Developers complain that it has become standard practice for activists to protest against every project that is introduced. Even at one of those talks shows on one of Goa’s news channels, an environmental activist was at a loss for words when a developer asked him what he and his movement actually wanted. They keep saying what they don’t want, the developer complained to the anchor, but they never say what they do want. And taking a cue from that, the anchor asked the activist what it was that he and his people wanted. I waited with bated breath, but nothing clear-cut came through in a jumble of half sentences.
And I thought if I was asked the question I would say that I would like the Goa of the seventies back again. When the roads were clean, the gardens beautiful with bougainvilla and abolim and the houses large … Where we had a clean beaches and quiet fishing villages to the West and lush green hills to the east ... Where everyone had enough and was satisfied with what they had ... Where a woman could wear all her jewellery to the village feast with no fear of it being snatched from her ... Where doors and windows of houses were kept wide open during the day and on hot summer nights too…
But that is not possible so here’s my second choice.
I want a plan. Houses should be built in settlement land and not anywhere else. Goans were self sufficient when it came to food. We had fish, we grew paddy, fruit and vegetables. We had coconuts and cashews which gave us some of the tastiest cuisine in the world and the most potent brews ever. It was scary that when India needed to import sugar, there was a shortage abroad too.
We need to rejuvenate the communidades and plant the fields and tend to the orchards again and throw the Land to the Tiller Act into the dustbin of history. We can have clusters of industrial estates in each taluka on barren land and give them piped water. The main cities can have business districts where corporates set up offices to provide jobs for our urban people.
In order to get good jobs we have to have well qualified and skilled people, so our educational institutions have to be given a major revamp. From nursery levels, teach children to be unafraid of the unknown and give them the tools to learn. Change our syllabus to include subject matter that is relevant today and for the future. Select only the best people for the teaching profession, because they play a crucial part in forming the ethics of the people who will run this state in the next decade.
Government jobs should be reserved only for 50-year-olds who can work till they are 60. The burden will be less on the taxpayer and we’ll have more money for sensible infrastructure.
I want youngsters to avoid government jobs; I want them to start small businesses, which can grow into big ones. I want our engineering, medical and other professional colleges to actively encourage research and enterprise. If we have a River Princess sitting on a sandbank, we should have alert young minds finding solutions to remove her before she does any damage. We should have such seats of learning that the products and services we offer should be the best in the world.
I want an end to corruption. I want every corrupt person to stop cold turkey and do the right thing. I want people to get jobs based on merit, not on how much they can pay or how much influence they have. For that I want a group of 40 wise men and women who take on the business of governance as a challenge and clean out the rot from within. I don’t mind a few gated communities, but I want a proper sewerage system all over settlement areas.
I want the rivers to be desilted regularly so that our rivers live long and healthy. For that to happen I want the mining to be controlled and the forests to be allowed to make large amounts of oxygen for us.
I want the outsiders who have already come to settle here to respect the land and the people. I do not want more outsiders, because we have to think of space for our own children. We have enough migrant labour and if we need more let our engineering students build machines to do those jobs.
I want the police to serve, protect and enforce the law. I want a happy healthy society which is unafraid and ready for a good laugh anytime. And one thing I would not change is our food, music, drama and wit. That has come through undisturbed through the centuries. If our music and arts can do it why can’t the rest of the essence of Goa? Like the ad says: let’s just do it!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Goa is proof that all things don’t end
The T20 League ran and ended. Who remembers who won? The Cricket World Cup always cracks me up because the world, for cricket, is a handful of ex-British colonies minus the US. Well that ran across our TV screens for a while. Then the FIFA World cup took over and ended with Wimbledon running in tandem. We watched Rafael Nadal of Spain take the Wimbledon cup and the Spaniards waltz off with the FIFA World Cup. There seemed to be nothing to watch on TV until of all things – the Goa Monsoon Session Assembly.
