THE rede of Salcete have begun to lock horns once again. It may at first sight appear to be an uneven match. One of the rede is over six feet tall and equally broad and has a long history of engaging in bullfights. The other redo is less than five feet which has not prevented him from attracting hoards of women. In real life, unlike in bullfights, it is not the size of the bull or its pedigree but its tenacity and bravado and sheer brazenness that is the decisive factor in who wins the electoral bull fights. The irony is that this time, neither of the two most combative and ferocious bulls will be facing each other in the Spain of Goa, Benaulim. Churchill Alemao seems to be determined to fight the next general elections yet again from the Navelim constituency where he inflicted a defeat on veteran Congressman Luizinho Faleiro in the last general elections. The bonsai bull, Mickky Pacheco, has apparently decided to shift to the new Nuvem constituency because many of his strongholds and vote banks - such as Betalbatim and Colva - are now part of the Nuvem constituency following delimitation.

THIS IS not about Dr Oscar Rebello. Or about Patricia Pinto. Or for that matter, about Rajan Narayan. But the unfortunate part is that individual, petty egos have always come in the way of both the individual Goans and movements for larger social good breaking down in Goa. This is about how caterpillars in Goa will neither want to become butterflies themselves nor will they permit others to become butterflies. This is about crabs or more specifically Goan crabs not wanting to become lobsters and ensuring that no Goan crab will ever become a lobster. This is about how petty egos frustrate and destroy both the individuals and movements which seek the greatest good of the largest number. This is about how in their obsession with their own petty individual agendas, several Goans sacrifice the larger interest of the community. This is about how petty people play into the hands of unscrupulous politicians. Right from the time of the Opinion Poll, petty egos and petty people with petty agendas have always undermined the larger goals of the Goan people. At the time of Opinion Poll, the oversized ego of Dr Jack Sequeira almost derailed the unity among the minority community and their commitment to preserving the unique and distinct identity of Goa. It is a matter of historical record that Jack Sequeira without consulting his United Goans party colleagues like Loyola Furtado agreed to the option of union territory or merger with Maharashtra instead of the alternatives of merger and full-fledged statehood for Goa which was the demand of the majority of the UG leadership led by Loyola Furtado.

NEITHER Indian National Congress (INC) that led the crucial phase of India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule nor Mahatma Gandhi, who is rightly considered the Father of Indian Nation, showed any interest in the liberation of either the French colonies of Pondicherry or the Portuguese colonies of Goa, Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli. Indeed, right through the independence struggle of India from 1857, which marked the first Indian mutiny against the British till the final phase of the freedom struggle which started on August 8, 1942 with the Quit India Movement, Goa was not on the agenda of either the INC or the leaders of the struggle for independence. Indeed, of all the national leaders who participated in the struggle for Indian independence, it was only the socialist leaders, primarily Ram Manohar Lohia who took any interest in the liberation of Goa from Portuguese colonial rule. This is why Ram Manohar Lohia, who attempted to hoist the Indian National Flag at the Lohia Maidan in Margao on June 18, 1946, is considered the Father of the Goa Revolution that eventually led to the liberation of Goa in 1961.

THE DISTRICT Hospital at Mapusa was completed in all respects two years ago. When we talk about the hospital being completed, we do not speak only of the building of the hospital. The Mapusa District Hospital is fully equipped with state-of -the-art facilities. It has a CT scan which is if anything, su¬perior to that of even the Goa Medical College Hospital.
The Mapusa District Hospital has sophisticated ultrasound systems with colour dopplers. It has state-of-the-art opera¬tion theatres, a central sterile supply department and is fully air-conditioned. The hospital is also fully comput¬erized and has mobile X-ray systems. It is not vulnerable to power fluctuations, unlike the GMC, because an under¬ground cable has been laid from the substation to the Mapusa District Hospital.
Mapusa District Hospital has a sewage treatment plant with an elevated tank platform. It has a morgue, unlike the dys¬functional morgue at Hospi¬cio Hospital. All the beds are in place. It has geysers and water purifiers, which are in short supply even at the Goa Medical College Hospital. All the equipment in the hospi¬tal, including the software and the hardware, have been tested and commissioned. The Hospital built at a cost of over `40 crores more than two years ago has the entire infra¬structure that is needed for it to start admitting patients im¬mediately. In fact it was ready to start functioning two years ago. The only thing that the District Hospital at Mapusa does not have is patients and doctors and nurses and other staff needed for the function¬ing as a full-fledged state-of-the-art public medical facility.

The Chief Minister and his cabinet colleagues have literally been feasting at the expense of the tax payers and the aam admi. Chief Minister Digamber Kamat alone spent over one crore rupees on wining and dining not only visiting VIPs and VVIPs but also his own cabinet colleagues, MLAs belonging to the ruling party and government servants. Between June 1, 2007 and 31st March 2008, Chief Minister Digamber Kamat incurred an expenditure of over Rs37 lakhs on official lunches and dinners for his cabinet colleagues and on kebabs and more for official meetings. In the year 2008-09, he spent an additional Rs37 lakhs and in 2009-10, over 26 lakhs. From April to June, in just three months of the current financial year, Chief Minister Digamber Kamat has spent Rs7 lakhs on wining and dining the aamdaars and the khaasdaars, the bold and the beautiful and the rich and the powerful. If you take into account the expenditure incurred by the Chief Minister and his cabinet colleagues on dinners and lunches and kebabs and more at public expense, the total amount spent between June 1, 2007 and June 2010 exceeds Rs2 crores.

