BY RAJAN NARAYAN

AND A few more stray thoughts and a few more observations for yet another Sunday. For a Sunday following the week when tourism in Goa received possibly a fatal blow with the report of the rape of a nine-year-old Russian girl being molested at Arambol. For a Sunday following the week when the state government continued to pander its employees, despite the continuing fall in revenue. For a Sunday following the week when Chief Minister Digamber Kamat consolidated his reputation of being a compulsive late comer. For a Sunday following the week when the Union Environment Minister and the local Environment Minister failed to fulfill their pledges to the fisherfolk and other costal communities.

CHILD RAPE

AND a few stray thoughts on the latest jolt that tourism has received due to the collapse in law and order in the state. Forget Russian female adults, apparently Goa is not safe even for the children of visiting tourists. The latest outrage is the rape of the nine-year-old daughter of a holidaying doctor from Russia. The allegation is that the daughter of the Russian national was raped when her daughter was swimming in the sea of Arambol beach in broad sunlight. The rape of the nine-year-old comes on top of several cases of rape and molestation of foreign nationals, starting with the alleged rape and murder of the British teenager Scarlette Keeling on Anjuna beach on February 18. This was followed by an allegation that Rohit Monserrate, son of Education Minister Babush Monserrate, sexually and mentally abused a 14-year-old German girl in October 2008. The mutilated body of a 19-year-old Russian girl was found in the railway tracks near Tivim in October 2009. On December 1, 2009, John Fernandes, who narrowly lost the last assembly elections to Mickky Pacheco, allegedly raped a 25-year-old Russian girl in his car after spiking her drinks.

COPS INDIFFERENT

WHAT is agitating foreign tourists and the governments of countries from which the largest number of tourists come from is the criminally callous attitude of the Goa government to these increasingly frequent sexual assaults on foreign women tourists and now even the children of foreign tourists. Understandably, the Russian government is most agitated as Russians have now overtaken the British in terms of the numbers of charter tourists arriving in Goa. The Scarlette Keeling case was handed over to the CBI following allegations that the local police had tried to hush up the matter. But the CBI does not seem to have had much success in its investigations and in fact Julio Lobo, who was among the accused charge-sheeted by the CBI, was acquitted by the Children’s Court. Absurdly enough, apparently the prosecution could not establish the widely known fact that Scarlette was living with Julio Lobo.

The police apparently do not have any clue to who killed the 19-year-old Russian girl, Elena Sukhonova, whose body was found on the railway tracks near Tivim. There are no takers for the theory of the railway police and the local police that the victim accidentally fell off the train and was run over.

In the Rohit Monserrate case, Rohit has been charge-sheeted and the case is pending before the Children’s Court. But given the fact that the victim and her mother have returned to Germany after the trauma the girl underwent, it is extremely unlikely that the case will result in a conviction. As has been the tradition with the Goa Police, both the Monserrate son and the influential father have had enough time to destroy any evidence and intimidate witnesses, if any. In the case of the charge of rape against John Fernandes, the police — under political pressure — did not even bother to attach the car and the clothes worn by the accused on the day or rather night the alleged rape took place. In fact, for a week after the incident, the police did not even bother to attempt to arrest the accused or interrogate him.

JOHN FERNANDES

THE police are alleged to have colluded with John Fernandes in permitting him to flee from Goa when the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court rejected his anticipatory bail application. The police got custody of John Fernandes only when he voluntarily surrendered after the Supreme Court refused to entertain his application challenging the refusal of anticipatory bail by the High Court.

The police themselves have admitted that John Fernandes has failed to provide them with the clothes he was wearing on the day of the alleged rape. The delay in attaching the vehicle in which the alleged rape took place gave him enough time to destroy all evidence of the heinous act. The police have also yet to take any serious action on the allegation of two Russian women that an unauthorised taxi driver tired to rape them in Anjuna on their way back from a Christmas party. On the contrary, the police have been insisting that it was a dispute about the fare. Even a month after investigations, the police are yet to file a charge-sheet against the “taxi driver” and his associates.