It was so much like the FIFA World Cup, two teams locked in a lung-to-lung battle; sometimes the ruling team members got caught up in the precision of the Opposition’s game plan and scored several self goals. They turned against their own Captain when it came to transferring the drugs-cops-politicians nexus to the CBI. Worse, one of their best strikers Dayanand Narvekar grabbed the ball and kept hammering it into the ruling dispensation’s goal, with the Opposition even acknowledging that it took guts on his part.
The ruling team even had two main players missing. One red-carded by the judicial system and the Crime Branch and the other nursing probably a lily-liver in a Mumbai hospital. The ref Pratapsing Rane, mixed it up with the NBA and called a time-out twice.
Goans watching the games had food for thought when MLA Francis D’Souza stated that the government was driving a wedge between North and South Goa. Salcete constituencies he said were getting the entire pie with nothing left over for the rest of the state, just a few crumbs here and there.
MLA after MLA said the same thing that only Salcete is not Goa and Goa is not only Salcete. They said that the wealth of the state has to be equally divided among all constituencies. You cannot spend Rs 15 crore on one constituency in the south and not even Rs 2 crore on another in the north. D’Souza even said that with the exception of Water Resources and Forests Minister Felipe Neri Rodrigues, all other Ministers poured money only into their constituencies. And there was precious little to show for all that money spent. D’Souza said they were breaking the solemn oath they took when they were sworn in as Ministers that they would work for the good of Goa.
And as I would react to a foolish move in the game, I sniggered at Francis D’Souza. If I had a vuvuzela I would have blown it. Did the Ministers even know what they were reading when they took their oath? Do they even know what a solemn oath is? If they are non-matriculates, maybe not even Stds 5, 6 or 7 pass, how the hell are they expected to know what a solemn oath is? Yes I know ‘Hell’ is an oath…
They have stood for elections, bought, bullied and blarneyed their way into office because it’s true. They wanted to work for the people. Of course they wanted to work for people. Their people. Their families and in-laws and maybe a few good friends, never mind if those took the Ratol way out. But they know with just a Std 5 to their name there doesn’t seem to be much of a future for them. They could maybe, be a tailor’s assistant, or a motorcycle pilot, worthy jobs in their own way, but hardly making the big bucks they get with dipping their hands in the taxpayer’s pocket. They have the power to change existing laws; they have the power to make new laws. They have the Midas touch where everything turns into Swiss bank accounts. Why would they even bother about an oath?
But we watch the game being played and realize that indeed this is a very, very strange game. The Opposition wins every round hands down, but when they come out of the House, Goa declares them the losers. Because we the people cheer the ruling party on and turn our pockets inside out saying rob us, destroy us. That’s why we elected you and will always elect you. You are doing a very FINE job!
It was so much like the FIFA World Cup, two teams locked in a lung-to-lung battle; sometimes the ruling team members got caught up in the precision of the Opposition’s game plan and scored several self goals. They turned against their own Captain when it came to transferring the drugs-cops-politicians nexus to the CBI. Worse, one of their best strikers Dayanand Narvekar grabbed the ball and kept hammering it into the ruling dispensation’s goal, with the Opposition even acknowledging that it took guts on his part.
The ruling team even had two main players missing. One red-carded by the judicial system and the Crime Branch and the other nursing probably a lily-liver in a Mumbai hospital. The ref Pratapsing Rane, mixed it up with the NBA and called a time-out twice.
Goans watching the games had food for thought when MLA Francis D’Souza stated that the government was driving a wedge between North and South Goa. Salcete constituencies he said were getting the entire pie with nothing left over for the rest of the state, just a few crumbs here and there.
MLA after MLA said the same thing that only Salcete is not Goa and Goa is not only Salcete. They said that the wealth of the state has to be equally divided among all constituencies. You cannot spend Rs 15 crore on one constituency in the south and not even Rs 2 crore on another in the north. D’Souza even said that with the exception of Water Resources and Forests Minister Felipe Neri Rodrigues, all other Ministers poured money only into their constituencies. And there was precious little to show for all that money spent. D’Souza said they were breaking the solemn oath they took when they were sworn in as Ministers that they would work for the good of Goa.
