In the hysteria over the clergy of various religions violating the vow of celibacy and sexually abusing women and children, another equally important act of sacrilege or unholy conduct has gone unnoticed. It is a moot point whether priests and Godmen of any religion who are permitted to get married are necessarily less likely to engage in sexual abuse, which is not confined to Roman Catholic priests but even to Hindu Godmen. At the time of writing, there are serious charges of molestation against a Swami Nityananda, who is alleged to have been videographed having sex with his female devotees. Indeed, I have rarely come across a Hindu Godman who is not surrounded by very pretty woman. But in the outcry against the clergy of various gods misusing and abusing their positions to sexually abuse minors of both sexes, the essence of priesthood has been forgotten. The basic concept of genuine spirituality, whether it is our Lord Jesus Christ or Hindu Godmen or saints like the Saibaba, is that they renounced all material possessions. During his lifetime, Jesus Christ lived a very austere and humble life. He identified himself with the poorest of the poor. He did not need gilded churches or fancy vestments that the present pope and the cardinals and the bishops wear. He did not wear a diamond ring on his fingers. Jesus Christ did not seek to curry favour with the rich and the powerful.

By Rajan Narayan

ON SATURDAY, May 1, a meeting of what one might label a committee of citizens, concerned over the collapse of governance in Goa, had a meeting in Ponda. The meeting was convened by freedom fighter Gurunath Kelekar, who has been very active for many years now in traffic education and saving the lives of hundreds if not thousands of young and old. The organisation MARG, which literally means ‘road’ or ‘direction’, has always received liberal support from Chief Minister Digamber Kamat, who has been a close friend of Gurunath Kelekar. The Chief Minister has been enthusiastic about extending support for traffic awareness camps and workshops and the magazine that is brought out by Marg.
But, on the ground, neither the Chief Minister nor the Home Minister and the Transport Minister have been willing to do anything to stop the killing on the roads. On the contrary, the Transport Minister has been unwilling or unable to crackdown on the thousand of trucks overloaded with ore driving recklessly through towns like Curchorem and Sanvordem with an unauthorised ‘not to be stopped’ sticker, which have been claiming an increasing number of lives in the state.

THE RESULTS of the ‘exams’ or assessment conducted by the Directorate of Panchayats for the year 2009-10 is likely to be a big disappointment for those who swear by the 73rd and 74th amendment to the Constitution and wax eloquent about decentralised planning. The presumption being that Panchayats and civic bodies are less corrupt than the government of Goa and the Minister for Town and Country Planning. The exam conducted by the Directorate of Panchayats shockingly reveals that only one of the 180 panchayats, Mencurem-Dhumacen, had no complaints of illegal construction. The Directorate of Panchayats, in its assessment of the functioning of panchayats in the state, has provided for negative marks for panchayats against whom there are complaints of encouraging illegal construction. Panchayats which have one to twenty complaints of illegal construction get one negative mark; those against whom there are 21 to 40 complaints receive two negative marks; those against whom there are 41 to 60 complaints get three negative marks and panchayats which have 50 or more complaints of illegal construction get four negative marks. The extent of illegal constructions encouraged aided and abetted by the panchayats is dramatised by the fact that the 180 panchayats taken together have 1106 negative marks.

THE SHADOW of P D Dinakaran, the Chief Justice of Karnataka who has been accused of grabbing huge amounts of land illegally, hangs over Goa. Sources in the High Court are shocked and dismayed over the fact that the name of the notorious Winnie Coutinho, public ‘prostituter’ and Additional Advocate General of Goa has been recommended by some judges, who are intimate with her, for elevation to the High Court of Bombay. Which would be tantamount to subverting justice and making a mockery of the justice delivery system. Candidates for appointment as judges of the High Court and the Supreme Court are required to be men and women of unimpeachable integrity. Replies obtained by activist Aires Rodrigues under the Right to Information Act from the Home Department reinforces the belief among the legal fraternity that Winnie Coutinho’s reputation as a public prosecutor is extremely dubious, to say the least.

INSPIRED BY the very candid and inspiring account of Nandita Das’ journey as an activist and a filmmaker, I would like to share with you my own journey in becoming an activist and my compulsions to bring about the change I want to see in our social systems. I believe my journey is relevant at a time when activism is under a cloud and food security has been acknowledged by the Planning Commission itself to have become a farce. For the benefit of the uninitiated, food security means ensuring that the poorest of the poor have access not just to rice and wheat but to a nutritional diet from birth. India has the dubious distinction of having among the largest number of undernourished and malnourished children despite the economic progress it has achieved. Way back in 1962, when I was doing my present day equivalent of the twelfth standard, I spent three months in a remote village in Bihar close to Bodhgaya where the Buddha achieved enlightenment when he was meditating under the Bodhi tree. It was the time of the great Bihar famine when thousands of people, including children, were literally dying of hunger because of successive years of drought. There was an office of the United States Information Service, which is now called the American Cultural Centre in Bengaluru, where I was studying.