RUSSIAN THREAT

THERE has been much indignation and anger in the country over the continuing attacks on Indians, particularly Indian students in Australia. Admittedly, the Australian government has not been taking the racial attacks against Indian students seriously. But, by the same token, the Russian government has justifiable reasons to be angry and indignant over the continuing cases of rape and molestation of its nationals in Goa. The agitation of foreign governments, particularly the UK and Russia, can be gauged from the travel advisories issue by the respective governments. In the wake of the accusation of rape against John Fernandes, the Russian government is reported to have advised its citizens not to venture out alone or at all after 10 pm. But since the rape of the nine-year-old Russian girl took place in broad daylight, it would appear that foreign tourists are not safe even during the day time let alone at night.

Through it all, whether it is cases of rape or molestation or widespread trafficking of narcotic substances, the Home Minister has been in a kumbhakarna kind of stupor. Incredibly, the Home Minister even went to the extent of claiming that there were no drugs in Goa. Presumably, now he will claim that there are no cases of sexual molestation of foreign women or their children in Goa and that the tourists are themselves responsible for the fate that has befallen them. But surely even the Home Minister cannot be stupid enough to argue that a nine-year-old invited rape by provocative behaviour, which has been his stand in the case of Scarlette Keeling and the Russian girls who have filed complaints of being sexually attacked.

UNSAFE GOA

CLEARLY, Goa is not safe for foreign tourists or, for that matter, even locals. There are as many or more cases of murder and molestation against locals. Unfortunately, they do not get the kind of publicity and exposure that sexual assaults on foreign tourists receive in the local or national media. We have no doubt in our mind that Ravi Naik has completely abdicated his responsibilities as home minister and should be dropped from the cabinet. Because if the present trend of the callously casual attitude to complaints of sexual assault and molestation of foreign tourists continues, the Russian charters will boycott Goa in favour of safer destinations where the administration is a little more concerned about the safety and security of their honoured guests.

FINANCIALLY SUICIDAL

AND a few stray observations over the profligate attitude of the Goa government, which seems hell-bent on committing financial suicide. The Sixth Pay Commission has already imposed a huge burden on the finances of the state. Incredibly, now the government is apparently considering extending the Sixth Pay Commission scales not only to public sector organisations, but even grant in aid institutions like Kala Academy, Bal Bhavan, Sanjay School, Goa Konkani Academy, the Sports Academy and presumably all the Ravindra Bhavans. It is bad enough that the state government has been blackmailed into extending Sixth Pay Commission scales to the Kadamba Transport Commission, which has been running under loss for several years now.

FINANCIAL SUICIDE

IN fact, the majority of the public sector undertakings in the state, with the exception perhaps of the Goa Industrial Development Corporation, the Economic Development Corporation and the Goa Infotech Corporation, which is on suspended animation, are incurring huge losses. If private companies functioned like government corporations, they would have gone bankrupt and forced to close down long ago. And, unlike other state governments and the central government, the Goa government is reluctant even to sell the loss making public sector corporations to private investors. The decision to extend the Sixth Pay Commission benefits to loss making public sector corporations and non commercial organisations like the Kala Academy and the Konkani Academy will hasten the process of bankruptcy of the state.

The bitter ground reality is that while the expenses of the state are going up at break neck speed, the revenues are falling. Every member of the Digamber Kamat cabinet keeps coming up with ambitiously extravagant schemes. The PWD Minister Churchill Alemao has been on a bridge-building spree even where bridges are not needed. In addition, he is apparently demanding Rs.1000 crore — or is it Rs.10,000 crore — to build an underground sewage system throughout Goa. The Tourism Minister wants to develop the infrastructure around the cruise jetty and build a state of the art office building for the Tourism Department. The Minister for Education has already extorted Rs.100 crore for the cyber age scheme. There is no evidence on the ground that computer literacy has improved in Goa because of the cyber age scheme.

SCAM SCHEMES

THE Revenue Minister keeps wanting to extend subsidies to beneficiaries under not only below the poverty ration card holders, but even individuals far above the poverty line. Never mind that the bulk of the essential commodities supplied to fair price shops gets diverted to the open market and is sold at excessive prices. The Health Minister keeps coming up with one scheme after another, ranging from a trauma care ambulance service to the latest centre for the care of children who are born mentally and physically challenged. The Chief Minister, on his part, wants to build a bridge to link Dona Paula with Vasco besides bestowing cash awards for an increasingly large number of people, keeps coming up with schemes for celebrating the centenaries of prominent people, the latest being the birth centenary of the first chief minister of Goa Dayanand Bandodkar. We have no objection to the Chief Minister honouring people who have made significant contributions to Goa or bestowing awards on writers and artists and even an award to Anil Kakodkar, the former chairman of the Baba Atomic Research Commission. The only problem is: where are the resources to come from?