And as I would react to a foolish move in the game, I sniggered at Francis D’Souza. If I had a vuvuzela I would have blown it. Did the Ministers even know what they were reading when they took their oath? Do they even know what a solemn oath is? If they are non-matriculates, maybe not even Stds 5, 6 or 7 pass, how the hell are they expected to know what a solemn oath is? Yes I know ‘Hell’ is an oath…
They have stood for elections, bought, bullied and blarneyed their way into office because it’s true. They wanted to work for the people. Of course they wanted to work for people. Their people. Their families and in-laws and maybe a few good friends, never mind if those took the Ratol way out. But they know with just a Std 5 to their name there doesn’t seem to be much of a future for them. They could maybe, be a tailor’s assistant, or a motorcycle pilot, worthy jobs in their own way, but hardly making the big bucks they get with dipping their hands in the taxpayer’s pocket. They have the power to change existing laws; they have the power to make new laws. They have the Midas touch where everything turns into Swiss bank accounts. Why would they even bother about an oath?
But we watch the game being played and realize that indeed this is a very, very strange game. The Opposition wins every round hands down, but when they come out of the House, Goa declares them the losers. Because we the people cheer the ruling party on and turn our pockets inside out saying rob us, destroy us. That’s why we elected you and will always elect you. You are doing a very FINE job!
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The Section 304 coincidence
Two cases made national headlines on one day. Both slapped with Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code, which is culpable homicide not amounting to murder. One was due to the mass killing of 20,000 people in Bhopal 26 years ago through corporate negligence at the Union Carbide factory at Bhopal. The other was the death of a young woman in Goa through her romantic association with Mickky Pacheco, a politician with a highly chequered career. One has caused great revulsion across the nation and the other has done the same in Goa.
Section 304 was slapped on Warren Andersen the CEO of Union Carbide 26 years ago and on former Tourism Minister Mickky Pacheco three days ago. Mickky Pacheco used his contacts to fall off the grid and disappear. Warren Andersen used the Government of India to falling off the grid and disappear.
In both cases poisonous chemicals were used to cause death. Mickkys 304 was due a tube of rat poison, followed by death and destruction of evidence. Andersen’s 304 was poisoning with deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant and killed over 20,000 people in what is arguably the worst industrial disaster the world has seen. Followed by a government cover up to make the disaster look less like a crime and more an Act of God.
In Mickky’s case, the state government is pulling out all the stops to nail him. In the Bhopal gas tragedy the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister’s office actually sent a government plane to fly Andersen to New Delhi and then out of the country to the safety of the USA, where his government refused to extradite him to face charges in India. They said he was not responsible, the Indian management was. Yet in the case of the British Petroleum oil leak into the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, the US government is pinning responsibility on the CEO of the company and demanding compensation amounting to billions of dollars. The Bhopal victims got approximately $500 each and a US spokesperson said these memorable words: “$500 dollars is pretty good for an Indian.”
Andersen was warned that the Bhopal plant had major mistakes in its system. He ignored the warnings. But it is significant that Warren Andersen immediately corrected those same flaws in the factories in the US plant.
In Mickky’s case, the police, the media, the public prosecution and even the court is focused on nailing the culprit. In Andersen’s case the authorities released Andersen on the same day he was arrested and flew him out of Bhopal in a state government plane.
Congress leader Arjun Singh, was Madhya Pradesh’s Chief Minister in 1984, but he refuses to comment on his actions at that time.
Anderson was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, grievous assault and killing and poisoning human beings and animals due to leakage of the MIC gas from the Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal.
A Bhopal trial court last Monday convicted eight Indian officials of Union Carbide. Anderson was not even mentioned in the judgment. They were sentenced to just 2 years and were given bail almost immediately and escorted out of the court through a back exit. The trial court watered down the case on the instructions of a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court (SC).
