DOES GOA NEED ‘DEVELOPMENT’?

No. In fact, there isn’t any other answer to the question in the title except an emphatic “No!”. And here’s why.

In Goa, ‘development’ does not mean an improvement in the quality of life but rampant destruction of natural resources, corruption in various sectors of the administration, and disparities in wealth and opportunities. Further, most of the infrastructure projects built in the name of development rapidly deteriorate after a few years, either because of poor construction quality or the failure to maintain this infrastructure regularly. In promoting development, the Goan exchequer loses money in the short- and long-term.

In the existing situation, Goans are placed in a lose-lose situation. Such public infrastructure as roads (for instance) is indeed needed but a 4- or a 6-lane highway does not need to be built across the rural landscape, making Goa a transit point to facilitate the movement of goods. Thus, the public demand for simple infrastructure, such as 2-lane roads, is, in the eyes of the government, an open invitation for constructing ever larger highways.

Another reason Goa does not need ‘development’ is that the government is not investing in the maintenance of public infrastructure. In fact, the government is not serious about maintaining or fixing the existing infrastructure. The government bodies build public infrastructure like roads, bridges, parks, and so on, but after a few years, there is hardly any upkeep—leading to many projects turning into white elephants. Thus, the way forward is not more development but the preservation and maintenance of the existing natural and built landscape.

The heavy rains and the subsequent flooding, after a frighteningly dry spell in June, indicates the value of maintaining, in fact nurturing the existing public infrastructure rather than building more roads, highways, and apartment complexes. Despite having inherited a good network of drains, both natural and artificial, Goa’s roads and streets get flooded, leading to substantial losses. Such flooding happens not only because of rampant and haphazard construction but also due to the failure of maintaining the existing drainage system.

The images of Panjim flooding “like Bombay” underscores the failure and negligence of the municipality and the concerned governmental authorities. Panjim is such a glaring example of the government’s failure to maintain existing infrastructure as the city already had a well-designed drainage system before it was torn to bits by piece-meal real-estate development. Panjim’s fate is the result of years of neglect together with the Goan authorities allowing the construction of new buildings haphazardly in recent times.

The monsoon season also exposes the poor quality of work of the many mega projects recently commissioned. A couple of weeks ago, and the most recent example of the administration’s misguided priorities, a retaining wall of a newly-constructed bridge in Mashem, Canacona collapsed, luckily before it was commissioned. The project consists of a 7.7 km four-lane highway, with three bridges in Galgibaga, Talpona, and Mashem at a whopping cost of 190 crores. The collapse of the wall means not only a wastage of a considerable sum of money and precious natural resources for the construction but also highlights poor quality of work. Many infrastructure projects, such as new highways are not necessarily what Goa needs or something that the people of Goa have demanded.

In contrast to mega highways, and as stated earlier, Goa does need its existing roads to be in proper condition, that is, Goan roads should not end up being washed away after brief spells of heavy rains. But what we observe is that most Goan roads get easily riddled with potholes with the first drizzle of the season. Once the roads get damaged, the authorities take forever to fix them. Even if they do, the job is so shoddily done that the condition of the road does not improve, and the next season washes away the previous year’s ‘repairs’.

The recent state-wide protest against the proposed Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) is a step in the right direction. The CZMP proposes, amongst other things, to reduce the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) limit from 500 meters to 50 meters—this means more construction activity in eco-sensitive areas if the proposed changes go through. The logical conclusion of such a plan would be more destruction across the coastal and riverine areas, destruction of sand dunes and other mechanisms of nature which help against flooding.

The residents of Goa’s coastal and riverine areas have rightly rejected a model of development that is only interested in taking over the coastal resources and making them available for the exploitation by corporations. Instead of the government’s plan to intensify construction activity, in other words, development, the people have rejected the move as they do not want the destruction that development and construction activity brings in its wake. With the rejection of the CZMP, as with other such projects, the people have asserted that they want the preservation of the existing natural and built environment and a better quality of life.

Therefore, Goans need to redefine the significance of development radically. As it stands, the vision of both the central and state governments and big businesses is driven by profit for few and the destruction of the Goan landscape. The challenge, then as it is now, is to create an environment-friendly model of public infrastructure beneficial to the public at large.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 7 August, 2019)

DELAYED RAINS ARE THE COST OF ‘DEVELOPMENT’

Water reserves are dangerously low owing to the delayed rains in most parts of the country; in some places, reservoirs are bone dry. Scientists express fears that in 3 or 4 decades, most Indian cities will be unlivable as they will run out of water. The delayed rains and the disruption of the seasonal cycles is another aspect of climate change, and it should be clear by now that such a change has dire consequences for the survival of life.

