The Buzz: The Queen of Goa’s Beaches – Calangute – is to be sold to cement factories
Calangute Panchayat has a new hare-brained idea: lobbying for building construction to be allowed upto 50 metres of the High Tide Line! (The setback line today is 200 metres.)
The Panchayat has called for a special gram sabha resolution on Wednesday (15 October, 25) to try and galvanise public support for its crackpot project of sinking both the image and future of the village in 10,000 tonnes of concrete. It says this is best done by relaxing the building line to 50 metres from the high tide tide, even if by doing this ,the beach entirely disappears.
This is the problem when panchayats are dominated by the same people for too many terms. Brains fill with mush. The Panchayat does not know what to do with the stinking garbage management plant at Saligao. It’s clueless about the daily abuse of the beach. There is neither a sewage treatment plant nor organized water supply. Ground water is contaminated with sewage. Illegal constructions continue unabated. Undeterred by its utter uselessness, the panchayat now wants to add more mayhem to the existing mayhem.
There is no lamani in the panchayat, nor is the state government behind this. Good old Goenkars have now learnt the art of stabbing themselves – and the future of their children – in the back. And who will educate the people at the gram sabha about the holiness of the new idea? Well, a member of the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority in being invited. The Gram Sabha has been called on a weekday, violating all norms, because the concerned official says he cannot come to shed wisdom on a Sunday, since Sundays are to be kept for adding brew to brain. As Varun Grover, the stand-up comedian said the other day, the comedy in these institutions has become a threat to employed people like him.
Once upon a time we had neither panchayats nor GCZMA and we lived very well, in peace, and in wonder of what nature had endowed us with. Now we laugh at the antics, but why f**k up the beach? You don’t have any other work to do? C’mon Calangute folks, attend the GS and tell your panchayat to go fly a kite!
The Author is Claude Alphonso Alvares is an Indian environmentalist based in Goa. He is the editor of the Other India Press