Smegma churning MoF¨ç˚´®ß.
Venantius J Pinto
On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 8:16 AM, V M wrote:
> http://www.outlookindia.com/article/a-flight-of-the-piggish/295991
>
> One of former US president Bill Clinton’s favourite quotes is: “You
> can put wings on a pig, but that doesn't make it an eagle.” The
> punchline, though, doesn’t seem to apply to successive governments
> drawn from Goa’s tight-knit political elite, who continue to bulldoze
> through an astonishingly ill-conceived billion-dollar “second airport”
> project in the north of India’s smallest state. Despite the fact that
> outrageous scandals emerge every time the project is submitted to any
> kind of scrutiny, Mopa continues to rumble to take-off.
>
> The latest head-shaking moment came last week when the state’s
> undersecretary (finance expenditure), Sushma Kamat, raised red flags
> of alarm when CM Laxmikant Parsekar’s cabinet sent her Mopa’s draft
> terms of agreement for approval. It turned out that the winning
> concessionaire would get 232 acres of prime land (out of the project’s
> total 2,271 acres) “for unrestricted use for commercial development”,
> which could be undertaken without any prior approval of the town
> and country planning board.
>
> According to the cabinet-approved terms of agreement, if the project
> is cancelled for any reason, all that land—mostly seized from
> reluctant farmers and small landowners—would remain with the
> concessionaire, along with the license to build without approvals. If
> the project is delayed—as all projects in Goa always are—the
> government pays the concessionaire a hefty Rs 3.6 lakh per day until
> resolution.
>
> Stating her case admirably mildly, Ms Kamat noted that “unrestricted
> land use may be used for commercial activities which may not be
> beneficial to the state and its people. Handing over such a land mass
> to a private entity who may develop it for whatever purpose may create
> third-party rights without adequate compensation to the state
> government”. But her complaints were ignored, and the Goa cabinet
> passed the terms of agreement anyway.
>
> The logic for Mopa has always been strained. In order to get the
> initial go-ahead, the state government had to persuade the Centre to
> relax its informal rule that no airport would come up less than 150 km
> from another. Its proponents have never been able to explain why
> North Goa simply can’t use the brand-new greenfield airport nearing
> completion at Sindhudurg, just 100 km from Goa’s border. Now, there
> will ostensibly be three international airports lined up in a row
> close to each other.
>
> In 2007, the state sought the expert opinion of the UN’s
> specialised agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization
> (ICAO), on the matter. The findings were unequivocal: Mopa and Dabolim
> aren’t viable together. Unhappy with the UN aviation arm’s disapproval
> of its pet billion-dollar project, the state's political elite turned
> to their favourite crony consultant, the Louis Berger Group. This is
> the same notorious concern which earlier this year admitted in a US
> court to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying
> approximately $9,76,630 in cash to ex-Goa CMs Digamber Kamat and
> Churchill Alemao to take control of a Rs 1,000-crore water-supply and
> sewage project funded by the Japan International Co-operation Agency
> (JICA).
>
> The same James McClung of Louis Berger, who confessed to paying bribes
> in Goa, became the direct overseer of the Mopa airport project. What
> the ICAO analysis had found strictly unviable now became viable, at
> least on paper. The Goa government has paid Louis Berger at least Rs
> 14 crore so far (despite its tainted legal record, the group remained
> the Mopa consultant) to push the project closer to development.
>
> There are still some hurdles to be crossed before the first scheduled
> flights take off from what is still a pastoral, wooded plateau at
> Mopa, where scores of species of birds can easily be spotted in a
> single morning. There are petitions before the National Green Tribunal
> contesting the hasty environmental impact assessment reports
> submitted by the government, and other permissions still to be
> granted.
>
> But Goa’s people find themselves fighting a growing demographic
> imbalance, and a rapacious construction lobby advancing fast on
> several fronts at the same time. Mopa is backed by the state’s
> politicians as well as the directorate of civil aviation. As proven
> last week with the egregiously flawed Terms of Agreement, that
> combination is powerful enough to get its way.
>