If Raisa Madonna Alemao, the respectful and resourceful daughter of Joaquim Alemao who is doing her masters in political science in the Goa University, were to do her doctorate it would probably be on the subject of the importance of illegal mining and land sharking in Goan politics. She would be the right girl to do it as her middle name is Madonna, the material girl! Raisa Madonna Alemao must be presumed to be an authority on mines as four of the mining companies owned by the Joaquim Alemao family carry her name: Raisa Mining Services, Raisa Mining and Trading, Raisa Inland Waterways and Raisa Logistics. And Raisa Alemao along with Dinar Tarcar and Rudolf Fernandes and all the other kith and kin of politicians who are engaged in legal and illegal mining would like Digamber Kamat to give up the mining, portfolio which he now holds in the cabinet. But you don’t have to own a mine or several of them to make a mega buck in double quick time. Every portfolio in the Digamber Kamat cabinet is potentially a very remunerative mine for extorting money from the aam aadmi. And the most profitable and remunerative of the various mines representing portfolios in the Digamber Kamat government is the PWD ministry, which has the highest budget allocation.

THE POLICE force in Goa will be sitting ducks if a 26/11 type of terror attack is launched in the state. This is because the police force is grossly under equipped, poorly trained, has limited mobility and has no experience of using sophisticated weapons like AK47s. If the police force in Goa is poorly equipped and does not have the training to cope with even routine law and order problems and detection of crimes, it is not for want of funds. On the contrary, the state police department and Home Minister has been forfeiting funds provided by the Union Home Ministry and the state department year after year. The ‘mis-utilisation’ and under-utilisation of funds is among the major contributory factors for the sorry state of affairs in the police force in the state. Law and order falls in the concurrent list of the constitution, which means that both the central government and the state government share the responsibility for the security of citizens. State governments get considerable funding from the centre for modernisation of the police force.

By Rajan Narayan

HISTORY HAS repeated itself. In March 1990, the then Benaulim MLA Churchill Alemao, furious because he was not given the portfolio of Minister for Sports held in the previous government by Francisco Monte Cruz, the candidate he had defeated, toppled the Congress government led by Pratapsingh Rane. And sold Goa and Goans to a builders lobby led by the notorious Cajetan Cordeiro, who apparently financed the toppling bid. Churchill Alemao’s accomplice in forming the ironically called Progressive Democratic Front was the present chairman of the law commission, Ramakant Khalap, who engineered a defection in the MGP, which marked the beginning of the end of the MGP. It was not Babush Monserrate who first used builders to secure political power, but Churchill Alemao whose personal self interest and the self interest of his family of six brothers has always been more important than the welfare of Goa and Goans. His greed was dramatised by the fact that even to set up a mobile Konkani library under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development scheme, a language for which he claims to have fought for, he demanded a kickback and was exposed in a sting operation.

IT IS not only human beings who have been engaging in large scale illegal construction. According to a notice published in The Navhind Times on March 14, 2010 — as directed by the Supreme Court of India in their interim order dated September 29, 2009 — the government of Goa has admitted that there are over 900 illegal religious structures in public places in the state, many of which are within the setback area of the National Highway and other interior roads in cities and even villages. The illegal religious structures are not limited to the place of worship of any particular religion. When it comes to breaking the law and building illegal structures, Hindus, Christians, Muslims and even devotees of Sai Baba and Lord Ayappa (the popular Mallu deity) have all shown scant regard for the laws of the land. THE largest number of illegal structures in the state is that of crosses. Apparently whenever somebody in the family dies or miraculously recovers there is a convention of putting up crosses to commemorate the event. The majority of the crosses are on the roadside within the setback area. The Executive Engineer (Roads) of South Goa himself has admitted that there are over a hundred structures within ten metres and some even within five metres of the stretch of National Highway 17, which passes through Goa.

SPEAKING AT a function recently the outgoing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, K G Balakrishnan, the highest law officer in the country commented that murderers can execute their sinister plans faster than the judiciary can punish them. Which also holds true for other kinds of criminals like rapists, paedophiles, large scale narcotics pedlars and those who indulge in genocide of the kind we witnessed in Gujarat. Indeed it would be easier for a whole caravan of camels to pass through the eyehole of a needle than to get prompt justice in our system of law and judiciary. There are instances in our own Goa where litigation, particularly in property cases, has gone on for three generations.
The bitter ground reality is that as on January 1, 2010 there were 53,000 cases pending in the Supreme Court, as many as 40 lakh cases pending before the various high courts in the country and an incredible 2.7 crore cases pending in the lower courts. The arrears of cases awaiting disposal continue to go up. There has been an increase of 139% in the number of cases pending in the Supreme Court since January 2000.