--------------------------------------------------------------------------- **** http://www.GOANET.org **** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5th Annual Konkan Fruit Fest Promenade, D B Bandodkar Road, Panaji, Goa
16-18, May 2008 http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2008-May/073789.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saddened, disheartened, disillusioned, unable even to open Goanet and read its contents without the heart lurching forward in disappointment and the stomach knotting in anger. On the one hand, we want to drive away foreigners who have bought homes legally in Goa. We want to confiscate their flats and auction them off. As an itinerant worker of the 21st century I cannot imagine the same being done to me. On the other hand, we have pulled up hapless people from remote villages, assaulted them, evicted them from their homes and sent them packing. All because they were not Goans but still happen to be citizens of India. As a person who has to commute between Chennai, Mumbai and Goa on any given day, week or weekend, as someone who has thought of buying a flat in these metros to cut down on commute time, I cannot imagine the same being done to me. Then there are the endless agitations and assaults on one project or another. It may truly be that many of these projects will change the socioeconomic fabric of Goa to its detriment, but in which civilised society can a project that has passed through all legal formalities be stopped by people agitating? There have been investments made, someone has perhaps put in their lifetime's savings, offered his first born as collateral, begged and borrowed, only to be thwarted after the fact. Has any financial recompense been offered? I doubt it. We even have respected posters Gadgil and (well)Mario, who want the State to be answerable to the panchayats. How did we ever come to this situation, where even the pretense of democracy has been discarded in the name of "People's movement" and "Saving Goa". What are you saving Goa from? What you have in Goa is absolute anarchy. Marked by the looting and vadalising of other people and people's assets. Yes, we have problems in Goa, problems of migrant labour, lack of conservation, infrastructure, the list maybe endless. But what we have now is anarchy. Poor Kamat obviously never heard of Teddy Roosevelt, who would have advised him to "speak softly but carry a big stick". Kamat forgot his stick as CM. selma