Dr Joe D’Souza
To make any country into a vibrant and sustainable economy, it has to scientifically blend into the three major sectors of growth in a judiciously sustainable way. From being a wanderer, about 80,000 years ago in search of food and sustenance, man has transformed into being a settler, using his knowledge, experience and skills to harness the powers of the solar energy to grow food, fodder, fiber, feed and fertilisers. The goodness of crop rotation, shifting cultivation, animal rearing and husbandry has been in practice for the last 15,000 years. Although we use modern terminologies to describe scientific advances in agriculture and pisciculture, the present-day approaches to biotechnology and gene technology were practised without much fanfare and pomp by our ancestors.
Thus, if Goa has remained a healthy prosperous and a dynamic society over the past 500 years, it was due to the fact that our forefathers were extremely clever and enterprising to harness the bounties of mother nature in a holistic and sustainable way.
In the Communidade system of development, the ‘gauncars’ in every village grew their paddy, developed sustainable poultry, pig and cattle farms, involved themselves in scientific horticulture by distributing plantlets and seeds of their unique varieties of paddy, fruits and vegetables. The seeds were scientifically selected for cross over and hybridization.
I only want to remind the present-day Goans that the fruits and vegetables along with rest of the cultivated crops in Goa are qualitatively the best across the globe, only because of our forefathers, who diligently undertook organic composting, farming and preservation of harvest in a traditionally scientific manner. The best seeds were always preserved for cultivation for the next season. Be it the Moira bananas, the Parra watermelons, the list is endless, as every village in Goa scored over the others in competitive productivity and sales. Hence for me as a young lad in the 50s, visiting Mapusa, Siolim, and other village market and fairs was a salubrious, exhilarating Sunday experience.
With a rich and healthy harvest, our ancestors used the goodness of mother nature to dish out the best Goan sausages, delicious jams and pickles, preserved meats and fish. The Goan bread and sannas made from coconut toddy, rich in vitamins, minerals, assimilatory carbohydrates are the toast of every Goan meal even today.
It is a matter of total shame and disgrace that we are foolishly boasting of the tertiary sector of our economy in the form of service and hospitality industry and have miserably failed to use our core strengths to offer to our tourists or guests the best of Goan fruits, vegetables, and the varieties of our Goan dishes.
Scientifically the primary sector of our economy must be used to propel the secondary sector to expand and grow. The secondary sector of our economy should further catalyse the growth of the tertiary economic sector such as tourism or hospitality.
It is a disgrace that the Chief Minister of Goa, a few days ago, at a public meeting at Sankhali lamented and shed tears over the degradation and degeneration of Goan agro-based economy. Sadly the government is doing nothing noteworthy to boost the primary sector of our economy and the agricultural land under cultivation is dwindling rapidly in Goa. Largescale conversion of agricultural land for concretisation, and no proper boost and motivation for farmers, delays in grants of subsidies and schemes, no guidance and attraction to the youth to take up farming, has worsened the situation.
The newspapers across our territory printed boldly that Pramod Sawant decried the Goa’s total dependence on other states for our agriculture and vegetable needs. It is not that our economic priorities are skewed against the tenets of sustainable development.
Come on Goans, wake up at the earliest to the ground realities. Our political class and the urban elites of Goa have totally allowed our economy and core competence to decay and deteriorate. Look at Goa of the 21st century, our traditional occupations are in total shambles. As a scientific researcher, I worked on a project in the 90s over thirty years ago, restoring fields in Bicholim taluka specifically which were degraded by mining rejects entering paddy fields.
For the last three decades, in particular, agriculture and horticulture have been totally neglected as the illegal mineral extraction was allowed to plunder and destroy the primary sector of our economy. Fields were covered with toxic mining rejects and the groundwater depleted as extraction by illegal and unscrupulous individuals preferred to kill the goose that laid the golden egg for Goans. For the last 15 days, Panjimites in the centre of the capital city are receiving muddy red water supplied through a PWD water supply network.
By destroying verdant hills, we have not only depleted our aquifers and water resources for eternity but invited upon ourselves scourges of flooding, landslides, depleted and polluted springs and water supply. The levels of cancers, tuberculosis, kidney ailments and physiological stress ailments are posing danger as biomagnification of pollutants in our food, feed and fodder are today a challenge we all have to live with. Sadly, even as of today, the PWD water treatment plant at Opa is unable to filter and supply us clear and clean water as the mining pits with mining rejects surreptitiously discharge silt-laden waters into the Opa and Khandepar rivers, the waters of which supply drinking water to Panaji.
Today we have turned the scientific triangle of economic growth and development upside down. Instead of focusing on agriculture, our government has made tourism as a core sector to fuel development.
We have totally ignored the fact that tourism is an extremely fragile industry. Let us remind ourselves and see for ourselves, as to how and where we are all going wrong and haywire, in my article in the next week.
