MARGAO
The All India Professionals’ Congress Goa Unit held its first office bearers’ meeting and resolved to appeal to voters in the village panchayat elections to act as soldiers, and protect their respective villages by rejecting candidates without any ideology and vision to develop their villages.
Fresh from the AIPC national conclave held at Raipur last week under the chairmanship of Member of Parliament Dr Shashi Tharoor, Sidharth Karapurkar, vice chairman Goa, who attended along with State chairman Elvis Gomes and Secretary Sita Antao, said that the AIPC national meet of around 1,000 AIPC members from diverse professional fields had advocated greater decentralisation of the process of governance in rural bodies, in line with the vision of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
He said that candidates propped up by MLAs and heavyweight politicians will have no allegiance of any kind to serve the needs of the people and will want to occupy the seats for self advancement and to help their political bosses. Hence, candidates with professional backgrounds will make better governance possible, as they are less likely to be subservient to the political class when it comes to issues of their villages.
Meanwhile, AIPC Goa Chairperson Elvis Gomes who led the Goa contingent at the two days of deliberations at the conclave said that State governments had a lot to learn from the Bhupesh Bhagel-led Chhattisgarh government when it comes to boosting village economies. He said that an open discussion with the Chief Minister, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and others, coupled with site visits had revealed that the government was seriously investing in people in terms of education, health and boosting the rural sector economy with farmers even finding value for dung picked up through government schemes.
He said that forest rights of tribals, both individual as well community, were getting settled at a pace unseen before.
“We in Goa are losing our ‘Ganvponn’ as our government pushes for reckless concretisation of villages through the TCP, PDAs and VPs. On the other hand, Chhattisgarh is seen putting money in the hands of villagers to preserve the environment. Purchase of cow dung from farmers and mass production of organic manure that is supplied back to the farmers is an environment-friendly intervention that helps maintain ecological balance. We in Goa have a government that officially allows promotion of gambling through proliferation of casinos. These are contrasting styles of governance we see in the country,” said Gomes, calling upon professionals to join AIPC.
