WHO THE BLEEP CARES ABOUT GOAN POLITICIANS? by Selma Carvalho

I don't usually write political commentary but two incidents which transpired this past week have prompted me to do so.  On 15th March, I woke up early to check the result of Panjim's CCP elections. Imagine my disgust in opening the Herald website to see a Babush Monseratte, chugging alcohol straight from the bottle.

Maybe, rather naively, embedded in my mind's eye is the image of a politician who conducts himself with dignity, decorum and sobriety; he displays humility and concedes that he is after all a servant of the people. He does not go around acting like default nobility, downing alcohol in open view as if he had just successfully robbed a bank in a Bonnie-n-Clyde drive-by shootout.

Some weeks ago, I wrote a column on how revolutions are useless unless the people revolting have a sincere desire and ability to bring about change. The time to create revolutions, in a democracy, is at the ballot box. Who are the people who attend rallies and who are people going to the ballot box? Are they two different sets of people? Is it possible that one goes to a rally to protest corruption and then goes to the ballot box to vote in corruption? (Thankfully at least the indignity of the CCP election results has been mildly mitigated by the fact that Babush's hold is considerably diminished.) There are no short term fixes in this game; no great apocalyptic endings and a brand new beginning. There is only a continuous flow of history, in which we must struggle to reform with the firm belief that reformation alone is the only revolution worth pursuing.

The second reason why my hackles are up this week, is a video of Minister for Environment, Aleixo Sequeira, actually supporting illegal sand-mining in Goa (for the video clip, click here ). What gives, Mr. Sequeira? I have never heard of a Minister for Environment advocating the destruction of the environment. How can he justify an ecological travesty? Has he conducted a study to understand the ecological impact of sand-mining? Has he undertaken a study on its impact on marine life, the reduction of dune cover, the effects of the encroaching water? His justification that there is no alternative source of sand to feed the ever-growing hunger pangs of the real-estate industry is morally repugnant and reprehensible.

Just how much destruction of Goa are we going to tolerate for the sake of the real-estate industry? Has there been one piece of solid legislation or action from Goan politicians, which has actually protected the Goan and his land from blatant CRZ violations; from the abuse of cheap migrant labour which destroys the wage structure of indigenous labour and impoverishes migrant labour to a sufferance beyond human dignity; from the unchecked malaria that breeds at construction sites; from mega-project monstrosities which destroy the fabric of the Goan village, a fabric which for centuries has adjudicated its own delicate organism of morality and social responsibility; from the deprivations of water and electricity as a result of overburdening the infrastructure; from the annihilation of green cover and destruction of bio-diversity; from the untenable fluctuation in the real-estate price market making housing out of the reach for the common man in Goa; from the dumping of construction detrui in paddy fields?

I wonder if Mr. Sequeira has ever taken a ride at 6pm from his house through the small villages around his magnificent mansion. In the evening you can see the bonfires of cancer being lit with the tons of plastic garbage for which there is no other form of disposal. Burning plastic can release any number of toxins into the environment including one that was used to produce Agent Orange. The same chemical Americans used to destroy forests in Vietnam; exposure to which left the population maimed and deformed. This is what we are releasing into our environment every day. At the very least, as Minister for Environment, Mr. Sequeira could have developed a comprehensive policy about plastic disposal, instead of lecturing us on the needs of the real-estate industry.

To transliterate a Konkani saying, whose land is it Mr. Sequeira? Your father's land? Because that is exactly what the politicians of Goa think it is.