What’s happening in Sancoale?

A low down on what's made news in the state including the protests against Bhutani, the Fontainhas fights and Porvorim's plight.

Hi folks,

We meet again after yet another eventful week in Goa, albeit one that saw many of Goa’s politicians — especially those affiliated with the BJP — get busy in the Maharashtra elections scheduled for next month.

But back home, things are not all rosy and in fact, there’s much to shine light upon. So let’s get right to it.

What’s happening in Sancoale?

Bhutani Acqua Eden Goa

Well, for one, there’s a meeting scheduled today at 3pm outside the office of the Village Panchayat of Sancoale to show solidarity with ex-sarpanch of the village Premanand Naik, who is on a fast-unto-death until permissions for the controversial Bhutani project are revoked by the panchayat. But how did it come to this? 

As you may have heard, the village of Sancoale has been a hub of activity this week, attracting the attention of everybody, except, it would seem, those in government, at the helm of affairs, and at the village panchayat. 

The long-running protest against the project found renewed vigour after the Sancoale panchayat, in a meeting held last week, decided to defer a decision on whether to revoke the construction licence issued to the Bhutani Infra (Parmesh Construction Company Ltd) for its super luxury mega project on the hill in Sancoale. 

This, they said, was because the panchayat is seeking legal opinion on the reply that Bhutani has filed to their show cause notice, which gave them seven days to reply, failing which the construction licence would be revoked. 

But that’s just the theory part of the story. In reality, the story is that the panchayat—that is, the ruling side consisting of seven (out of eleven panchas), along with the secretary—is in no mood to proceed with withdrawing the construction licence and has been dragging its feet on acting against the company. 

Sample this: on the day of the meeting, villagers and activists gathered at the panchayat hall to observe how the panchayat would act on the decision. Unnerved by their presence, at least four of the panch members, including the sarpanch and deputy sarpanch, walked out of the meeting. 

With no decision forthcoming, the ex-sarpanch of the village, Premanand Naik, began an indefinite hunger strike that he promised to withdraw only if the village panchayat revokes the licence for the project. 

Naik’s hunger strike has shone the spotlight on the attitude of the panchayat and its secretary. The members of the ruling side have assiduously stayed away from the panchayat office, outside which Naik is on his fast-unto-death, while the secretary—actually a gram sevak officiating as the secretary—Orville Vales has been stonewalling questions about his and the panchayat’s role in first granting and now delaying revoking the licences that never should have been given in the first place. It even included a clash between the officiating secretary and the Congress delegation, besides also an almost physical duel between the same aforementioned Orville Vales and Rama Kankonkar, which resulted in a complaint against Vales that he used a casteist slur against Kankonkar during the altercation. 

It is incidents like these that throw light on the dark niches where our elected representatives and the bureaucrats that report to them really live. Despite all the bluster, it is situations like these that allow us to see who our public representatives really are. Where is panchayat minister Mauvin Godinho? Where are the rest of the MLAs of Mormugao taluka? The sarpanch, the deputy sarpanch, and ruling members. The entire ruling machinery could have acted differently if they wanted to. Instead, they are giving excuses, delaying a decision, and instead hiding behind technicalities and the so-called letter of the law to try and justify their action. 

It is a strategy that has been tried and tested. Be it at the time of the Tiracol golf course project, the Vanxim island project, the Aldeia de Goa project in Bambolim that gave rise to the GBA movement, or the Carmona Raheja project. It is the local panchayat that is the slowest to withdraw its approvals. It is the people who finally force the panchayat’s (and the government’s) hand. 

Will this time be any different? Time will tell. Much will depend on how things play out, beginning with the planned protest this afternoon. 

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Fontainhas outpouring

Privacy Please. Photo by Suban Shaikh on Unsplash

The senior folk of Fontainhas, the capital city’s heritage neighbourhood, have been up in arms this week. After legendary stories of how a certain Aloo Gomes Pereira used to hurl stuff at tourists outside his home for photoshoots, making a noise, or just being there, things went up a notch over the past two weeks, leading to an altercation between Pereira and a pair of tourists who decided to fire back. 

Since then, the residents have met local MLA Atanasio Monserrate, who visited them and later called on the Mayor Rohit Monserrate to air their grievances and call for some measures to be put in place. For now, though, a meeting has been scheduled sometime in the coming week wherein possible solutions could be thrashed out. 

