The protests have begun. The countdown? Not quite
What will it take for a protest to work in a BJP govt? A university scandal, the River Princess and more in this week's edition
Hi folks,
Welcome to yet another edition of Gerard’s Gazette, a weekly newsletter, in which I attempt to break down the events of the week gone by, offer a bit of context, as well as a dose of news behind the news.
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It’s been a packed week from protests to scandals and more protests so let’s get right to it.
The protests have begun. The countdown? Not quite
On Thursday evening hundreds gathered for an impromptu protest to demand the sacking of Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane for alleged transgressions (to put it mildly) in two of the several portfolios that he has charge of – Town and Country Planning and Forests. You can read (and sign) the whole petition here.
As expected, the government didn’t even flinch at the protest. As they began their march towards Altinho to hand over the petition to the chief minister at his official residence, the protesters were stopped by the police posse, who ultimately allowed a handful of protesters to head uphill and inward the petition at the chief minister’s office. The Chief Minister himself wasn’t ‘home’ at the time.
Needless to say, a statement was made. The question now is, what exactly is the statement that was made?
That the protesters are a small motley bunch of activist types who can be conveniently ignored, as Vishwajit Rane seemed to suggest in statements made the day after the protests when he said the government isn’t run based on the protests.
For one, the protest gathering could have -- and should have -- been larger. More people should have turned up. For reference, the 2007 GBA protest against the Regional Plan 2011 had a reported gathering of 10,000 people. But that was organised differently.
It was the culmination of months of smaller meetings at the village level, an awareness campaign explaining all that was wrong with the RP 2011, the formation of village groups who coordinated at the local level (there even was a UK branch of the Save Goa Movement), transport was arranged, announcements were made at churches, etc., and people responded in large numbers. Back then, much of that was necessary because there was no social media to speak of.
By contrast, the current protest was called for a few days before the protest. The first call was made by activist Swapnesh Sherlekar via his YouTube channel, followed by an appeal by Goa Foundation’s Director Claude Alvares to take part in the protest. Both appeals were made solely via social media, spread via WhatsApp, etc.
The thing is, in the situation we currently are, neither method is guaranteed to work.
For example, massive organised protests against double tracking of the South Western Railway line between Castlerock (Karnataka) and Vasco da Gama (via the Mollem sanctuary) yielded little in the way of government response. Relief ultimately came from the Supreme Court and the court-appointed Central Empowered Committee. A similarly massive (but impromptu) protest against statements made by former Goa RSS chief Subhash Velingkar didn’t force the government to budge either. Protests by parents against the school reopening have not made the government move an inch.
On the other hand, there have been protests that the government has responded to. For example, the huge protests that were seen in Pernem around 2022 in response to the TCP Department’s move to draw up a ‘zoning plan’ for Pernem forced the government to scrap the zoning plans. (It is another matter that the same changes that were intended to be brought in via the zoning plan made their way through via the 17(2) conversions.)
Similarly, protests against the Bhumiputra Adhikarini Bill, that weren’t really all that massive, still forced the government to allow the bill to lapse, while protests against the Bhutani project, at least, got the government to say that permissions would be withdrawn (although they didn’t ultimately withdraw them).
What then makes the government respond to some protests and ignore others? For one, I can say for sure that while there’s no sure-fire formula to make the government take notice -- it often boils down to who’s protesting, for what cause and whether or not their favourite business interests are involved or not.
If the protests are massive and made up primarily of members hailing from the BJP's core constituency of voters, like that of the Pernem zoning plan, the protesters are likely to have some success. That’s also true if the protests are not really massive, like the protests against the Bhumiputra Bill.
Then there are the taxi protests – organised by those who operate tourist taxis from Mopa – who had to call off their strike, without much success despite consisting primarily of members made up of the core constituency. But now there’s a business interest or competing business interests involved.
The bottom line is that, under BJP rule (unlike Congress rule, during which agitations like the anti-RP 2011, the FORCE agitation for grants to English medium schools and the anti SEZ agitation all succeeded), if you have to succeed, you have to be really big, broad-based and persistent with your demand if you are to have any chance of success.
No one needed a special invitation to turn up for the protest at Panjim, but at the same time, it would have made a big difference if more people had appealed to others to join in. For example, the petitions filed against the conversions were filed by several organisations -- the Goa Bachao Abhiyan, the Khazan Society of Goa, the Pilerne Citizens Forum, and the Federation of Rainbow Warriors -- are all listed as petitioners in the various petitions that were clubbed together and heard jointly by the High Court. If each of them were to make a public appeal to attend the protest, it would possibly have been bigger than it was.
It doesn't even have to be an appeal. If a person standing in society publicly says s/he is going to be there, others are automatically encouraged to follow suit.
Besides, there were several notable absentees – most prominently, only two of the seven opposition MLAs showed up – both from AAP – and while there was adequate representation from the state’s opposition parties, what was quite notably missing was people from the villages actually affected by the conversion changes. Pernem, Bardez, Tiswadi and Bicholim (Karapur) face the biggest zone changes, but their populations were barely represented.
Nonetheless, there’s a long road ahead, and the onus should not have to be on citizens to ensure something as simple as a corruption-free government. But here we are, and if not us, then who?
How to get a bad name and keep it
It’s been a bad week for Goa University. On Sunday, a local newspaper broke a story that an assistant professor at the university had entered into the cabin of a professor and ‘leaked’ a copy of the paper to a female student – a student with whom he was allegedly intimately involved – who then went on to top the class. The sequence of events reportedly took place around September last year but came to light during a meeting between the vice chancellor and staff of the department of physics and applied sciences.