While on the one hand the Chief Minister, and indeed every member of the cabinet, is on a spending spree, there is no attempt to even plug the leakages in the existing revenue collection machinery. It was pointed out at the winter session of the Assembly session that the state has been losing crores of rupees due to evasion of excise by liquor companies and the import of alcohol into the state. It is being pointed out that there is large scale evasion of stamp duty because the minimum applicable rates of stamp duty for the sale of land or built up space is far below the market price. The civic bodies and the panchayats, on their part, are very reluctant to collect house tax and other charges, placing a greater burden on the state exchequer.

On top of all this, the main revenue generation or additional resource mobilisation measures in the budget have yet to take off though the financial year is almost over. The Chief Minister has failed to implement the proposal for levying a cess on mining rejects, which was to fetch over Rs.400 crore. The proposal to impose a professional tax seems to have been abandoned. So much so, while expenditure keeps going up forget about implementing the budget proposals, even the existing sources are not being tapped effectively. There is likely to be a disastrous fall in revenue on the tourism account because of the sharp drop in the number of tourist arrivals compared to last year. All of which seems to suggest that the state is hurtling towards bankruptcy.

LATE COMER

AND a few stray observations on the compulsive late coming of Chief Minister Digamber Kamat for functions he has accepted to attend. Inevitably, the Chief Minister always turns up late to any and every function that he is supposed to grace. When frantic organisers call up the Chief Minister, they are told that he is on his way or on the bridge. The Chief Minister of course does not specify whether he is on the Mandovi Bridge or the Zuari Bridge or the Talpona Bridge. I have known occasions when the organisers are told that the Chief Minister is on his way to a function in Panaji when he was still attending a function at Canacona or Pernem. The habit of turning up late persistently causes embarrassment to the organisers and arouses the anger of people invited to attend the function. This is because most organisers, in their anxiety to please the Chief Minister, delay the start of the function by an hour or even two hours because the Chief Minister has not turned up.

The Chief Minister himself seems to believe that he has a right to keep people waiting and turn up late. Unfortunately, not every one has the guts to tell off the Chief Minister as Ustad Zakir Hussain did when the Chief Minister walked in one hour after the Ustad had started his performance. When the Chief Minister was being escorted to his front row seat the Ustad censured him and publicly commented that people who came late should occupy the back seats and not disturb him during his performance. More recently, a meeting was organizsd by senior journalists, many of whom are senior citizens. For some reason that I cannot comprehend, some senior politicians like Shashikala Kakodakar, who just turned 75, and Dr. Wilfred D’Souza, who is in his 80s, were also invited to the function, which was supposed to start at 5 pm. At the time I left, around 6.15 pm, the Chief Minister had yet to turn up. The organisers of course did not start the function because it was organised to extract some monetary benefits for retired senior journalists and, therefore, they could not offend the Chief Minister. But even in the case of organisers who have no demands or expectations from the Chief Minister, the function is inevitably delayed till the Chief Minister turns up. Apparently the Chief Minister cannot bring himself to refuse anyone who invites him. Never mind that he is insulting both the organisers and the invitees by turning up late. He should realise that it is better to refuse an invitation than turn up late.

BROKEN PROMISES

AND a last stray thought for yet another Sunday. The state Minister for Environment, Aleixo Sequeira, had promised that fisher folk and other traditional coastal communities would be protected from the order by the High Court to demolish all illegal structures within the prohibited area of the Coastal Regulation Zone rules. Indeed, the Union Minister for Environment, Jairam Ramesh, assured a group of fisher folk in Canacona that their structures would not be demolished. Aleixo Sequeira kept making statements that he was trying to persuade the Centre to grant relief to traditional coastal communities, who may have illegally renovated their houses or built additional rooms to rent out to tourists. But nothing happened and the bulldozers continued to raze the structures of the poor and the under privileged. Never mind that the bold and the beautiful and the rich and the powerful managed to get stay orders against the demolition. Surely if the rich and the powerful can get stay orders, the least that the coastal MLAs can do is to get stay orders for those who cannot afford to move the courts? We do not object to demolition of illegal structures on the beaches. But the law should be applied equally to all and we hope the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court takes note of the fact that the structures put up by the rich and the powerful invariably escape the bulldozer.