The Accidental Activist - The Real Goan Village By Venita Coelho
I finally get it! After months of struggling to understand the Regional Plan and its implications, I have finally understood the most important thing of all: what the plan doesn't do. 'Socio-economic planning' was just a bit of a fancy phrase to me. Then I did the 3-day GBA workshop conducted by a team from the Kerala NGO Maitri, which walked us through how to create a proper socio-economic plan for Nachinola Village Panchayat. First up was a simplified questionnaire that a group of youngsters went around the village filling up. When the numbers were crunched, for the very first time I got my real look at what a village in Goa is really all about. We all talk about the Goan village. But the statistics showed in black and white what the ground reality is. Over 11 per cent of the village consists of people over 60. Another 11 per cent of families were headed by widows. Only 2 per cent earned their livelihood from farming. For stability a household needs at least two earning members - which the village fell short of. The demise of farming showed clearly, as did the poverty in the heart of a seemingly prosperous village. No less that 14 per cent of the village still used firewood to cook. As we broke into groups and discussed various sectors like 'Health and Sanitation', 'Water Supply', etc, a picture of the real problems of the village emerged. This was an exercise that helped us put our theorising aside, and which cut through government assumptions and policies and showed us the truth. Socio-economic planning (note how easily the word slips from my lips now!) takes a long hard look at the realities of life in a village. The team from Maitri helped us see the ground reality, map resources, isolate problems, and brainstorm for solutions. All this went into a 5-year plan that outlined simple practical solutions for each issue that had come up. At the end of the three days I sat back stunned, and asked, "Why on earth wasn't this exercise done in every village in Goa before the Regional Plan was made?" Soter D'Souza of the Peaceful Society pointed out that this was their gripe with the Regional Plan. It was all about land and land use - and not about people and the reality of their lives at all. In Moira we have just finished a mammoth mapping exercise of the village, and have done our best to save the heritage of the village by marking 'heritage landscapes', 'forests', 'special zones' etc. But now in hindsight I see just how limited it was. It was all about the land, with nothing about the people who live off the land. How many of them are struggling to survive? How many are without jobs? How many below the poverty line? What are the education levels of the village? Not one of these questions has featured in the entire Regional Plan exercise. Yet without knowing this, what kind of planning can we possibly do? As I write, confusion reigns supreme. Nobody knows whether the last date for submitting plans has been extended. Only about 20 villages have put in their reports on the Regional Plan. If the government at all means it when it says that this is a participatory plan, then it needs to extend the deadline for submitting reports. Further, it should do a capability-building exercise before people are required to analyse and respond to something like the RP2021. Kerala spent crores and years teaching people the tools of planning before the villages did their planning exercises. Here, laymen like me have struggled with maps, pored through the RP2021 and done our best. But our best is an amateur best. If only workshops had been run to train us correctly. Most important of all, if only the government had put an emphasis on socio-economic planning as well, instead of asking us to do a ground reality check of maps that are based on already formulated government policy. Where in this methodology is the space for a village to actually voice its concerns - or to do something about them? Where in all the hoopla is the common man? Where is the exercise to map the real problems of each village, and not just its land? After months of struggle and hours and hours of work given up to the Regional Plan committee, I now realise that we have only done half the job. The other half not only lies undone, it lies unrecognised by a government that claims to be for the common man. Where does that leave us? I would say exactly midway to disaster, a thought clearly voiced by Founder President of the Centre for Policy Research V A Pai Panandikar, who turned down an invitation to be a member of the Goa State Planning Board with the words, "The political priorities being so different from what the people need or desire, there is an increasing dissonance between the priorities of the people and those of the government. This bodes ill for our future." In other words, that planning in Goa is basically a joke. (ENDS) =========================================================================== The above article appeared in the June 2, 2009 edition of the Herald, Goa
