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.

The death of Ravina Rodrigues is a cold calculated and deliberate murder of a 15-year-old young lass in the prime of her life. The inquiry report confirms that the operation theatre of Dr Pai Nursing Home to which the late Ravina Rodrigues was first admitted was “not upto the mark and was in an unhygienic condition and it has also been established that there was no urgency to perform that operation in Pai Nursing Home.” The inquiry report has held Dr Surme, a full-time employee of the GMC, Dr Dilip Amonkar, Head of Department of Surgery (GMC) and Dr Pai, who runs the Pai hospital in Vasco jointly responsible for the sequence of events that led to the unfortunate death of Ms Ravina Rodrigues.

THE 42nd edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) was inaugurated at Ravindra Bhavan in Margao - Chief Minister Digamber Kamat’s constituency - on Wednesday, November 23 without the usual confusion and chaos that has marked inaugural ceremonies in the past. Not only was the venue spruced up at a cost of a mere Rs 11 crore as against the Rs 40-odd crore spent on the renovation of the Kala Academy for the first two editions of IFFI held in Goa, the cultural programme was a seamless capsule of India’s rich cultural heritage. Among the highlights was an on-the-spot portrait by a Goan artist of the lifetime achievement award winner Bertrand Tavernier. For a change, protesters, who had lined up demanding a change in the dates of the film festival that now clash with the novenas and feast day of St Francis Xavier, were handled with kid gloves. Apparently the protest registered on the Union Minister for Broadcasting Ambika Soni, who in her speech at the inauguration, promised to take up the issue with the international body which creates time slots for international film festivals worldwide.

THE INCUMBENT president of the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), Manguirish Raikar, has been accused of upholding the dubious traditions of the former president of the GCCI, Nitin Kunkolienkar. It has now been revealed that Manguirish Raikar has allegedly offered to get a 20,000 sq m plot of land for a computer software company at the market rate, which is more than 10 times the rate at which the Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) officially allots land. The plot that Manguirish Raikar allegedly offered to the software company is among the many plots that have been identified as underutilised by the committee appointed by the government to probe allotment scams by the GIDC board, of which Blaise Costabir is a member.

THE ECONOMIC Survey reveals that the net sown area in the year 2006-07 (which means net cultivable land) was 1,37,039 hectares comprising 37.95% of Goa’s total area of 3,61,113 hectares. The Economic Survey for 2006-07 showed the area where multiple crops were harvested was 35,069 hectares comprising 9.71% of the total area. The gross cropped area, which is synonymous with cultivable land, was shown as 1,72,108 hectares or 47.66% of the total land area of the state. The total area under cultivation, as per the Regional Plan 2021 is less than an average of 5% for the entire state of Goa. Clearly, it is the land sharks who have gobbled up all the cultivable land in the state of Goa. The historical presumption that Goa is a green paradise is no longer true because more than 55% of Goa is urbanized, which implies that there are only concrete jungles and very little real jungles in the state of Goa.

THE WRITING on the wall is clear. The mining industry in Goa is sinking. Along with the sinking mining industry ship, the politicians who had been involved in mining themselves or have been extending patronage and protection to the mining industry also face the prospect of drowning along with the mining industry. An indication of the impending decline if not the demise of the mining industry are the results of the second quarter and six months unaudited consolidated results of Sesa Goa Ltd, the largest mining company in the state. Sesa Goa has reported that for the six months ending September 30, 2011, iron ore sales were 1.55 million tonnes as compared with 1.82 million tonnes in the corresponding period last year. The company has acknowledged that during the second quarter of the financial year July to September, iron ore production was 1.12 million tonnes as compared with 2.88 million tonnes in the corresponding period due to the ban on mining in Karnataka announced on August 26, 2011. In Goa, the company exported only 0.83 million tonnes of iron ore in the second quarter and 3.98 million tonnes of ore in the first six months of the financial year as compared with 0.92 million tonnes and 4.71 million tonnes in the corresponding period, last year. Consequently, Sesa Goa has reported a decline of profits before tax of 94% in the last quarter and 37% during the first six months ending September 30, 2011 as compared to last year.