ON SATURDAY, when I was in Margao for the release of Aravind Bhatikar’s autobiography called Vovllam, I asked the veteran politician and former Minister of State for external affairs, Eduardo Faleiro whether he was planning to contest the forthcoming assembly elections. His response was symbolic of the perception among both aspiring candidates and voters on the forthcoming Assembly elections. Eduardo Faleiro’s snappy fivel-word response to my question was “I am not a businessman.” Which is the bitter ground reality about the Assembly elections, which are scheduled for March 3, 2012. It is not ideology or issues or political labels which are going to determine the outcome of the elections to the Legislative Assembly of Goa being held in March, but money power.

AS I am convalescing in Mumbai from major surgery to repair my waste management system, I’ve been getting messages from my friends in Goa asking me to liberate Goa from the chaalis chor or 40 thieves. Architect Dean D’Cruz, to whom I have sent a copy of my book on liberation, has replied with a message “Now that you have written a book on the liberation of Goa, can you get down to writing a book on how Goans can liberate Goa from the chaalis chor who form the Legislative Assembly of the state of Goa.” In the run up to the Assembly elections to be held on March 3, 2012, I can understand the agitation of my fellow Goans and their murderous rage or kolaveri over the choices on offer to them in the forthcoming elections.
The choice before the Goan electorate appears to be between a party now headed by communal ego maniac Manohar Parrikar, who is being projected as the leader of the BJP Legislative Party, and the caretaker chief minister the spineless Digamber Kamat. During the current tenure of the Legislative Assembly, Manohar Parrikar sought to polarise Goans on communal lines. Manohar Parrikar, whose party colleagues have been responsible for genocide in Gujarat and protecting fundamentalist lunatics like the Sri Ram Sene in Bangalore, has been indicted by the magisterial enquiry in the first ever communal riots that took place in Curchorem in 2005. Manohar Parrikar is a self-professed admirer of the butcher of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.

IS CORRUPTION an issue during elections? The Lok Sabha bye-election in Hissar did not have any meaningful results to prove that corruption was an issue. This was in spite of the fact that Team Anna pulled all stops against Congress candidates. The debates on electronic and print media on issues involved in the forthcoming Assembly elections in UP, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Punjab hardly consider corruption an issue. Goa hardly figures in any national debate, since it is too small to merit any footage either in electronic or the print media. The only time it hits headlines is when drug trafficking and rapes of foreigners are exposed. Baba Ramdev failed to get back the black money stashed abroad. Team Anna failed to get a strong Lokpal Act for the country. Baba Ramdev’s campaign against corruption all over the country started with a bang and also ended with a bang. The only sad thing about the last ‘bang’ was that it was executed mercilessly and swiftly by the Delhi government. Team Anna’s campaign also started with a bang at jantar mantar and then at Ramlila Maidan and died (or was it just halted?) with a whimper. The bang in this case was unwittingly helped by the government but the whimper was entirely by the people. The initial euphoria seems to have died down. Baba Ramdev’s anti-corruption campaign is still going on, but on a very low key and Team Anna has already announced its decision not to use the anti-corruption platform against any particular political party in the forthcoming Assembly elections, but to exhort the electorate every where to elect ‘clean candidates’.

WHEN DID the serpent enter the Garden of Eden that is Goa? When did the ugly face of defections, corruptions and money and muscle power make their appearance in the Garden of Eden and shatter the innocence of the Goan political class? The story is that the members of the first Legislative Assembly of the state of Goa, a large proportion of them being lawyers and doctors, were so straightforward and simple and genuinely committed to the welfare of the residents of Goa that they even offered to pay the electricity bills of their constituents. Those of them who did not have private transport travelled by public transport. Dayanand Bandodkar himself refused to stay in the official bungalow allotted for the chief minister. And Dayanand Bandodkar gave literally from his own pocket and it never occurred to him to loot and plunder the public exchequer as his successors did.

I must admit that till I became an entrepreneur in a small way in my mid 50s, I was hostile and suspicious towards all corporate activity and businessmen and industrialists. In the formative years of my life between the age of 18 and 30, I was a very staunch Marxist. It was indoctrinated into me that all businessmen were, to use the phrase common to the left, running dogs of imperialism. My first few experiences as a journalist and a financial journalist at that did nothing to improve my opinion of the business class. As a young trainee sub-editor in the Financial Express way back in 1968, one of my first assignments was to interview a gentleman called Pathanwala who used to manufacture a very popular brand of face cream called Afghan Snow. The days of fairness creams and other fancy beauty products was some distance away then and the feminine sex at least used, what is called snow and the most popular brands were Afghan snow and Ponds snow which were the two most popular and most widely sold face creams.