All three SC judges are doing very well after that ruling. One became a member of the International Criminal Court at The Hague. One is now a Congress MP and chairman of a commission of Dalit Muslims and Christians and the third shockingly, has been presiding over the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust that runs a 350-bed super-specialty hospital. The trust was set up by Union Carbide.
The Rajiv Gandhi government’s zeal to shield Union Carbide from justice as well as from paying proper compensation to the victim’s families is the stuff of legends. It continues till today with the Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi legally representing Dow Chemicals the company that bought Union Carbide. He made sure that a) they cannot be held responsible for the Union Carbide disaster and b) could not be held liable for cleaning up and contamination of the site in Bhopal, as even Union Carbide had not been held liable.
Mickky may get away scot free from his case, while the axe may fall on the family of Nadia Torrado, who may also get away with a slap on the wrist. The end result will just be a feeling of foolishness on the part of the Goan people who actually select people like Mickky to govern the state.
In the case of Bhopal, we will continue to feel anger, revulsion and deep pain as generations of children will be born deformed and cursed from birth due to the criminal negligence of a company that was specifically warned of leaks in the system and impending disaster. Only now, 26 years later, a much more aware media armed with Right to Information, has uncovered the criminal negligence of the government of India itself. Our elected representatives that bent over backwards to protect an American company but turned their back on the deaths or 20,000 innocent people. And they continue to turn their backs on disease and suffering of countless numbers of those unlucky to survive the gas leak at Union Carbide in December of 1984.
Section 304 was slapped on Warren Andersen the CEO of Union Carbide 26 years ago and on former Tourism Minister Mickky Pacheco three days ago. Mickky Pacheco used his contacts to fall off the grid and disappear. Warren Andersen used the Government of India to falling off the grid and disappear.
In both cases poisonous chemicals were used to cause death. Mickkys 304 was due a tube of rat poison, followed by death and destruction of evidence. Andersen’s 304 was poisoning with deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant and killed over 20,000 people in what is arguably the worst industrial disaster the world has seen. Followed by a government cover up to make the disaster look less like a crime and more an Act of God.
In Mickky’s case, the state government is pulling out all the stops to nail him. In the Bhopal gas tragedy the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister’s office actually sent a government plane to fly Andersen to New Delhi and then out of the country to the safety of the USA, where his government refused to extradite him to face charges in India. They said he was not responsible, the Indian management was. Yet in the case of the British Petroleum oil leak into the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, the US government is pinning responsibility on the CEO of the company and demanding compensation amounting to billions of dollars. The Bhopal victims got approximately $500 each and a US spokesperson said these memorable words: “$500 dollars is pretty good for an Indian.”
Andersen was warned that the Bhopal plant had major mistakes in its system. He ignored the warnings. But it is significant that Warren Andersen immediately corrected those same flaws in the factories in the US plant.
In Mickky’s case, the police, the media, the public prosecution and even the court is focused on nailing the culprit. In Andersen’s case the authorities released Andersen on the same day he was arrested and flew him out of Bhopal in a state government plane.
Congress leader Arjun Singh, was Madhya Pradesh’s Chief Minister in 1984, but he refuses to comment on his actions at that time.
Anderson was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, grievous assault and killing and poisoning human beings and animals due to leakage of the MIC gas from the Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal.
A Bhopal trial court last Monday convicted eight Indian officials of Union Carbide. Anderson was not even mentioned in the judgment. They were sentenced to just 2 years and were given bail almost immediately and escorted out of the court through a back exit. The trial court watered down the case on the instructions of a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court (SC).
All three SC judges are doing very well after that ruling. One became a member of the International Criminal Court at The Hague. One is now a Congress MP and chairman of a commission of Dalit Muslims and Christians and the third shockingly, has been presiding over the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust that runs a 350-bed super-specialty hospital. The trust was set up by Union Carbide.