The climate change that we confront today is the product of human intervention as opposed to the climate fluctuations experienced by our ancestors. While bad seasons are a part of the natural cycle, the issue today is not the occasional natural disruptions but continued and increasing problems due to human intervention in nature, as well as a dire need for an efficient response to disasters or disaster-in-the-making by governments. As the problem is a man-made one, its solution lies in a sincere and creative response to the crisis by the government by taking into confidence various communities, especially marginalized communities.

In Goa, the almost-dry June is unprecedented in recent memory. The delayed monsoon has sparked fears of the scarcity of water and the disruption of the agricultural cycle in the future. The situation in Goa is grave because successive governments and profit-hungry business interests have destroyed the environment and the landscape at an unparalleled rate—politicians and bureaucrats call such destruction ‘development’. This ‘development’ involves unnecessary and environmentally destructive mega-projects, be they bridges, roads or highways, real estate in eco-sensitive areas, the cutting of trees and mangroves, the destruction of hills and mountains that act as water catchment areas or reservoirs, and rampant mining that forever destroys forests and water resources.

A stoppage in the destructive ‘development’ creates conditions where the environment heals to its previous condition. Following the ban on mining activities in Goa, many farmers reported a better yield as the groundwater table improved considerably. But though the ban on mining had given some respite to the forested areas of Goa, construction of mega-projects in other parts continues with the axing of thousands of trees.

The regularity of rainfall depends on trees and the forest cover. It is not enough that forests are preserved within the borders of Goa. What happens in the neighboring regions, too, affects the environment in Goa. The Maharashtra government, for instance, announced that the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project will affect more than 54,000 mangroves. The NGO Vanashakti, which released their findings last month of monitoring forests and eco-sensitive areas of the Konkan, says that within four years – from 2014-2018 – almost 1,600 acres of forests were lost to industry and mining.

Almost every environmental clearance from the government or an independent body involves the destructions of thousands of acres of forests. The ruling politicians and those who benefit from such mega-projects claim that the government bodies carry out compensatory afforestation. The Government of India until recently had a policy of afforestation, which the BJP government made into a law. However, the policy and the law does not work in reality as it does on paper. Sometimes the land earmarked for the compensatory afforestation displaces forest-dwelling communities, in other instances, it is unsuitable for plantation, or the compensatory afforestation project suffers from the apathy of the forest department.

The future, therefore, seems to be clear: Goa (as many other parts of India) faces rampant deforestation, and consequently a disruption of the seasonal cycles. While activist and civil society groups are finding some small but significant successes in their fight for the preservation of the environment, the question of the best way, or ways, to tackle environmental destruction still confronts the people of Goa. Successive governments have not adequately performed its duty in protecting the environment, nor have they shown goodwill towards the Goan environment by making strong protection policies and laws and implementing the same in letter and spirit. How, then, do we safeguard our future?

If we want to avoid delayed rains and other catastrophic climate change issues, we need to think of environmental concerns together with social concerns. In most occasions, the destructive ‘development’ is promoted in areas where communities of lesser socio-economic status live—land and water bodies are grabbed without any concern for the life and livelihood of such communities. For instance, in Goa’s mining areas, tribal and agrarian communities have lived for centuries; their lifestyle was seriously affected by mining. For the promotion of tourism, fishing communities, as well as agrarian ones, have suffered the ill-effects of high-end projects and upmarket ‘development’. Often the government and big businesses exploit the differences between different caste and class statuses, between those who own the land and those who are tenants—playing these sections against one another, and often using the legal procedures and the people’s lack of knowledge of these legal procedures to promote non-sustainable economic activities.

Currently, policy decisions by governmental bodies concerning the environment do not integrate the people—thus destructive policies displace communities, considering them as extraneous to the process of policy formation. Contrary to the governmental vision, environment-related activism in recent times in Goa is progressing in the right direction. The agitation against the increasing handling and transportation of coal, for instance, has integrated the concerns of the fishing community, some leaders of the movement earn their livelihood from fishing—a reason such efforts meet with success. Environmental activism can deepen their respective movements by subverting the caste and class fractures in Goan society.

