Roland Francis: " Tony, have there been attempts by the Govt to grab communidade land let?s say in your own Moira experience."
Roland not any major attempts during my tenures, but way back, the government acquired a large tract of land for the "20 Point Programme". The Committee was literally bulldozed into granting the land to the government. Today, there is a glorified slum there. The plots are supposed to be of 100 Sq. m dimensions and they are supposed to be one room tenements, but there are inadequate roads within the colony and many of the dwellers have built storied buildings there. The local name for the place is "Fukot Nagar" - FreeTown. This is an eye sore and in the view of some villagers a curse to the village. Every now and then the Panchayat lays down tarred roads in comunidade lands without any by your leave from the Comunidade. For your information, if I am not mistaken, Assagao paid around Rs. 5000 two years back as Jono. This I came to know through casual talk with one of the committee members. Assagao today, is not what it was years ago during your time Roland. It has completely transformed itself along with a few other villages like Sangolda, or Porvorim. There are a great many restaurants there, some of them gourmet restaurants. It has a lot of 'birthing centres' where women can have deliveries in water. There are all sorts of Yoga centres and clinics. The roads, even the interior ones are hot mixed. It has a school, a higher Secondary School, an Arts, Science and Commerce college which offers studies to the post graduate level. It also has an engineering college set up by the Pilar Fathers on land donated by the Assagao Comunidade. So today, you would probably get a couple of bottles of imported whiskey for the Jono that you receive if your name is still registered with the Comunidade. For those who do not know, every Joneiro has to 'renew' his registration in the month of May every year to be eligible to receive the Jono. Something akin to the journey to Bethlehem made by the Holy Family. As for the "mezzache poixe" Every committee member is entitled to a sitting fee for managing committee meetings. But I haven't claimed any for the past six years and neither have the other committee members. In fact we incur out of pocket expenses in the form of phone calls, transport to Mapusa/ Panjim, printing, a lot of which we do on our own machines. The comunidade has a desktop and a printer, but it is open only on Fridays because the Escirvao (Clerk deputed by the Administrator) serves 7 comunidades and comes to Moira only on Friday. So if there is some urgent communication to be done, we do it from our home machines. Hope this gives some insight into the Comunidades. Tony de Sa