The Rajiv Gandhi government’s zeal to shield Union Carbide from justice as well as from paying proper compensation to the victim’s families is the stuff of legends. It continues till today with the Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi legally representing Dow Chemicals the company that bought Union Carbide. He made sure that a) they cannot be held responsible for the Union Carbide disaster and b) could not be held liable for cleaning up and contamination of the site in Bhopal, as even Union Carbide had not been held liable.
Mickky may get away scot free from his case, while the axe may fall on the family of Nadia Torrado, who may also get away with a slap on the wrist. The end result will just be a feeling of foolishness on the part of the Goan people who actually select people like Mickky to govern the state.
In the case of Bhopal, we will continue to feel anger, revulsion and deep pain as generations of children will be born deformed and cursed from birth due to the criminal negligence of a company that was specifically warned of leaks in the system and impending disaster. Only now, 26 years later, a much more aware media armed with Right to Information, has uncovered the criminal negligence of the government of India itself. Our elected representatives that bent over backwards to protect an American company but turned their back on the deaths or 20,000 innocent people. And they continue to turn their backs on disease and suffering of countless numbers of those unlucky to survive the gas leak at Union Carbide in December of 1984.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Boneless chicken
Actually it was Manohar Parrikar who came out with it. He looked at the media-persons before him and said, what kind of a government is this? Ministers are involved in sex scandals, rape scandals, murder, excise scams, illegal mining… We have a boneless chief minister, a man with no backbone.” I heard it on the television as I was preparing Murg Makhani, butter chicken that can adapt itself to any occasion, any cuisine situation. It is chicken marinated overnight in curd, along with spices and cooked in tomato puree.
I listened to the news item while rubbing the marinade into the chicken. What Parrikar meant was that the Chief Minister did not have the courage to put his foot down. He was too chicken to do anything about his ministers, because he was so afraid of losing his seat. One image led to another and the allegory I ended up with was a boneless chicken.
Boneless chicken which is used for Murg Makhani gets along very well with a variety of spices, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, lime, cumin, methi, ginger and garlic. By themselves each cannot do much, but together, they make a formidable combination. Just like a coalition government actually. Bits and pieces of other food groups, nothing much by themselves, but together, they mix and merge their interests and they cling to the boneless Chicken Makhani (we’ll call it CM). Together with the CM they get a uniform flavour, and with all that rubbing they are embedded deep in the CM. The CM cannot move without them, they are always with him in everything he does.
Making a CM to your specifications is not at all a difficult task, provided you have the right recipe with you. So I am going to give you a recipe for a CM that is easy to digest.
How to Make Boneless Butter Chicken (Chicken Makhan)
Ingredients:
For Marinating
• 80 kg chicken (boneless)
• Sour comments from opposition
• His own colleagues trying to topple him constantly
• 1 powerful but independent minister
• I handful of openly corrupt leaders who everyone is too afraid to expose
• A sprinkling of fiery orators who can whip up the masses.
• Lots of infrastructure projects for the ministers
• Mining Lobby
• Building Lobby
• Lots of empty promises
For the Gravy
• We the people of Goa, whipped and beaten.
Instructions
• The chicken cuts himself into small pieces. He mixes, well all the ingredients for the marinade and thoroughly rubs the mixture into his chicken pieces
• Let the marinated pieces stand for an entire term.
• You will need lots of grease to grease the chicken. Put him in the pan. He will not move. He will just sit there in his boneless way, because he knows if he jumps out of the frying pan he will end up in the fire.
And that’s how you get the perfect Chicken Makhani, hereinafter known as CM. The CM be warned, has a shelf life. No matter how thick the gravy, the CM can get rotten. He needs to feel the heat regularly. Therefore the gravy too needs to be heated constantly, else it will just sit and congeal.
I listened to the news item while rubbing the marinade into the chicken. What Parrikar meant was that the Chief Minister did not have the courage to put his foot down. He was too chicken to do anything about his ministers, because he was so afraid of losing his seat. One image led to another and the allegory I ended up with was a boneless chicken.
