------------------------------------------------------------------------ * G * O * A * N * E * T **** C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Enjoy your holiday in Goa. Stay at THE GARCA BRANCA from November to May There is no better, value for money, guest house. Confirm your bookings early or miss-out
Visit http://www.garcabranca.com for details/booking/confirmation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ROOTING FOR GOA: THE FRUITS ARE BEGINNING TO SHOW By Miguel Braganza [EMAIL PROTECTED] Goa has been known as 'Aparant, a region without boundaries. The golden sunsets, the golden ripe mangoes, cashews and jackfruits and, perhaps, the gold bedecked women attending the weddings during the long summer season, moved some poet to call Goa a golden land or Sunaparant. Like El Dorado, Goa draws people to itself. More than that, it draws its sons and daughter back to their native soil. One such son-of-the-soil to return to Goa is Pandurang G. Kakodkar or, simply, PGK. A former Chairman of the State Bank of India (SBI) and the Goa Public Service Commission (GPSC) and a current member of the Board of many prestigious companies like MCX and Sesa Goa, PGK has returned to his native land with a one point agenda: to draw funds for planting and nurturing a million trees in Goa. His first step was to get his former employer, the SBI, to fund tree planting along the Miramar by-pass. People refuse to accept that the huge trees along this road are just six years old, but that is the truth. PGK ensures that the trees are pruned and watered during summer. He also has manure applied to these road side trees. The Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP), the SBI and, recently, the Botanical Society of Goa have joined hands with PGK to make things grow. He is always there in the forefront. It is not for nothing that the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (MACCIA) awarded him with the Dr. G.D. Deshmukh award recently. PGK, as the vice-chairman of the Western Ghats Kokum Foundation, is actively involved in the greening of the Goa University campus and road side tree planting from the Raj Bhavan to Goa Medical College funded by MCX, Sesa Goa and SBI for now. Agriculture and Dr. Hemant Yeshwant Karapurkar have been synonymous for almost half a century in Goa. HYK has been the Director of Agriculture, Project Director of Rural Development Agency, founder chairman of Goa State Horticulture Corporation and chairman of GPSC when the likes of Sanjit Rodrigues, Sandip Jacques, V. M. Prabhudesai and Elvis Gomes were selected into Goa Civil Service. He has been an active member of the Botanical Society of Goa and continues to guide it as its immediate past president. It was during his stint as the president of BSG the the fruit festival of the Sunaparant, the Konkan Fruit Fest, was conceived and given birth in association with the then Panjim Municipal Council under the dynamic and soft-spoken Ashok Mogu Naik. HYK has also served as the founder chairman of the Goa Biodiversity Board and has been a member of the working group on campus greening at Goa University. Fr. Inacio Almeida, sfx, of the Society of Pilar comes from a family of farmers from Curtorim. In addition to his religious work, Fr. Almeida is an avid farmer and social scientist. He has won the Krishi Samrat award for highest sugarcane productivity per hectare in Goa while working on the Society's Dudh Sagar Farm in Collem. If EM technology has become a household name in Goa, lay the blame on Fr. Almeida. Today, he is promoting EM and Jatropha bio-diesel through his Pilar Nature Farm so that Goa can truly be a cleaner and greener place, naturally! Fr. Almeida grows off-season vegetables under polyhouses, flowers, vanilla, areca nut, fertilizer and pesticide-free rice and is forever in search of newer and safer technologies. In his own words, "We eat pesticide-laden vegetables from Belgaum and rush to Belgaum hospitals for treatment." If one wants to eat healthy and live healthy, Fr. Almeida is a good person to turn to. All others can pray to St. Jude, the patron of the hopeless cases. Dr. Ajit Shirodkar was not born in Estado da India Portuguesa simply because the Portuguese did not capture neighbouring Vengurla. Based at Bambolim, this holder of a doctorate in Pharmacology from Purdue University, is every bit a Goan. His one point agenda is to develop and adopt technologies that will restore Goa as the hub of the Konkan. Gopakkapatna was the port of trade with India for those who crossed the Arabian Sea to trade Indian spices for Arab horses. It can now be the hub for trade in mangoes and other fruits of the Konkan. Dr.Shirodkar's primary target as the chairman of the Western Ghats Kokum Foundation (WGKF), of course, is Garcinia indica. His father was involved in the development and marketing of Amrit Kokum, the sweet, purplish pink summer drink made of Bhindam or Kokum. The 'Goa butter' or 'bindnell' is a vegetable fat that is solid at 40 degrees Celsius. It finds application in medicine, cuisine, confectionery and in cosmetics in an increasing health conscious world. The discovery by a biochemist, Dr. John Lowenstein, of the cholesterol balancing and fat suppressing qualities of Hydroxy Citric Acid (HCA) found naturally in Garcinia fruits have only confirmed what the people of Aparant knew when they added 'sol-kodi' to the meal containing fish and even added the 'solam' directly to dishes cooked with fish. Dr. Shirodkar has made his expertise in growing, ripening, grading, packing and marketing of mangoes available to those who care to learn. The 'Compendium on Kokum' was released at GCCI hall earlier this week. Fredrick Noronha is not an agriculture-linked person and was born in far away Brazil. Other than that, he is every bit a Goan, promoting agriculture in Goa. Beginning with the slow dial-up service of VSNL and Goatelecom and moving on to the broadband service and Sify Iways, he has promoted Internet contacts and dissemination of information to link people and technologies. If I have a Internet presence, it is thanks to him. If I write for a newspaper, it is also thanks to him. Rico, as I call him, is persevering to the point of irritation. My experience is that perseverance works more often than not. At the end of the first Konkan Fruit Fest, the Botanical Society of Goa was bankrupt: it had spent beyond its last rupee. As a group we persevered. The Japanese had done that at the end of the World War II. So had the Germans. Both these countries have thriving economies and thriving development of technologies. We saw no reason to think otherwise. Perseverance works. The BSG can vouch for it as it hosts the fourth annual Konkan Fruit Fest along with CCP, WGKF, ICAR, Directorate of Agriculture, RFRS-Vengurla fruit growers and processors at Panaji beginning today. Together Everyone Achieves More. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MIGUEL BRAGANZA is an agriculture officer, who took the unusual step of quitting his government job and opting to be a horticulture consultant, write on the issues that are close to his heart, and otherwise contribute positively to society. He is known to many who studied, like him, at Britto's and Xavier's in Mapusa and was in the scouting movement in the 'seventies. GOANET-READER WELCOMES contributions from its readers, by way of essays, reviews, features and think-pieces. We share quality Goa-related writing among the 7000-strong readership of the Goanet/Goanet-news network of mailing lists. 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