Word quickly spread, activists filed police complaints against the assistant professor in question, protests by student unions followed and the university’s vice chancellor was forced to say that he was instituting a fact-finding commission whilst insisting that he hadn’t received any complaint that any paper was leaked.
On Friday, the registrar of the Goa University, Sundar Dhuri, lodged a complaint against Assistant Professor Pranav Naik in the physics department for “trespassing and cheating”. Naik was called and appeared for interrogation at the Agassaim Police Station on Saturday. Simultaneously, the Goa government too instituted an inquiry commission headed by former High Court judge R M S Khandeparkar to get to the bottom of the matter.
Whether justice will be done or the matter will be buried after the media attention dies down remains to be seen, but what really struck me as odd was that the entire focus seemed to be (at least from the vice chancellor’s statements) on whether the papers were leaked or not, which seemed to be completely ignoring the elephant in the room – the fact that an assistant professor was allegedly involved in an intimate relationship with a student, which, to my mind, was the bigger scandal. Consensual or not, there should be no place for such ‘conflicts’, especially given the unequal power dynamics of an academic setting.
The various investigations will hopefully get to the bottom of at least the paper leak part of the allegation, but as to the relationship part, given that there is no ‘crime’ involved, at least none that has come to light so far, don’t be surprised if it is brushed under the carpet. Yet, it remains the most plausible reason that can explain the ‘motive’ behind “trespass and cheating” that took place in the school of physics.
The other thing that has the university rattled is the Goa government’s decision to ‘privatise’ the university’s indoor stadium, named after the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Chief Minister Pramod Sawant announced that the stadium, built by the Goa government for the Lusofonia Games 2013 and later handed over to the Goa University before being taken back, was being handed to a private company, Dome Entertainment Private Pvt Ltd, for 10 years. The deal is expected to earn the government revenue of about Rs 25.5 lakh every month, while a clause in the deal would allow the government to use the stadium whenever the need arises at no cost.
Teachers, students and civil society are up in arms. Not only is the state-of-the-art stadium that can be used to host international matches of basketball, volleyball, table tennis and other Olympic sports used more for non-sporting events, but its leasing out to a private university threatens the sanctity of the university.
A stadium built to enhance the facilities (and thereby the ranking) of the university will instead now be used for god knows what.
Lost in the middle are the interests of the university that for long has been trying to build a name for itself as a serious place for learning and perhaps get itself a better ranking. Instead, the only thing it seems to be getting right now is a bad name.
Princess of the tar sands
If you are of a certain vintage, you will certainly remember the M V River Princess, an ore carrier belonging to Salgaocar Mining Industries, the mining company belonging to the Anil Salgaocar Group (different from the V M Salgaocar Group belonging to Shrinivas and Dattaraj).
The derelict ore carrier broke anchor due to cyclonic winds and ran aground at Candolim Beach in June 2000, where it remained for twelve whole years until it was finally removed in May 2012.
This week, however, it was back in the news. Salgaocar Mining Industries, which owes the state government Rs 166.41 crore, which was the cost of removing the ‘nuisance’ that it caused, was bestowed with a quantum of relief from the High Court, which ruled that the Tourism Department erred in not giving the guilty party a hearing before determining the quantum to be recovered from them -- estimated to be Rs 166.41 crore.
And so they don’t have to pay the money. For now. Twenty-five years after the company’s negligence resulted in one of Goa’s biggest environmental catastrophes, they still haggle over the extent to which they are responsible. Though, it must be said, they have agreed to pay Rs 20 crore within the next six months if only to prove their bona fides in cooperating with the process. This concession comes even as they challenge the validity of the very law by which the state is empowered to recover money from anyone causing a ‘nuisance’ to Goa’s tourist places.
Lords of the Ruins
And finally, I must highlight a story that might have missed your attention.
Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant was this week felicitated for achieving the distinction of being the longest-serving chief minister of the state. It turns out that since Goa became a state (in 1987), there have not been too many chief ministers who have completed a full term. In fact, the only Chief Minister of the state of Goa (so far) who completed a full term is Digambar Kamat of the Congress, who lasted the full five-year term between 2007 and 2012. Should Sawant complete the full term in 2027, he will earn the distinction of being the only second chief minister to do so. Parrikar lasted for five years between 2000 and 2005, but that was across two separate terms with an election (2002) in between.
But is it just a coincidence that the state’s two longest-serving chief ministers have lorded over what are arguably the two worst periods the state has witnessed when it comes to corruption, misgovernance and a sordid state of affairs?
That’s all I have for you this week. Make sure you comment or write in, should you have something, anything to say.
I would also invite you to contribute via sending in your views, especially on a subject you know something about, and I will be happy to include it as part of the newsletter.
You are also welcome to write in with leads and tip-offs or anything that you think might be interesting enough to include here.
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Until next week, then. Tchau!
This is absolutely true. The worst chief minister we ever had as far as corruption and mis governance is concerned.
Shocking to hear about the owners of River Princess not paying up. Sinquerim Beach was never the same after their wilful neglect. Who can estimate the amount of losses and letting them off the hook sends a signal to all the other shipping companies who probably dump oil on the beaches, making the sand black. A sad reflection of a few rich companies getting away with destruction at the cost of the public and Goa's reputation as a tourist destination, which began to sink with the River Princess.