Boneless chicken which is used for Murg Makhani gets along very well with a variety of spices, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, lime, cumin, methi, ginger and garlic. By themselves each cannot do much, but together, they make a formidable combination. Just like a coalition government actually. Bits and pieces of other food groups, nothing much by themselves, but together, they mix and merge their interests and they cling to the boneless Chicken Makhani (we’ll call it CM). Together with the CM they get a uniform flavour, and with all that rubbing they are embedded deep in the CM. The CM cannot move without them, they are always with him in everything he does.
Making a CM to your specifications is not at all a difficult task, provided you have the right recipe with you. So I am going to give you a recipe for a CM that is easy to digest.
How to Make Boneless Butter Chicken (Chicken Makhan)
Ingredients:
For Marinating
• 80 kg chicken (boneless)
• Sour comments from opposition
• His own colleagues trying to topple him constantly
• 1 powerful but independent minister
• I handful of openly corrupt leaders who everyone is too afraid to expose
• A sprinkling of fiery orators who can whip up the masses.
• Lots of infrastructure projects for the ministers
• Mining Lobby
• Building Lobby
• Lots of empty promises
For the Gravy
• We the people of Goa, whipped and beaten.
Instructions
• The chicken cuts himself into small pieces. He mixes, well all the ingredients for the marinade and thoroughly rubs the mixture into his chicken pieces
• Let the marinated pieces stand for an entire term.
• You will need lots of grease to grease the chicken. Put him in the pan. He will not move. He will just sit there in his boneless way, because he knows if he jumps out of the frying pan he will end up in the fire.
And that’s how you get the perfect Chicken Makhani, hereinafter known as CM. The CM be warned, has a shelf life. No matter how thick the gravy, the CM can get rotten. He needs to feel the heat regularly. Therefore the gravy too needs to be heated constantly, else it will just sit and congeal.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Education and Bal Congress
Any way you look at it Bal Congress is a great idea. Bal Congress is the Congress Party’s bright idea of grooming young netas and netesses in schools. It’s a great idea because all other parties are going to go the Bal way. We will have the Bal Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bal Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Bal DMK, the Bal AIADMK, the Bal RJD, Bal Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bal Nationalist Congress Party, the Bal MGP. Our education system will be all Bals.
Each party will set up its own schools in every hamlet of the nation. Working along the lines of catch-em-young, we will be raising little netas from nursery level. Instead of learning colours the regular way, they will learn orange is actually saffron, red is for communism, green is for Islamic parties. They will learn black is the best colour of money, white the clothes you wear to parliament, blue the colour you turn when the court convicts you, yellow the colour of investigative journalism. The toddlers will learn symbols, the hand, the lotus, the lion, the bicycle, the lantern etc.
Admissions will be given to toddlers purely on winnability. Uniforms will be white cotton kurta pyjamas and white Nehru caps. The syllabus will be changed with different textbooks for different schools depending on their affiliation.
Mathematics will be an important subject, very, very important. The little netas will be proficient in numbers, in profit and loss (profit to them and loss to the nation). It’s all good! Instead of learning the composition of mass, they will learn about the compostion of the masses. How to keep earnings of the masses low, and how to increase their own.
There will not be much focus on pure sciences, because lets face it, what role does science play in politics? Let the private schools deal with new breakthroughs in science, engineering and technology, the little netas only have to learn how to make the right purchase of bad technology so that they can collect huge commissions and kickbacks. They will learn how to open secret Swiss bank accounts and stash their ill-gotten gains for their children.
The little netas will learn how to formulate tenders; why else do they call it the tender age, huh? They will learn how to negotiate with a favoured company, fudge the amounts, take money under the table, stash it away in aforementioned Swiss accounts and take on a bad company to build bad infrastructure or provide a bad service, like pre-monsoon works at Vasco.
