<The verdict was now loud and clear: that Panjim was no more a dream city, it resembled more like an obstacle course full of trenches and water blocks and its inadequate infrastructure had made even a brief spell a nightmare for its residents; that Parrikar was a good and an efficient leader otherwise but his over-obsession in creating the 'IFFI' infrastructure in a 'jiffy' had cost the city and its residents dearly.> [Sandeep Heble, June 24]
I distinctly remember that when IFFI was first mooted in mid-2003, I found it rather very strange that Manohar Parrikar was bandying about one transportation project after another instead of talking about plans for festival related infrastructure. Thus we began to hear about a ropeway project to link Aguada with Campal, a skybus to connect Mapusa and Panjim, renting luxury buses and even building a floating theatre complex . Then I found that 20 years ago when CHOGM was held in Goa a lot of attention had been paid to transportation projects like a four lane boulevard, helipads, boat jetties etc. I tried to get the government to shift its focus for IFFI infrastructure by highlighting these issues in letters to HERALD and even a full fledged op-ed article. Then everything seemed to go under ground. There was no word at all about the government's plans. But way out in Ribandar work began on a small parallel Patto bridge and the Panjim Patto traffic island began to get a facelift etc. Neighbours spoke of a new road coming up in the Merces area (something we had originally heard about vaguely from our builder in 2001 but never gave it another thought). All this was supposed to be in connection with SFX which coincided with IFFI. Then all hell broke loose. The work on the Panjim Parallel Patto bridge started, the fourlaning of DB Marg began, ... and even a small hill behind our colony in Ribandar got demolished in 60 days flat for the new NH4 bypass to Old Goa. This road was even surfaced to some basic extent. So the obsession with transportation was alive and well after all! In the run up to IFFI, a new idea was floated by Parrikar. This was to have free cinema on the beach at Miramar and a couple of other places in Goa. Initially "plasma screens" were mentioned but this was quite far fetched given the size that was being talked about. I attacked this idea too in a couple of letters in HERALD. But the beach cinema idea did go through thanks to the hijacking of IFFI programs from the Centre by Parrikar and his government. He went further to block traffic on DB Marg for IFFI. This combination of free beach cinema at Miramar and blocked DB Marg reportedly resulted in utter traffic chaos in interior areas of Panjim. When DB Marg was freed for normal traffic we discovered it was up and down like a micromini roller coaster thanks to "innovative" features like "table tops" expressly built for IFFI. We thought that the transverse drains had been taken care of in fourlaning DB Marg. To our utter horror we found that these sections of the arterial road had to be dug up just before the present monsoon to sort out problems with them. Now from all accounts the spell of heavy rain has turned DB Marg into a regular river competing with the Mandovi for shock-and-awe value!The charm of Panjim is going to be lost with perpetual work on DB Marg (from Parallel Patto bridge to Miramar Circle and even beyond) its major sea facing feature. For the life of me, I dont know what the all fired hurry in fourlaning DB Marg in 2004 was when the drainage problem would prove so tricky. It required careful planning and sytematic implementation giving adequate time. In the aftermath of the one-monsoon test, it seems like a huge mistake as Sandeep Heble has observed and Parrikar as an IIT trained engineer who reportedly spent many late nights supervising IFFI works should own up to it instead of trying to pass the buck on to lower level functionaries. The bottom line is: I am really mystified by the quality of our political leadership which has no compunction in begging for votes and then riding rough shod over their people like this. Politicians do seem to be drawn to transportation (and land) projects like moths to a flame. In a small footnote, I would also question the capabilities and motivation of our met people (at Dabolim and Panjim) who apparently dont even communicate routinely with each other directly but have to get the information (e.g of the 'cyclone' a couple of months ago) from the central pool in Delhi to which one or the other has itself contributed. They have to create a critical mass and jointly alert the media to issue advance warnings to potentially affected citizens so that sensible precautionary measures can be taken to avoid the serious predicament of people like Sandeep Heble.