s inspiring words, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog”.
There is a Goa out there looking up at them as an alternative to political leadership not to replace them but to check them at every step. The time has come now to go beyond the complaints, RTIs and petitions. The time has come to step out to lend your voice to the people’s resistance, a Goa waiting to rise.
https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/Editorial/Khoincho-Avaaz/136474.html
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