INTRO: With no school, bus service or a government office, Tiracol seems cut off from mainstream Goa. GERARD DE SOUZA visited this remote hamlet to find out what makes the 300 people living there tick and the hopes of a better life.
BY GERARD DE SOUZA
Life comes to a standstill the moment you stop at the ferry point that will take you from Querim to Tiracol, the only Goan hamlet that lies to the North of the River Tiracol.
The lone sluggish ferry, it would seem, is more for the benefit of local anglers from Querim, who fancy their chances of a bite on the Tiracol bank of the river, rather than their own. With its partly rocky, partly swampy bank it might as well be true.
For long Tiracol, which is just one of the seven wards of the Querim-Tiracol village panchayat was known only as the village that housed a fort and lay closer to Maharashtra than to Goa. All that has now changed with the once primarily agrarian village being flung into the limelight, courtesy the Leading Hotels eco-tourism project, much against its will.
With the ‘development’ bandwagon passing them by, villagers learnt to make ends meet. From being fully dependent on agriculture to opening bars and restaurants, getting jobs in neighbouring Maharashtra and Goa.
“Since independence there isn’t even a single person from the hamlet who has got a government job, no matter at what level,” Francis Rodrigues the panch of the ward and former sarpanch of the village says.
Of 90-odd houses in the village about one-third or 30 are closed most of the year with the inhabitants either working abroad in the Middle East or in the merchant navy or even in other metropolitan cities like Mumbai.
This village of 300 has no school, no bus service and no offices of any kind; not even a market or a small tinto. All it has is a well-paved road that runs from the fort to the ferry point with another branch of the road going towards Maharashtra.
“We get a lot of tourists who come here. The monied ones come to see the fort and sometimes stop by to have beer or even a meal,” Antonio Pereira who runs a bar and restaurant at the ferry wharf says.
But in the off season it’s mostly dry.
It isn’t surprising then that the village is dotted with bars and restaurants run by the villagers catering mostly to neighbouring Maharashtra which is barely a stone’s throw away. With Tiracol being geographically closer to Maharashtra but administered by Goa it is a perfect oasis of cheap booze for people from Maharashtra.
Testament to this are the men and youth who come by in Maharashtra registered vehicles, sometimes from as far as Kolhapur only to be found wobbling and staggering along the narrow roads. This part of Goa certainly doesn’t have entry tax applied to it.
Agriculture began to decline with the arrival of Usha Ispat Ltd. in 1989. The Pig Iron Plant started by Usha Ispat in Redi district of Maharashtra boasted of three huge towering blast furnaces manufacturing three lakh tons of pig iron per year. So close was the plant to the Goa border that its compound wall was literally the Goa-Maharashtra boundary.
“Everything was covered in black. The fields were covered in black, the plants were covered in black our houses were covered in black. What agriculture could you do at that time,” says a senior lady, who shies and walks away, when asked her name.
Usha Ispat finally shut shop and was sold to Tata Metaliks in 2005, but it never saw its heyday again and Tata Metaliks has decided to sell the plant as scrap.
“Besides the plant, there was the problem of stray cattle from Maharashtra who used to just walk in and trample the cashew saplings and kill the fields. Evidence of stretches of land that were once crop fields can be seen atop the plateau beyond the fort and beside a football ground that the villagers have made for themselves.
The ground too shows evidence of not being used for a long time. While the goal posts aren’t rusted yet, they certainly have seen better days.
Some families in the village invested in trucks to be run in the neighbouring Redi iron ore mine, while several others rely on remuneration sent from a family member who is working abroad.
Schooling too is a problem. Parents choose to send their students either to a convent school in Redi in Maharashtra or in Querim or even in Mapusa. Higher education is either in Mapusa or Siolim.
Francis Rodrigues' son himself has studied his engineering, but in the absence of any job, he is assisting his father in running his restaurant. No sooner he get a job, he will have to move out.
Villagers now find themselves in the centre of attention.
Save for a fertile valley that a brook runs through, much of the village, especially in the northern end is a rocky plateau that has trees and shrubs with the undergrowth thick enough to hinder a walk through. The plateau however offers breathtaking views of the Arabian Sea and rocky cliffs that only the most daring will stand on the edge.
Most families, baring four, are solely dependent on cashew plantations which are located towards the Maharashtra side of the village.
The Fort, which is government property, is now a seven room hotel for the discerning tourist who wishes to live right in the middle of heritage.
A couple of locals have found employment here, as have some people from Maharashtra.
The village is now at crossroads with some fearing that they will even lose the houses on which they are standing to the golf course promoters. Time will tell what direction the village will take.
