On the morning of his swearing in on March 9, just beforethe ides of March, the Chief Minister designate Manohar Parrikar was alreadygrappling with power. Or the collapse of it. There was a complete failure ofthe western grid and parts of North Goa, including Panjim had plunged intodarkness.
But the time he reached the Campal ground for his swearingin, power was restored. And a little later, political power was officiallywrested as the balance of power changed hands from the vanquished Congress to theelected BJP.
Nine months later, while still riding high on a mandate thatwas emphatically delivered to him, Parrikar himself will admit that he seesgrid failures. It’s an everyday exercised to keep Goa from having a gridfailure. The mining shut down, the consequences on the economy may have sloweddown advances on meeting promises, but where he has been found wanting is inthe planning the big picture of growth and development. Parrikar is not justanother Chief Minister. He is also not a BJP Chief Minister. The Parrikar ofold who allegedly “had agendas and wore saffron” on his sleeve is not a figurethat is envisaged, even in jest. And that’s because this mandate has with it,given him a much larger canvas. Shall we say a “Parrikar-esque canvas”.
He is being judged not as a Chief Minister. But as ManoharParrikar. His delivery report is not based on whether the CM of Goa hasdelivered, but whether this reign has been “Parrikar-esque”. Has ManoharParrikar managed to live up to his own magnificent grandeur of governance?Sadly not, but that doesn’t mean he has failed. It just means that he has beenunable to understand that deadlines and delivery need to be directlyproportional to dialogues, when he is Manohar Parrikar. He set himself too hardwhen he didn’t need to.
The little Manohar of Mapusa, who hated to lose and knewthat he was better than the rest, is still there. He is mellow, extremelypolite and gracious, absolutely incorruptible and works from 6 in the morningtill way past midnight, as if there’s no tomorrow. But Goa has a short fuse,the length of which he himself has shortened by his rapid promises.
We chose to do our first ever check on Manohar Parrikarsperformance, partly because nine months is a good benchmark to deliver – inlife and in governance, but mainly because some of the key deadlines, on whichhe asked himself to be monitored, have lapsed. And while we are not hanging himfor it, we are asking questions and the right ones. It’s tempting to go the waymost examiners of Parrikar, including those in the media, by looking at his keypromises of a Lokayukta, a good Regional Plan and zero tolerance of corruption.We have done that too, but before doing just that, we played back the audiotape of Parrikar’s first speech as Goa’s new Chief Minister, just after he wassworn in. It was short and still he raised a very emotive issue, which got buried by other popular announcement of zerotolerance to corruption.
Looking at the huge multitudes that looked at him with ahope never seen before, sweating in the March sunshine but breathing easy,Parrikar first said. “No one will have to pay a bribe to get jobs.” And he thensaid, “We will create opportunities for our young to come back. Our youth willnot have to leave Goa to work. We will give them a golden Goa”. No one clappedinitially before they all did. Because no one believed that a Chief Ministeractually had this big picture. Today with mining effectively shut for a coupleof years and the industry mood on a huge downswing with new investments notcoming in, and old ones moving out, does he have a plan to create more jobs andemployment? Does he have a plan for growth and industrialisation. Is he workingtowards investments in FMCG manufacturing and using our vast port resources?The barometer of measuring a Parrikar-esque government needs to be differentfrom measuring just a Goan government. And this is where signs area disturbing.This year 1270 engineering students will pass out from the GEC, PCC, RIET(Shiroda) and Don Bosco, as opposed to just 810 two years ago. While the number of student pass outs areincreasing by 200 each year, what is Goa giving them? Where are the world classtraining facilities, opportunities for research and most importantly jobs?
Industry is on a downturn. And we don’t have an industrialpolicy. This is a big ticket move and should have got priority at par withLaadli Laxmi, DSS and Griha Lakshmi schemes. Populist schemes never makeeveryone popular. While one section feels that the schemes have been corneredby the ruling party, the other feels that they have not been honestlyimplemented. As the leader of the anti-Parrikar pack Vijay Sardesai says, “Hehas put limits on the scheme for housewives, putting a cap of eligibility tothose with an income of less than 3 lakhs. Large sections of governmentservants who voted for him will be ineligible”. A Parrikar-esque move demandsbig ticket decisions on industry, tourism, employment and growth. Parrikarhasn’t honestly done so. For instance, he handpicked one of finest tourismbureaucrats of the country, Mathew Samuels, as he moved from a superb stint inPondicherry to head tourism. He began by a initiating a credible exercise,where advertising agencies would be picked on creative merit at the best costto brand Goa. He had a run in with a local cartel that cornered alladvertising, which had nothing to do with branding, but releasing ads.
Soon, the new minister and the old coterie intervened.Samuel’s specific circulars on transparency were asked to be withdrawnofficially and the Chief Minister told him politely that he had to go. The easy option was to let Samuels go. Thedifficult one would have been to make him stay to do the big canvas paint andget a world class policy in place. Doing the difficult things should have comeeasy. They haven’t.
While our boxes on specific issues tell the micro stories,this essay will be incomplete without a core occurrence which has dominated hisgestation period of nine months. Rapid fire promises with careless abandon.Lokayukta in 100 days. A Regional Plan by December and then January. A completesolution to mining. Manohar Parrikar doesn’t need to try so hard to beefficient. He is setting targets that he is unable to hold himself accountableto. He should listen to his speech on March 9 ‘I do not have a magic wand (heused the phrase “jaadu ki chari”). So why did he start saying what he didn’tbelieve in.
As Parrikar grows on the job, he needs to fix two mainthings – the Regional Plan, because Goa’s future planning needs a credible, allinclusive base development that gives the people of Goa a chance, and a LokAyukta because the tent of corruption in the past government needs anindependent institutional 24x7 action. Non action is reaching levels ofnegligence, when we as a newspaper have done four covers on the corruption inthe PWD and no questions have been asked.
But the big thing he needs to fix is give Goa a real future.A future where your kids come home and there’s more than enough money in thebank. Where goods are manufactured and move out. Where Goa prospers. ManoharParrikar needs to get Parrikar-esque.