Thus, stronger vision for a better environment and better politics needs to combine ecological issues with sociological ones.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 3 July, 2019)

A REPUBLIC ALWAYS IN CRISIS

The Indian Republic is, was, and will be in crisis. And perhaps the biggest issue that dogs the Republic is social and economic inequality. Seventy years of electioneering has not solved the problem. Successive governments and civil society groups have failed to address the issue of inequality. The social and economic inequalities manifest in the form of routinized violence and discrimination in everyday life for the marginalized and minoritized communities. The crisis will only deepen in the future if these inequalities remain unaddressed.

The routinized violence and discrimination against the marginalized and minoritized communities are not new; it is a way of life since the establishment of the Indian Republic. Ever since its founding, the Indian Republic has been unable to stop the discrimination and atrocities committed against its marginalized and minoritized communities. The most recent and shocking revelations of the death of Dr. Payal Tadvi, a resident doctor at a hospital in Bombay, exposes yet again the casteist way of life in India. Barely three years after the institutional murder of Hyderabad Central University scholar Rohith Vemula, Dr. Tadvi’s institutional murder (now suspected to be cold-blooded murder) is déjà vu for those familiar with the discrimination, harassment, and violence against marginalized and minoritized communities.

The recent deaths contradict the democratic vision enshrined in the constitution of India. The routine violence and harassment fly in the face of political grandstanding about the greatness of Indian culture and its ability to harmoniously bond the various communities now and in the future. Fractures of caste and religion are often used—especially during elections—to polarize and scapegoat many marginalized communities. The result of almost seven decades of polarization, scapegoating, and a deepening of casteism is the spread of Hindu majoritarianism. Any attempts at realizing democracy and equality in India have to confront the juggernaut of religious majoritarianism—whether under the guise of secularism or a theocratic ideology.

The Indian Republic, emerging after the transfer of power from the British Raj, faced a crisis in the sharing of power with marginalized caste and minoritized religious groups. The elite Hindu groups, who controlled politics after the departure of the British, kept most of the power for themselves and their kin, while there were thousands of religious and caste communities, socially subordinated to the Hindu upper-castes, who expected to share power and influence in a new Republic. In such a scenario, the elite groups of the country, mostly Hindu, nurtured a political illusion of equal rights for all, while they maintained their hegemony. In other words, the Indian polity was actually based not on equality but clientelism. Most of the marginalized caste and religious communities have to play second fiddle to one or more upper-caste Hindu communities.

The contradictory nature of the Indian Republic whereby the elites sought (and seek) to hold on to power while employing a language of liberalism, secularism, and democracy obstructed any meaningful changes in terms of social justice. The culture of the new Republic too was overwhelmingly upper-caste Hindu. Thus, communities which did not emerge out of an upper-caste Hindu location had to change their culture to make it compatible with Hindu, or euphemistically, Indian cultural forms. The public culture in the new Republic was also marked by those cultural forms deemed appropriate by Hindu culture in terms of food, drink, and dress.

With their hold on power, elite Hindus (as well as non-Hindu elites), ensure that insignificant social and economic mobility for marginalized caste and religious communities. True, the constitution of India provides many safeguards against oppression and promotes affirmative action, but the push-back from the elite sections has resulted in the dilution of the progressive vision of the constitution. In publicly-funded universities and government employ, persons such as Tadvi and Vemula face constant and vicious harassment. It is not an exaggeration to say that persons from marginalized castes and minority religions are often unwelcome in the public institutions of the Indian Republic.

The problem of an equal, or at least a fair, sharing of power has dogged the Republic since the beginning. If one thinks about politics—and not just elections alone—in the Indian Republic, the elites shared power only on limited occasions. They have done so begrudgingly if at all power has been shared in the first place. One could think of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission and the deep-seated resentment that many elites in the country feel even today, as an example. The resulting concentration of power within the hands of a few is the cause of the continued crisis facing the Republic.

The crisis that confronts the Indian Republic is an old one: How to eradicate the deep-seated inequalities to build a community that looks after its own and nurtures its citizenry to its full potential? It is this question that most public intellectuals do not confront. Of late, there is the talk of the fundamental ethos of the Indian Republic being in danger. There is no doubt that it is in danger. However, one must bear in mind that the progressive ethos of the Republic has always been in danger. There has always been strong opposition to any progressive politics that goes beyond just words, that actually empowers the weak and shares power with the downtrodden.

The way out of the crisis of inequality, violence, and minoritization is to recognize that chest-thumping nationalism—of any shade—only diverts attention from the real issues. It allows those in power to engage in further polarizing the polity and permit the wholesale diversion of resources to crony capitalists from those who need them the most. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 4 June, 2019)