JUST AS I was getting ready to dictate my response to the outcome of the elections to the Legislative Assembly of Goa, I got a message from someone very close to Digamber Kamat, who rightly characterised the verdict of the people of Goa as a victory for democracy. The verdict is certainly strong disapproval of the Congress party’s contempt for the voter and the obsession of the Congress High Command with ‘winability’. But at the same time it is not a verdict for the saffron brigade, as dramatised by the fact that the electorate has not given the BJP a clear majority in its own right. I am delighted that one of the most monstrous dynasties in Goa, the infamous Alemao dynasty which had extorted four seats from the Congress-NCP alliance, has been eliminated altogether. I am, however, anguished that Babush Monserrate and his side kick Pandurang Madkaikar have been returned to the assembly.

IN THE run up to the elections to the Legislative Assembly of Goa on March 3, 2012, candidates have been treating voters to biryani and beer and Peter Scot and Director’s Special. ‘Volunteers’ who accompany candidates for house-to-house campaigning are given Rs 500 per shift and kebabs and more for making up part of the procession. I understand that, in a similar manner, migrant workers are offered up to Rs 5000 or more for mobilising crowds for meetings addressed by various heavyweight politicians ranging from Congress president Sonia Gandhi to the BJP president Nitin Gadkari. Or even lesser mortals like Hema Malini or Sushilkumar Shinde. Everyone who wants to or can be persuaded to attend these “massive” public meetings of course get free transport and food packets and Rs 1000 as appearance money. The bulk of the crowd in most mega public meetings addressed by senior leaders of various political parties comprise of migrant labour or members of the ST community.

The residents of St Cruz have been victims of criminal gangs going back to almost three decades. In the 80s, Rudolf Fernandes, who is contesting as an independent candidate, and Babush Monserrate, who is contesting on a Congress ticket, were jointly accused of cutting down teak wood trees with an electric saw attached to a car battery in the property of a former mayor of Panaji, Dr Inacio D’Sa. The allegation was that the teak wood trees were being cut for timber required to build the Monserrate mansion in Taleigao. In November 1989, I was brutally assaulted within 100 metres of my residence in Dona Paula following a campaign I had launched in the Herald (which I was then editing) against Dayanand Narvekar, the then speaker who was accused of molesting an 18-year-old in his chamber. The day after Narvekar resigned, I was brutally assaulted by a gang allegedly based in St Cruz. Though I was given police protection, the witnesses to the assault, who were linesman of the electricity department and the owner of a bar in Dona Paula, were intimidated by members of the St Cruz based gang, which executed the supari against me. The case, like several other criminal cases of assault and intimidation against members of the gangs operating from St Cruz which included the gang led by Rudolf Fernandes and the rival gang led by Rego, were all A finaled because ostensibly the police could not manage to secure any evidence against the alleged accused.

IT CAN happen only in Goa. Where match-fixing has become a way of life, at least at election time. The Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Manohar Parrikar, offered the personal assistant to Chief Minister Digamber Kamat, Prakash Velip, a ticket to contest from the Quepem assembly constituency, ignoring its own senior leader and winnable candidate who is coincidentally also named Prakash Velip. In exchange, the BJP-led Manohar Parrikar is fielding a week losable candidate Rupesh Mahatme in Margao against Digamber Kamat.
Digamber Kamat reciprocated the gesture of Manohar Parrikar of fielding a weak losable candidate against him by recommending Somnath Zuwarkar, a spent force, as the Congress candidate for the Panaji constituency. When the Congress High Command did not agree, Digamber Kamat endorsed the candidature of a matka king, Yatin Parekh, knowing that Babush Monserrate will not extend any support to Yatin Parekh in Panaji. It is not just a two-way match-fixing. It is a three-way match fixing between Digamber Kamat, Manohar Parrikar and Babush Monserrate. Digamber Kamat, to oblige Manohar Parrikar, supported Babush Monserrate for the Congress ticket for the St Cruz constituency at the expense of the only female MLA in the current Legislative Assembly, Victoria Fernandes. Manohar Parrikar, in turn, obliged Babush Monserrate by not giving a ticket to Anil Hoble, the very winnable BJP candidate ,who was runner’s up in the last general elections in St Cruz.

MOGAMBO Babush Monserrate khush hua. Vishwajit Ravan Rane is also happy. Only Churchill Gabbar Alemao is squealing “Valanka Jai ho?” It is obvious that the criterion for allotting Congress tickets is not just ‘winnability’ but ‘villainability’. The greater the villain, the more the Congress High Command is willing to bend over backwards to give Mogambos and the Gabbars Congress tickets. Not only for themselves but for members of their gang of thieves. It is obvious that the Congress party has only contempt for the voters. By granting tickets to the Mogambos and the Gabbar Singhs and their gang of thieves, the Congress has presumably decided that only money and muscle power can bring it back to power in the state of Goa.

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.