At 65 year, post retirement from oil major HPCL, HanumanLaxman Aroskar was looking forward to a peaceful life amongst his betel andcashew plantations, growing his own paddy and feeding masses. The new airportwas outside his frame of reference in the Mopa-Warkhand plateau far away. Allthat changed when he and 34 others in Nanachipani were slapped with anemergency land acquisition notice. “I put my Provident Fund encashment to paythe High Court lawyer since the community did not have money to fight theGovernment” reminisces Aroskar, nursing his bedridden father’s hand.
But the betrayal at Warkhand especially in villages ofShemanache Advan, Nanachipani and Chandel is stark. While Aroskar and 81 otherswere awaiting the High Court verdict by the end of 2011, a posse of police ledby the land acquisition officer, M K Vasta swooped in on Aroskar’s land onWarkhand plateau and started cutting trees, and putting red marks on othertrees in heavily forested land, in paddy fields and even stones. The Governmenthad brutally marked its territory despite the Court proceeding’s outcome andwould take that land away. “I resisted and told them that the matter issub-judice and this is illegal but they told me that ultimately this is whatwill happen so they were preparing the land for acquisition. Isn’t thisdictatorial for a democracy”, asks Aroskar. For him and others it is no moreabout compensation, it is about a farmer’s right to cultivate.
Far away from media’s hawk-like scrutiny, the seven villagesof Mopa Greenfield Airport site have been fighting a losing battle against theGovernment. Their fight is not against the Airport or its impending necessity.Their fight is against the deceitful manner in which the land is being acquired“ by force, by cheating and even by unjust compensation.
“The land officers staff came one day and put these markerssaying no one should farm in this area but the moment they left we startedtilling in”, says Schemanache Advan village’s Sandip Kambli, pointing at theyellow rings on stones on the plateau that will form the airport’s runway. Shockingit may seem, the Goa Government’s assumption that Mopa is an uncultivable,barren land comes from a flawed report by an officer who did not care to checkthe ground reality. Large tracts of the plateau had been cultivating paddyduring monsoons. Tillari Irrigation Project on Maharastra-Goa border was to bethe perennial feeder for an yearlong crop circle. Authorities however put themarkers and restricted cropping that came in handy in courtroom battles toprove that Mopa was barren. But the deceit gets deeper. “The Special LandAcquisition Officer used a simple letter given by a sister to her brother forthe transfer of land in his name, to show it as an NOC for land acquisition”,explains local lawyer Santosh Keni. Keni explains that the residents of AirportSite are either illiterate or far away from any support from rest of Goa. Assuch, Goa Government has been tactfully using everything from fraud to force toget them to sign on the dotted lines. The villages of Mopa and Torsem were thefirst to buckle down. Their land has been acquired already. For the rest, afight against a non-understanding government is timeless.
