Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane on May 25 announced that he would be setting up an “expert committee” to probe into what he said were “discrepancies” in the Regional Plan 2021, by which, according to Rane 6-crore square metres of land, has been changed from settlement to green zone as part of the rationalisation process carried out by the then state level committee that drafted the Regional Plan 2021 headed by then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and had on board members such as Architect and Urban Planners Charles Correa, Edgar Ribeiro besides other architects, members of civil society and urban planners.
The Regional Plan 2021, which was one of the most comprehensive planning exercises that Goa has ever seen and has given Goa the detailed maps that we see today along with a host of protections in the form of green zones -- eco I and eco II, among others, is being ridiculed today by the incumbent minister because he believes that “large properties and settlement lands, some belonging to poor people, have been converted from settlement to natural cover, orchards and no development slopes in the name or rationalisation, depriving them of their right to put their land to developable use.” This, Rane said, was an “injustice” to those whose land was marked as green zones and that it was “important that justice be provided to every Goan who has suffered in this process.”
The people of Goa have a right to life -- a right enshrined in the constitution no less -- that includes life to a clean, healthy environment that supersedes all other non-fundamental rights including the right to property, which while being a right is not a fundamental right. In several judgments the Supreme Court has upheld that natural resources such as air, water, and land are fundamental to all life forms: they are, much more than money and economic infrastructure, the base of our survival, to large numbers of humanity, especially communities that have been termed.
Further, the constitution also guarantees the people a right to participatory planning -- that is via consultations -- something that the RP 2021 committee attempted to do by sending plans to village committees and gram sabhas to involve their inputs in what was, a sometimes chaotic, but in the end a crucial exercise that gives the RP 2021 the integrity that it holds today. The process of handpicking the poor and so-called expert committees by no means can replace the participatory planning process that is envisaged by the Constitution.
However, more than that, the entire tirade against the RP 2021 committee appears to only be a knee-jerk diatribe as a reaction to the questions that have now begun to be asked of the rapid sweeping changes that are being made to Goa’s lands. It is imperative that planning be holistic and not by making piece-by-piece changes with the people of Goa in the dark.
