It is a bitter irony that millions of tonnes of coal, heaped up at Mormugao port, are transported by rail to Karnataka and Maharashtra to feed their thermal power stations and industries, when all over Goa there is an acute shortage of power. Transportation of coal by rail also causes increasing levels of air pollution, which will be further aggravated after the work of double-tracking is completed. Presently, despite the hype over the use of renewable energy such as solar and wind power, which are both cheap and eco-friendly, precious little is being done to put these natural resources to use, to generate electricity. Probably, our energy problems would have been solved decades back had we diverted a small portion of the stacked up coal at Mormugao to run a medium-sized thermal power station in Goa. This would also have proved to be less polluting than the present rampant transportation of coal by rail and the double-tracking work in progress to benefit neighbouring states.
