The Out-of-Box Land

Goa’s natural beauty with lovely & loving inhabitants, Ihave experienced their love and righteous anger in considerable measure, over adecade. It is difficult not to get intimately and emotionally entwined with theland and its unique people! Looking into the future as to what I would like tosee happening in Goa, is a truly an exercise exciting as well as rewarding forone who loves the place from the bottom of his heart.

Goa, with its egalitarian well educated populace andcosmopolitan culture can be truly leaders of the futuristic world, in myopinion, not just our nation, in laying down the future path of growth forhumanity. What are the challenges of the future? To list a few, energyconsumption, land conservation, habitat's environmental  conservation  and nurturing  while  enhancing quality  of  living, while lowering the burden on the citizens' earnings!

By just walking the same path as followed by other countriesover the last century, will lead to the same level of ecological disasters anddemand extensive land use, apart from very high energy consumption   levels.  Obviously   this would also   be very expensive demanding   mammoth investments. The experience showsthat the infrastructure so created with technologies which are economicallyunviable, lead to a need for cross subsidies with parallel real estate projectsgranted as sops to make private capital flow in. The rest of India has triedand the experience till now shows very variable and unsatisfactory performanceunable to truly deliver the service.

The land is precious in Goa and cannot be bartered as doneby other states in lieu of compensation to attract private capital. The fragileecological balance and beauty of the land must be preserved while tackling themost serious pressure on the quality of life in terms of transportation withinthe state. The state depends on tourism.

One cannot over emphasise the need for systems which provideconnectivity throughout the state at affordable financially viable andpractically not demanding the land surface, while energy demand is kept to a minimum.

It is so comfortable to keep copying what others do even ifit is very expensive and cannot be afforded. The competence to adopt emergingnew technological ideas by making a complete assessment and not unduly bearrisk can help achieve leadership position in the world. But the vestedinterests of legacy technologies will certainly, block any  such initiative, with considerable strength,leveraging the administrative  processes, to  sabotage  such a  change from the beaten  path. A strong leadership commitment and quick delivery of promise, withcompletely transparent process of decision making and delivery, involving allstakeholders, will be needed, to succeed against all these odds.

Goan citizens are typically very literate and as a statevery conscious of their environment and land use. They are capable ofunderstanding change management. If world changing technologies are to be triedout, perhaps, they are capable of handling the case better than any othercommunity.

For vision 2020, it is hence proposed to lay out the plansfor providing connectivity throughout the state, with even energy needed alsosupplied by the technology, using local natural resources, with the surfaceland use and limited agricultural land use kept intact. The technologiesproposed are cutting edge and international forums examined and up held thesoundness of the conceptual outlines based on scientific and technicalexamination by respected and renowned American and French national societies ofengineers.

Delivery mechanism too, a novel process is proposed to makesure that entire community is fully involved and they can check and confirmthat the process is not vitiated by any secretive interpretation of publicpolicy in government files, while delivering public orders affecting the publiclife or assets. This is achieved by scanning and posting entire proceedings onfile, along with the order so that over sight by people through media andcorrection through judicial process is always available in real time, not afterthe damage has been done. The old British  practice of keeping files secret from subjects must be done away with.We cannot go in to 2020 without such fundamental reform in our governance,which plays crucial key role for delivering any worthwhile public infrastructure.

With the new airport coming up at Mopa at the northern endof Goa, and almost all major tourist hotels in south Goa, a comfortable meansof connectivity is a necessity.

The new technology of gravity power towers, a breakthrough,but technologically rather simple, is like a pendulum, putting to use thefourth fundamental force of gravity to keep a transport unit gain kineticenergy by the tower losing stored potential energy, but gaining back the samewhile bringing the moving unit to a stop as needed. The friction losses onlyare to be supplemented with external energy. This external energy as electricalenergy is provided again by another set of gravity power towers, aggregatingthe kinetic energy of breaking sea waves in shallow areas of the sea shore.Thus the gravity power tower brings in to action the eternal gravity to meetour energy needs completely for transporting men and material. At the 2011 APMconference in Paris the use of this technology in rail, road and air wasdescribed. [Please check links at www.atrilab.com]

The system most suitable for Goa conditions is the subwayrail based metro completely run by gravity. The system does not depend onrail-wheel adhesion, though uses rail tracks only, giving us the advantage ofjust following existing road network, following the grades without anydifficulty, just below the surface, so that, road too remains fully usable.

Route length about 100 km, practically following the NH 66to one side below the ground level, will be the Gravity Powered metro rail,with stations located every km but with option to have stops even at 500m . Theenergy requirement is estimated at 50 MW and Gravity Power Houses with a totallength in shallow region, of about 2 to 3 km distributed at various non-beachlocations will suffice. So practically the system will not need any power fromexisting resources.

The total project cost is estimated around Rs 7000 crincluding power generation. But the project is financially viable and henceraising private capital should not be difficult. Pilot project of just onekilometer and demonstration Gravity Power House for generating 1 MW energy fromsea, will cost about Rs 75 cr , as trials and experimentation will be involved.

The  execution  is planned  using  the Goan  engineering  colleges and  the  entire technology development can be done using Goan small scale industries.The entire technology developed will belong to Goa and Goa can even executesimilar projects nationally as well as internationally.

Thus 2020 can see Goa to be an international leader toimprove quality of life of humans and also address the global warming issue toowith an eternal energy and transport solution, which characteristically will befinancially viable without need for government subsidies to make it viable.

An IIT Scholar in Structural Engineering, Bojji Rajaram, wasthe man credited to have connected Goa to rest of the world directly via theseemingly impossible Konkan Railway. As a member of Indian Railway Service ofEngineers, Rajaram is a known accomplished project management expert,successful designer and executor of complex computerised real time railwaymanagement systems with built in knowledge base. He is the inventor ofAnti-Collision Device for rail transportation, and Skybus Metro Rail system.His love affair with Goa started as Chief Engineer, Konkan Railway Corporation.And ended as its’ Managing Director. It was here that he had proposed settingup of Skybus in Goa, a high speed cross country transit that would cut downvehicular pollution and reduced public transport congestions in Goa