THE ELECTION Commission has announced that the state of Goa would go to the polls on March 3, 2012 almost three months before the expiry of the term of the current Legislative Assembly. And unlike in the case of the other states going to polls in February and March, which include Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Manipur, voters in Goa will not have to wait for long for the results of the general elections to the 40 seats in the Goa Legislative Assembly as the polls in Goa are part of the last phase of polling. The counting of votes is expected to be taken up on March 4 and, by March 9, a new chief minister and a new government should be in place, according to the schedule announced by the Election Commission. At least, in theory, rigging the elections and buying votes will be a little more difficult during the forthcoming general elections to the Goa Legislative Assembly. Ever since the Bihar election, where the use of money and muscle power was controlled to a large extent, the Election Commission has put in place measures for seizure of money that may be used to bribe voters. A vigil will be maintained at airports, railway stations and bus stands to check on the inter and intra state transfer of money. This time around, the officials who will be keeping track of the flow of money will be from the Income Tax Department.

Aggrieved Siolkars hailing from the wards of Marna, Waddy and Sodiem, have joined hands under the banner of Waddy Nagrik Samiti and have appealed to the government authorities to immediately inspect, identify and notify the area in this region as forests.

SANTA WAS all set to go globe-trotting distributing gifts on Christmas Eve. Since the government of Lapland had declared the reindeer an endangered species, Santa had decided to use a jet ski which could slide as smoothly over land as it could over water. His haversack overloaded with gifts was all packed and ready. Before setting out, Santa switched on his laptop and went straight to Google Maps to check the various parts of the globe that he would be visiting to bring joy to children and adults alike. He clicked on the India map. “So do we start off from good old Bombay, Santa,” asked the chief elf. “That would be politically incorrect’, said the elf, ‘it is no longer Bombay but Mumbai. If you keep calling it Mumbai you will have the Shiv Sena at your throat.” “What is this Chennai,” Santa asked when he went clickity click on his laptop. “Oh,” said the elf. “That is the new name for Madras. And while we are about it, please remember that there is no Calcutta any longer; it is Kolkata. And good old Bangalore has turned into Bengaluru.” “I hope Goa has remained the same,” commented one of the elves.

THE FATHER of Goan nationalism, T B Cunha in his essay ‘Denationalisation of Goa’ lamented that the Portuguese colonial regime had enslaved not just the body, but the minds of Goan people. The Portuguese colonial regime perceived everything native from the sartorial habits of the population to its religious beliefs as primitive and regressive and sought to force what the colonial regime presumed to be Christian and European culture on the natives of Goa. The prohibitions imposed by the Portuguese colonial regime ranged from directing locals to refrain from wearing dhotis and cholis to banning the growth of the sacred tulsi plant in the courtyards of Hindu homes. Ram Manohar Lohia, who initiated the civil disobedience movement on June 18, 1946, was appalled that the citizens of Portuguese Goa were denied even basic civil liberties like the freedom of speech and association. He was shocked that even social gatherings let alone public meetings were totally banned in colonial Goa. Indeed, when Ram Manohar Lohia began addressing the rally demanding civil liberties on June 18, 1946, a police official tried to physically prevent him from speaking by putting his hand on Dr Ram Manohar Lohia’s mouth and threatening his nationalist Goan colleague Julio Menezes with a pistol.

ON JUNE 20, 2006, real estate companies owned by Vishwajit Rane acted as the brokers for the sale of over 285,000 sq ms shown as agricultural land falling within CRZ III in Tanso, Loliem-Canacona to Gold Star Resorts. The first and larger part of the property comprising of 2,55,050 sq ms bearing survey no 328/1 classified as agriculture and forest land was sold to Gold Resorts and Hotels Ltd at Rs 100 per sq m of which Handsel, the company represented by Vishwajit Rane, was paid Rs 1.3 crore. In the other land deal in Loliem, for an area comprising 30,000 sq ms which Handsel brokered, it received Rs 99 lakh as its commission. Goan Observer inquiries and investigations have revealed that despite considerable pressure from Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, the over 2,80,000 sq ms of land brokered by Vishwajit Rane have not been converted to settlement or recreation zones by the State Level Committee, which finalised the Regional Plan for the Canacona taluka.