By Augusto Pinto
pinto...@gmail.com
Consistent with Hartman De Souza's background in
theatre, Eat Dust* is a very dramatic book about
the devastations that mining has caused in Goa. It
reads like a documentary in print, for his
descriptions of landscapes before and after mining;
and encounters with people feel like a camera is
recording what he is doing. At the same time, his
style is full of adjectives and metaphors that aim
to persuade you to think his way.
For us in Goa the basic story of the degradation caused by
mining is quite familiar, but Hartman adds a personal touch
to it as he weaves his sister Cheryl's fight against five
powerful mine-owners who wanted to devastate her farm in
Cawrem, Sanguem taluka, into the narrative. Along with this
are struggles of other mining activists with the governments
who were totally bought out by the mining lobby.
Although I get the feeling that the audience for *Eat Dust*
are Indians outside Goa, the book is a great primer to the
people of Goa because it does not just focus on mining but on
the social and political and historical context in which the
mining is carried out. Hartman is pretty bitter about the
role of the elite in Goa and about the way they have remained
silent spectators.
To understand this Hartman points his fingers at
not just mining and the infrastructure and the
tourism and real estate lobbies but he regards the
greatest danger of all to be "consumerism". What
that means is all of us who are hooked on to the
good things of life all of which cost money, money
which has to be got somehow or the other to feed
our greed. The poor who sell their land to
mine-owners for a pittance become part of the
problem because to survive they then buy trucks to
transport ore for a livelihood and now have a stake
in the destruction of the environment. The middle
classes don't have the time to care much one way or
the other.
So what Hartman is saying is that while the demoniacal greed
of the mine-owners is definitely deadly, the common people
also have no clue as to what they are doing while the
intellectual class (you and I) who may be able to see what is
happening have all also let Goa down.
The author is quite bitter with the approach taken by NGOs
such as Goa Foundation of Claude Alvares who have used the
legal route to stop the illegalities of mining. By the end
of the book he seems to be accusing Claude to have sold out
by abandoning the ideal of stopping mining and of being
willing to accept that mining is okay if regulated and if the
money goes into the State's coffers. I think this is a bit
unfair as the Shah Commission which the author praises for
its role in stopping mining for a while would never have been
appointed without the ground work done by Goa Foundation.
Among the institutions which are seen to be playing
a dubious role in the rape of Goa is the Catholic
Church. It does not raise its considerable voice
and allows the Gavdes who are the ones most
directly affected by mining to suffer. And nobody
seems to care about the long term loss of a basic
necessity of man through mining: water.
But what is done? Hartman advocates force.
Hartman's family who bravely try to display the courage of
their convictions by literally putting their bodies on the
line by for instance chaining themselves to the gate of a
mine in Cawrem discover that such attempts are too feeble to
work. His octogenarian mother Dora participated in this
incredibly crazy protest. However the problem was that this
was not properly prepared and neither was it widely known
thanks to the stranglehold the mining lobby have over the
media. Maybe Hartman has a point but unless there is a huge
mass opposing mining such physical displays are easy to get
rid of. And there are lots of Right wing actors who will be
happy to disrupt mass mining protests.
At the end of the day this is a book that needs to
be distributed read and discussed widely in Goa.
Right now mining may not resume at the ruinous rate
it was formerly used to, because the demand for the
low grade ore of Goa has gone down and so have the
prices for this commodity. But there is no saying
that it won't resume in future -- and then what?
--
Eat Dust: Mining and Greed in Goa
Hartman de Souza
Pp 288. Rs 350
HarperCollinsIndia
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