Geography will be ruthlessly broken into constituencies first, then states, then countries. Position and flow of rivers will be very important, because rivers are a huge source of income for parties and netas. Dams can be built in the wrong places, huge dams, rivers can be silted up, because floods are a gold mine for our netas. They will learn how to destroy good agricultural land and entire agrarian societies.
They will concentrate on Languages, Tweaked History to show their party in the best light possible, Religion will be a very important subject, where the little netas will learn how to play one community against the other. For that you need a good knowledge of all religions so that you can play on the emotions of the masses.
Higher education will focus on commerce, book-keeping, accounts fudging, banking and yes management. You have to have great management skills to be the champion puppet master. Physical fitness is not desirable, why should it, when you can hire legs and arms by the hundreds to do your work for you. Sports are definitely out, because team spirit and a sporting spirit are bad words in the political lexicon.
Yes the Bal Congress idea is a great one. Especially if you want to ram that final nail into the coffin of Government education in India. One believed that our education system had reached the furthest depths it could. But then one cannot underestimate the nation’s oldest party to barrel through again, digging a deeper pit to shove the institution even further into the depths.
Each party will set up its own schools in every hamlet of the nation. Working along the lines of catch-em-young, we will be raising little netas from nursery level. Instead of learning colours the regular way, they will learn orange is actually saffron, red is for communism, green is for Islamic parties. They will learn black is the best colour of money, white the clothes you wear to parliament, blue the colour you turn when the court convicts you, yellow the colour of investigative journalism. The toddlers will learn symbols, the hand, the lotus, the lion, the bicycle, the lantern etc.
Admissions will be given to toddlers purely on winnability. Uniforms will be white cotton kurta pyjamas and white Nehru caps. The syllabus will be changed with different textbooks for different schools depending on their affiliation.
Mathematics will be an important subject, very, very important. The little netas will be proficient in numbers, in profit and loss (profit to them and loss to the nation). It’s all good! Instead of learning the composition of mass, they will learn about the compostion of the masses. How to keep earnings of the masses low, and how to increase their own.
There will not be much focus on pure sciences, because lets face it, what role does science play in politics? Let the private schools deal with new breakthroughs in science, engineering and technology, the little netas only have to learn how to make the right purchase of bad technology so that they can collect huge commissions and kickbacks. They will learn how to open secret Swiss bank accounts and stash their ill-gotten gains for their children.
The little netas will learn how to formulate tenders; why else do they call it the tender age, huh? They will learn how to negotiate with a favoured company, fudge the amounts, take money under the table, stash it away in aforementioned Swiss accounts and take on a bad company to build bad infrastructure or provide a bad service, like pre-monsoon works at Vasco.
Geography will be ruthlessly broken into constituencies first, then states, then countries. Position and flow of rivers will be very important, because rivers are a huge source of income for parties and netas. Dams can be built in the wrong places, huge dams, rivers can be silted up, because floods are a gold mine for our netas. They will learn how to destroy good agricultural land and entire agrarian societies.
They will concentrate on Languages, Tweaked History to show their party in the best light possible, Religion will be a very important subject, where the little netas will learn how to play one community against the other. For that you need a good knowledge of all religions so that you can play on the emotions of the masses.
Higher education will focus on commerce, book-keeping, accounts fudging, banking and yes management. You have to have great management skills to be the champion puppet master. Physical fitness is not desirable, why should it, when you can hire legs and arms by the hundreds to do your work for you. Sports are definitely out, because team spirit and a sporting spirit are bad words in the political lexicon.