LIKE THE yuvraj Vishwajit Rane who is the only cabinet minister who enjoys X plus security so also institutions under the charge of the Health Minister are the most heavily protected structures in the state of Goa. Of the total of 900 odd security guards employed by various departments of the government of Goa, health institutions such as the Directorate of Health Services (DHS), Goa Medical College Hospital (GMC), Institute of Psychiatry & Human Behaviour (IPHB) and Goa Dental College (GDC) alone account for over 600 of the total of 900 odd security personnel employed by the government of Goa through private security agencies. Indeed, in case of GMC, the ratio of security guards to doctors is 1:1 and the ratio of security guards to total employees is 1:3. If the security guards employed at other district hospitals and primary health centres are also taken into consideration, the number of security guards in securing the health minister’s fiefdoms may well exceed 1000. In sharp contrast, all the other important departments of the government including the secretariat which houses the offices of the ministers and the Chief Secretary and other secretaries, the district courts, the Public Works Department (PWD) and the water resources department together, have less security guards than institutions controlled by the Yuvraj.

LAST FRIDAY the better three quarters had her purse pick-pocketed at the Panjim market when she was buying vegetables and fruits. While she was walking towards a fruit stall she was pushed by some unknown persons. When she looked for the pouch containing the money which was at the top of her open handbag she found it was missing. Realizing that her handbag had been picked and her pouch containing a few hundred rupees was missing, she went to the Panjim police station to lodge a complaint. The police sub-inspector (PSI) present was not inclined to register her complaint. The presumption being that it was not worth recording a First Information Report (FIR) for the loss of a few hundred rupees. THE PSI refused to register a complaint though it is mandatory for every police station to register any complaint made by a citizen and state reasons in writing if a complaint is not or cannot be registered. Since the better three quarters was insistent on her right to lodge a complaint, the PSI consulted the police inspector in-charge of the Panjim police station. The Police Inspector asked for the name of the complainant.

Goans do not like migrants. There are increasing apprehensions that the migrants like the camel that was given shelter by the compassionate Arab, will disposes them of their homes and their land. The fear is not totally unjustified. This is because wherever there is an industrial estate, inevitably migrant slum colonies spring up. The most dramatic case in point in recent times is Verna Nagao. In the wake of the setting up of the Verna Industrial estate, slums housing migrants have proliferated. Earlier when the Zuari Industries Limited came up, a huge slum colony sprang up in Cortalim which not surprisingly has been known as Futaknagar. Most of the land occupied by the sprawling slums in Futaknagar has been put up by slum lords for housing the contract labour employed by Zuari and other industries in the areas. The Murmagao taluka historically has had the distinction of being the migrant capital of Goa because migrants outnumber Goans in the Murmagao taluka. Historically, it has been the steel rolling mills in the state which are the second largest employers of migrant contract labour. No Goan is willing to work in the conditions that prevail in the steel rolling mills at the core of which are very high temperature furnaces. Goans literally cannot stand the heat. Over the years several dozens if not hundreds of steel rolling mills have come up in Goa to take advantage of the relatively cheap power supply, generous loans from the economic development corporation and the fact that the administration is so corrupt that they do not have to observe any of the safety and pollution norms which are mandatory.

A LEADING tourism website, Tripadvisor, is reported to have labelled Goa the second most unsafe destination, particularly for women in the country. They are wrong and Home Minister Ravi Naik and Director of Tourism Swapnil Naik are right in claiming that Goa is, on the contrary, the world’s safest destination. But not for tourists or for that matter local Goans, but for criminals both domestic and international. It is ironic that at a time when Tripadvisor has bestowed the dubious honour of Goa being the second most dangerous destination for tourists that the Goa police have been unable to apprehend and arrest Goa’s former minister for tourism, the over-sexed Mickky Pacheco, for abetment to suicide and culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Despite the fact that Mickky Pacheco, allegedly, managed to visit a notary whose license to notarise had expired, to exempt himself from personal appearance during the hearing of his anticipatory bail application which was rejected by the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court.

NO, I am not talking about the deodorant which makes women swoon. Though probably Mickky Pacheco, with his felicity for attracting young nubile women and even abetting their suicide, possibly uses the much advertised deodorant. But we are talking about the Axe effect in terms of the vigour with which the police and the political establishment in Goa is pursuing the case of abetment to suicide which, on the unfortunate death of Nadia Torrado, has been elevated to culpable homicide amounting to murder, which carries a sentence of up to ten years rigorous imprisonment. Mickky may or may not be guilty of culpable homicide, though all the evidence definitely suggests that he abetted the suicide of Nadia. But what is significant is not the suicide of Nadia itself but the fact that probably for the first time in the history of Congress governments in Goa, a case is being pursued so vigorously by the Goa police. The only parallel to the prosecution which borders on persecution are the cases filed by Manohar Parrikar when he was chief minister against Somnath Zuwarkar, Mauvin Godinho and Dayanand Narvekar.