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Renew your wedding vows in Goa, or gift a Ceremony Package to a close couple Multiple options to make your day extra special! http://www.renewalsetc.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Politicians on the run? DEVIL'S ADVOCATE/ By Frederick Noronha Finally, their game is up. After years of conning the citizen, the politician is finally on the run. They can't go on at it for long more. It's protest after protest, in village after village. People all over Goa are demanding better levels of governance, and policies which don't simply sellout public assets for private gain of a few. Right? Do you go along with this argument? Sorry to disappoint, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Like the proverbial cat, our politicians have nine -- and probably more -- lives. They've faced many a challenge in the past, but continue to live on undeterred nonetheless. We have about the most unrepresentative and uncaring of political representatives. Yet some of them have survived from the 'eighties. Some even since the 'seventies. Others have dominated the political discourse since the 'nineties. Those who don't win elections can, of course, be accommodated in various red-lit cars or corporations and commissions, subverting the idea of a people's mandate. Even the leaders of the Opposition have enough of a stake in the system, not to rock the boat too hard -- in a way that threatens the big players -- and to wait in the wings for a return to centre-stage. There are three reasons why the citizen of this state are their own worst enemies. First is our unwillingness to tackle our own problem areas. Take what happened at Moira the other day. Politicians pit voter against voter, and whisk away a lady-campaigner to a police station. There she is kept safely away from a gram sabha without even being arrested! To add insult to injury, she was apparently taken there for her own 'safety'. Not that Venita Coelho's case reflects a new trend. Politicians understand grassroots sociology better than any of us. In other campaigns, middle-class campaigners seem oblivious to how class, communal and sometimes caste divides are skillfully manipulated. Or, if they are aware, they're unable to do anything about it. The poor have reason to feel suspicious. Fact is that Goa has long been a stratified, hierarchical society. In parts of Goa, caste is a big concern; with the current communal juggernaut, this is somehow kept under wraps. In villages where Catholics hold an economic (or numerical) edge, the resentment is also visible. So, it is easy to portray protesters as being 'anti-development' and 'anti-people'. In village after village, attempts to build a more concerned citizenry has run into roadblocks that stem from suspicion. Given the distrust among different groups of the populace, it's enough to use this to target one group with another. Added to this, the gap in reporting citizen's concerns, between the vernacular and the English media, also aggravates the situation. Because these issues get reported mainly on one side, the other tends to be out of sync or totally unaware about the issues concerned. It's easy to create doubts about motives in such case. Secondly: a few bribes and a few blandishments always work. No, it's not just the poor who fall for liquor and saris at election-time. The greed of the rich, and the middle-classes, is only that much more acute. If the poor fall for small bribes, the bigger guns need larger ones. Politicians know that (almost) everyone comes with a price. It could range from government jobs for sons and daughters, to useful business contracts, granting questionable permissions to big industrial empires, and more. Isn't it ironical that the very same quarters who today cry about the way in which Goa has been pillaged, have themselves played a key role in ideologically supporting every dispensation that has come about to rule Goa? Did you notice how elites are quick to change alliances, to any which wind that blows? Recently, one was surprised to see the way in which arch-conservatives, and those railing against migration into Goa, were quick to proclaim their loyalties to a winning Barrack Obama. Why is it that conservatives back home suddenly become progressives in their politics overseas? * * * Our ruling elites are a cynical lot. Opportunism is bad enough. But when combined with selfishness, it gets only that much more terrible. Goa luck is that we have a class of politicians who change parties like they change clothes. For whom, ideology means nothing other than a tool with which to access the spoils of power. People who believe more in issues of caste and community -- or creating hate -- than a consistent logic that could make ours a better region to live in. The take-over of dissent space is a matter we need to be concerned about too. Goa's main concerns have been built by politicians who believe in polarising people. Thus escaping the need to take on more concrete matters. In the 1960s, it was merger. In the 1980s, up came language. Today we have religion and the politics of religion at center-space. We only realise, as we go along, that all such matters rake up emotions but don't necessarily take us one inch closer to solving much more pressing matters. But why blame politicians alone? Goa's permanent government has weathered change across the centuries. They outlived rulers and rajahs, colonisers and conquistadors, and parties of every single hue that ruled us since the first elections in 1963. They've taken care of their interest well enough, so as to barter off the assets of Goa, invite new conquerors (sometimes it's 1510 repeated all over again), and make sure that they've prospered over the heads of everyone else. While taking care of themselves, they've been able to compromise in a way that leaves a scar on Goa. Bhatkars along the coastal belt now offer token criticism about the concrete jungles they have themselves allowed where coconut trees once ruled. So what if we sell Goan soil at a few rupees a kilo? What if village water has to be sold at paisas? Someone, somewhere is after all making a fast buck. If so many people feel so strongly about the large-scale transfer of land in Goa to speculative sharks, how is it that land deals keep taking place? Some of us have a stake in destroying what we claim to love. As a society, Goa singularly lacks a sense of enlightened self-interest. We lack the kind of politicians who would put their foot down in asserting Goa's long term developmental interests. When two aircrafts scrape each other at Dabolim, it becomes headline news. We blame one another, but nobody asks why Goa's airport has to have all its flights so badly bunched up in the afternoons. * * * Some politicians gain votes blatantly by dividing people; today on grounds of communalism, earlier on caste. Others simply play on ethnicity and build vote-banks who have little or no stake in how Goa shapes up in the future. The problem with Goa is not that we have a two-party setup which dominates local politics, but that these two parties are so much like one another. Superficial, pro-lobby and willing to sell their very voter down the Mandovi river. This of course is not to suggest that the smaller parties are any better, willing as they are to go with any bigger dispensation in power, and wedded to the politics of opportunism once they have even a single legislator elected. But it's the third reason why our discredited politicians will get another lease of life: their manipulation skills are second to none. Not only are we easily divided, and, in some cases, easily purchasable, but we are easily fooled too. Campaign groups are sprouting like mushrooms in the monsoons. How many of these are meant to primarily play a political game, and help one or the other politician discredit some rival? Today, it's easy to blame an Aires Rodrigues for a campaign-fiasco. But who were the politicians behind him, echoing every allegation and raising the tempo? Everyone seems to be conveniently forgetting that. In Goa, old dogs do learn new tricks. Unless the citizen sees through these, the voice being raised by the citizen is likely to come to nought. We need to recognise how Goa has been ruled for centuries by dividing its people. And every generation finds its own way to hoodwink those being continually taken for a ride. Till we wake up to that reality, history will surely repeat itself. ENDS Published earlier in Herald, Goa