I completely empathise with the residents’ grievances. No one should be made to live with the daily rumpus that is Instagrammers and the clippety-clop of their high heels on the tarmac (not really, but you get the point). It’s not something limited to Fontainhas alone. The havoc that Instagram has wrecked on the ‘maddani’ trees of Parra needs no elaboration. Overtourism is a problem, not just in Goa but across the world.

Frankly, though, it is quite uncertain what kind of measures can be put in place that will work only against tourists and not against local residents and patrons of businesses in the neighbourhood.
It is easy to say we are not against tourism but against noisy tourists, but when it comes to drawing a line in the sand, that’s where things start to get fuzzy. 

But there’s even more to it. If you dig a little deeper, you see that Aloo Gomes Pereira is himself a tourism industry stalwart and has been instrumental in bringing tourists to Goa since the 1970s. He served as Chief Operating Officer of TCI (Travel Corporation of India), now known as TBi Holidays, for 23 years and in the overall hotel industry for 30+ years, handling charters and Goa, and played an instrumental role in promoting Goa as a charter destination, working closely with international operators.

Things have come full circle then. Back then, tourism was only happening outside the fishermen's homes and along the coastal villages. Now it’s happening outside his home. As they say in Britain, you can’t hunt with the hounds and run with the hares. 

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Porvorim sludgefest

Work on the Porvorim elevated corridor (flyover) that began at the beginning of this year has picked up pace, and now, with the monsoons (hopefully) behind us, the work will only expand. And the results of the lack of preparedness are there for all to see. For one, the Goa government had promised that alternative routes would be made available before the diversions were effected. 

Instead, we can see, these alternative routes can hardly be called ‘roads’ and only serve to kick up dust. The question that must be asked is: why weren’t they readied and hotmixed before the work began?

And what of the construction manners of the contractor? I remember that when the Panaji Atal Sethu was being built, the construction sites were neat and tidy. Passing vehicles were not made to drive through dust and sludge, and neither did they occupy as much public space either. Their precast yards were located in Dhargal and not in the Guirim fields, as is now the case. 

Now it’s just one large dust cloud right from Guirim (where the fields have also been destroyed) right up to the start of the Mandovi bridge. Surely there was a better way?

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Chief Secretary escapade 

As you are probably aware, Goa’s Chief Secretary, Puneet Kumar Goel, has been transferred from Goa. His transfer order came late last week, and as such, a month and a half after his purchase of an allegedly illegal bungalow built in what was once a paddy field at Panarim, Aldona came to light. 

In doing so, he joins a list of central officers who have left Goa in ignominy—the former Director General of Police Jaspal Singh, of Pooja Sharma fame, and former DIG of Goa A Koan, who was transferred out of Goa after a drunken visit to a nightclub in north Goa where he allegedly misbehaved with a woman. 

Unlike the other two, however, Goel’s story is not finished yet. He is now a respondent in a petition filed before the Bombay High Court in Goa. Based on a petition filed by Direndra Phadte and José Marie Miranda The Bombay High Court at Goa has issued notices to Goel, among other respondents, in a petition seeking action against the illegally built bungalow that he bought. The seller, Cyril Mendonça, will also have to answer how he built the bungalow in the paddy field in the first place. 

And finally… 

Updates from the picket lines

• It was a temporary respite for the people of Siolim and Oxel, who won one of the many battles they are facing after the project proponent, whose construction threatens the Oxel spring construction, has agreed to pause his construction until an inspection by the TCP and the Water Resources Department can assess the possible impact of the construction on the spring. It’s not a victory, just yet. But certainly a step in the right direction, especially for the campaigners and other well-meaning people in Siolim and beyond who have been fighting to save their spring. 

• The Save Old Goa Action Committee this week met the Chief Minister and handed over a letter with more than 8,000 signatures to rescind permissions granted for several projects, including farmhouses, a road touching the chapel of St. Francis Xavier, and land conversion within the village panchayat of Old Goa, in the vicinity of the Chapel of Our Lady of the Mount, among other projects.
  The number of people who have signed has crossed 15,000—all of which have been submitted to the government for action.

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That’s all I have for you this week. Hope you enjoyed reading this week’s edition of my newsletter as much as I did writing it. Make sure you interact, comment or write in, should you have something, anything to say.

As always, please share and help spread the word. Until next week, then. Tchau!