Hartman De Souza's book *Eat
Dust: Mining and Greed in Goa*,
released recently, chronicles
the worst of the mining years
in Goa and comes at a time when
the industry finds itself at
the crossroads
Devika Sequeira
The idea that a hill just disappeared left me fuzzy-headed.
How does one come to terms with the deliberate destruction,
in peacetime, of agricultural practices and the everyday life
of people whose only crime is that they live here? Or the
wasteful hacking of trees, the seismic upheaval of mud, the
conscienceless blasting of aquifers? -- from *Eat Dust: Mining
and Greed in Goa* by Hartman De Souza; published by Harper
Collins
The upheaval in the years preceding and following the peak in
mining in Goa was indeed seismic. Three years after the
September 2012 ban, iron ore mining is far from even a modest
restart. And it isn't the non-profit Goa Foundation’s
petition against the renewal of 88 leases that's holding up
the horses (as the BJP MLAs would have us believe), but the
crash in iron ore prices globally. The ugly spat between
Goa's biggest mining major Sesa Goa and the truckers
currently is a portent of things to come.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar who used the
mining 'crisis' to turn the pool of
mining-dependent into government-dependent and
consequently harnessed their votes in the last
year's Lok Sabha election has read the signals
correctly: Goa needed to look beyond mining to
other avenues of job creation. The global recession
in the mining industry could drag on for years, he
said in Ponda recently, warning that a recovery
could be a long time coming.
If you take the road to Rivona via Cawrem these days, you
could drive for miles accompanied by nothing but silence and
sweltering heat, passing only the occasional vehicle. A
little over three years ago, it was impossible to negotiate
this stretch of road without feeling the weight and menace of
marauding mining operators, with thousands of trucks lined up
and the visibly expanding scars on the landscape.
For those like Hartman De Souza whose family lives and runs a
farm "where once all was verdant" the land would in no time
turn into "burnished orange deserts" as the mining got more
intense in the five concessions operating between Maina and
Cawrem.
Part memoir, part travelogue, part reportage, *Eat Dust* covers
the crucial years of the super boom in Goa's mining industry
starting 2006 and peaking frenziedly in 2010-2011.
"I saw this chronicle as a factual blow-by-blow account of
what actually happened on the ground -- left behind like
photographs in monochrome and sepia. Only when there was
nothing left here, except the pockmarked ravages of open-cast
mining, would everybody know how this part of Goa had been
upended in a frenzy fuelled by greed," he writes.
Theatre personality, teacher and journalist, De Souza says he
wanted to speak "for the earth’s injured voice" and in so
doing he spares none of the players: not the politicians, not
the mining mafia -- and not even the local media.
It chronicles the complicity of politicians such as Digambar
Kamat and the gamut of officials who were more than willing
to facilitate the illegalities ("in the Age of Greed, the
forest officials couldn't see the forest for the ore") and
the quick turnabout of his successor, Manohar Parrikar. It
notes with the advantage of hindsight, the remarkable "growth
(as in wealth) stories" of Joaquim Alemao, Dinar Tarcar, the
Timblos -- and many others indicted by the Shah Commission
for illegal mining.
It also talks of the rarely spoken of 'role of the
media' -- in this instance, a particular editor of
a regional daily, better known for his brand of
made-to-order journalism. "Within months of handing
the Catholic population of Goa to the BJP on a
platter," the man jumped ship and went to work for
a publication owned by one of the biggest mining
companies, De Souza writes.
Is mining in Goa at the crossroads? Only temporarily perhaps.
Were international prices or iron ore to rebound, so would
the industry. But till then, it is only the small players who
will feel the weight of the recession, not the big-timers
whose ill-gotten profits have already been funnelled into
real estate, hotels, company shares -- and more recently in
starting new media ventures and even investing in a football
team.
*Eat Dust* is not the personal anguish of its writer
alone. It is a lament for Goa and the class of
politicians and unconscionable people it has been
saddled with who drive the state's agenda. Whether
mining resumes or not, this document of those
shameful years will remain.
END
This article first appeared in the Times of India on Jan 4,
2016
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/From-verdant-lands-to-burnished-deserts/articleshow/50430936.cms
