If Goa ever needed a reminder of the force of nature, the incessant rains that continue to batter the State couldn’t have come at a better time. Despite predictions that this year is likely to be a below-normal monsoon, the rain over the last few days has proven to be anything but, forcing most residents to seek shelter in the safety of their homes. As the heavy showers continue to expose the shoddy preparedness of the State and civic authorities and the roads turn to rivers stripping them of their newly laid carpet, they also serve as a timely reminder to respect the forces of nature.
It is not without reason that Goa’s laws like the Town and Country Planning Act and others have protections against land-filling and hill cutting in them. The past week alone has demonstrated how projects, including government projects like roads and sewage plants, have been witnessing the brunt of the rising flood waters as they occupy space that rightly belongs to them. In South Goa low-lying lakes and fields where the western bypass is being built sans stilts resemble a lake. Similarly, other projects like that of the sewage treatment plant in Guirim which is yet another project being planned in the low-lying fields have also gone underwater.
In its defense, the government will claim that State projects do not face the restrictions applicable to private projects and hence can carry out projects in the fields and along vulnerable slopes. It was such a justification that was used when building the South Goa District Administrative Centre as well as the new South Goa District Hospital on low-lying land in Margao.
However, mother nature does not care for human definitions of what is legal and what is not. Time and again we have witnessed how nature has laid waste to the best laid human plans -- from the subsidence at Joshimath in Uttarakhand to the landslides at Coastal Karnataka and the Kerala floods allowing constructions along vulnerable stretches of the land has almost always come at a cost. Homes have been washed away, others have had to be abandoned while still others regularly go underwater when built in places once occupied by water.
In this context, the government’s recent moves to dilute protections laid out more particularly in the Town and Country Planning Act, to allow for changes in ecologically sensitive zones including paddy fields and orchards does not bode well, not just for the state but for the ultimate buyers of the homes that were to come up in the said ecologically sensitive lands. However, instead of learning from past, and currently ongoing mistakes, the State has shown no sign of relenting in its pursuit of inviting even more housing development in the State.
The State needs to prove that it can sort out the basics of ensuring that the roads are not washed out each year with the rains and can prevent flooding of existing residential settlements and dwellings. There should be no compromise on the quality of life we should be able to give ourselves -- not constantly chip away at our safeguards and legal protections while only enriching a select few.
