With the Panchayat elections scheduled for today, gullible voters exercising their franchise will be once again taken for a ride once Sarpanchs and panchas are elected. These village level elections are not autonomous or devoid of political interference. Most of the political parties have thrown their hat in the ring by fielding like-minded candidates for self-aggrandizement. It is wrong to believe that these grassroot elections are not held on party lines. Shamelessly even the defeated MLAs hungry for power are trying to make a backdoor entry by fielding their proxy candidates.
Goa has earned the sobriquet as a den of corruption at all levels of governance. As an important initiative the newly elected local governing body should take up the sanitation issue on a war footing as open defecation still persists in the villages although Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has made tall claims that Goa is Open Defecation Free (ODF). The much touted bio-digester toilets scheme initiated by the government in 2019 has hit a roadblock at the implementation stage. Any zero open defecation programme should be anchored on the objective outlined in the National Sustainable Sanitation Plan (NSSP).
