Deepak Laad
The word vibrant was used to flourish the development of Gujarat to the world, when Narendra Modi helmed the state. In reality, ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ was nothing but a grand window dressing exercise carefully orchestrated to anoint Modi as a national leader. The glitz of brand new bridges, buildings and roads did not go beyond a few visible urban pockets. The interior areas were as bleak, stark and backward as any other backward regions of country’s poorer states.
BJP is a ‘one man show’ of late and sycophancy pays in such ecosystem. Imitation becomes the best way of flattery. Goa’s BJP government too, has borrowed the phrase and is set out on the journey to become another ‘vibrant’ state.
The over enthusiastic CM has guaranteed fast clearance“ precisely in a month’s time “ to promote investments in the fields of tourism, entertainment, agriculture and infrastructure projects. Such prompt, pro-active actions are consistent and complementary to PM Modi initiated simplified sanctions of upto one crore loan in 59 minutes.
In the last two decades I have worked in PSU bank branches situated in the vicinity of three industrial estates in Goa. Though we had sizable budget for lending, there was dearth of industrial borrowers. Even today many MSME units just manage to scrape through their activities in a majority of industrial estates.
Goa is India’s smallest state with total area of 3700 odd sqkm of which 1400 sqkm is forest covered. Of the remainder, sizable areas are under occupation of Navy and Army establishments and vast tracts have already been sold to top builders from outside the state, for constructing up-market gated community apartments, villas, schools, tennis courts for the super rich moneybags from other states.
Whatever space remains after that is almost crammed. So if more industries are Goa bound, in the wake of recent vibrant Goa business Expo initiative, setting them up will entail felling of trees. Add to it the forest that will be chipped away once mining activities commence in the state. Recently the solicitor general appearing on behalf of our state was upbraided by apex court judge and told that having a better average of forest cover as compared with the rest of the county in itself doesn’t bestow license on the state government to keep cutting trees in the name of development.
The government, for sure hadn’t assessed beforehand how many new projects under each category were sustainable, given the not so comfortable position of available land, water and power supply and the recent huge problem of garbage disposal desperately awaiting some resolution. More than two lakh metric tonnes of garbage at Sonsodo is awaiting redemption for years now.
MLAs from the north are at loggerheads with their Southern counterparts over the garbage disposal issue. So does the government have any scientific mechanism in place to get rid of industrial waste that will come with the new projects, so as to avoid further pressure on the already fragile environment?
Close on the heels of garbage comes the environmental pollution issue. Effluents from industries are bound to increase the air, water and land pollution. Should we allow our air quality to worsen, sending the index soaring above 300, vying with 9 other Indian cities that are already figuring in the first ten most polluted cities in the world?
The union government seems to be faking us on the issues of pressing environmental concerns. It makes all the right kind of noises in the world fora, be it the minister addressing the world climate change conference or the PM at the United Nation’s general assembly.
Once home, however, they simply go back to their routine populist developmental agenda, unconcerned about the damage to the environment.
The union minister who was present at the business expo recently was even holding out veiled threats to the NGOs that approach courts for grievance redressal concerning environmental violations branding the NGO fighting for environmental causes as anti-poor and anti-development and exhorted people not to approach them.
Piyush Goyal should know that his government is more concerned about power than the poor, else everyday 20 crores of Modi’s poor brothers and sisters wouldn’t be going to bed on an empty stomach when stocks of food grain worth Rs 200 cores are left to rot in godowns everyday, due to the government’s inefficient handling of public distribution system.
Highways are supposed to accelerate the economy, but the progress of laying highways in the country is dismal. Even in Goa, after sacrificing such a large number of trees, the highways building work has been progressing at a snail’s pace and the completed stretches have started looking old and shambly even before they are put to use.
The state government keeps professing that the developmental work is being taken up for the good of Goans. The Goans today are a minority in their own land “ outnumbered by droves of migrants descending here in hundreds everyday. What good has development of the state done for local Goans so far if they cannot even afford to buy their cherished staple food- fish- and risk their lives every time they ride on roads that are not in motorable conditions?
Goyal’s promise of more trains will increase the influx of migrants 24x7. A few years from now, even local lawmakers will either be in minority or missing altogether. This once described as a paradise is bound to turn into grand garbage dump in the near future, in the name of development, that no tourist will fancy
visiting.