Yes the Bal Congress idea is a great one. Especially if you want to ram that final nail into the coffin of Government education in India. One believed that our education system had reached the furthest depths it could. But then one cannot underestimate the nation’s oldest party to barrel through again, digging a deeper pit to shove the institution even further into the depths.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Save the Goan
The realization struck when I saw Carmen Miranda announce to the television cameras that CM Digambar Kamat said that he did not need her vote, he gets enough votes from the migrants. Like the tiger in India, the Goan in Goa is definitely on the endangered species list. And we are doing as sloppy a job of saving the Goan as we are of saving the tiger. Look at the measures taken to save the tiger: a little bit here and a little bit there with poachers doing pretty much as they please. The tiger sanctuaries are vast and the forest rangers say it is impossible to catch them. Often it is the rangers themselves and locals who are hand in glove with the poachers. If only the tigers could get together and turn against their killers. It is no different here.
Here the poachers keep coming in from all directions. They don’t actually take a gun and shoot us, skin us and steal our body parts. Instead they overpower us with money and sweet promises and steal our souls. Like the tiger we try to protect ourselves, but we Goans are also wired to bask in the sun. Attacking and fighting was never the Goan way. We have welcomed invaders throughout our long history, allowed them to rule over us and over time merged with them to morph into a new and even more fascinating entity that remained essentially Goan. This time it is different. We have run out of the Goan essentials. Too many of us are okay with the instant gratification policies of the poachers.
Our enemies know only strength. They respect and fear mass disobedience. They quail before the threat of violence. If it is the electorate that has got them into power allowing them to sell themselves and Goa to the highest bidder, it is the electorate that has to curtail that power. I don’t mean we have to wait until the next elections. We have to act now. If we continue rolling over and playing dead, we are in serious trouble.
We owe a very great debt of gratitude to the disparate groups that fight pitched battles with Goa’s new invaders in the hinterland, or the plains, or the hill slopes. We owe Goa Bachao Abhiyan. We owe Claude Alvares and his Goa Foundation. We owe Mathany Saldanha. These are people who have professions, jobs, homes and families, who have given up their time for a larger cause. The cause of caring and protecting the Goa that has been preserved for us by our ancestors and passing it on to our children and our childrens’ children.
We are a package deal. Goans are Goa. If Goa is gone, so too will Goans be gone, pushed out from the one small, beautiful place they have always called home.
We have to come together, get out of our comfort zones, face the heat, both in terms of the fearsome sun and the heat of grappling with police, goons hired by miners, industrialists and builders to terrorize those who dare to object to the rape of their land. We need to unite under one umbrella organization. Form a network that can reach the smallest house in the smallest hamlet to offer support and protection. We already have one organization, the Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA) which is recognized in most parts of Goa. We need to strengthen the GBA and take strength from it. They are fighting an impossible battle, stretched out thin, unable to fight simultaneous attacks from all sides cheered on by our political class who we have selected to fight for us.
We have so many heroes fighting the good fight, Aires Rodrigues who revels in the fact that though many have tried to kill him, he celebrates his 50th birthday tomorrow, Dr Oscar Rebello who is the face of Goan resistance to the rest of the country, the no-nonsense Sabina Martins who thinks nothing of spending long hours into the night to force a promise from one of the slipperiest chief ministers Goa has ever had. Patricia Pinto, Anand Madgavkar, Claude Alvares, the 85-year-old Dora D’Souza, her daughter-in-law Sheryl, and Sheryl’s eight-year-old daughter, Prajal Sakhardande, Pravin Sabnis, Nandakumar Kamat, Rajendra Kerkar, Seby Rodrigues, Carmen de Miranda, Judith Rebello, Judith Almeida, it is impossible to list them all here.
There are easily hundreds of hardworking men and women who love this small state of ours so much that they forgo the comforts of blinkers, ear plugs and gags that most of us use. It’s time we stopped being passengers going along for the ride. It’s time we took the reins, or at least got off and walked shoulder to shoulder with those who are fighting to preserve our identity.
That is the only way we can beat the poachers at their game. This is the only way we can preserve some of our cultural wealth for our descendants. This is the only way the Goan can survive.
Here the poachers keep coming in from all directions. They don’t actually take a gun and shoot us, skin us and steal our body parts. Instead they overpower us with money and sweet promises and steal our souls. Like the tiger we try to protect ourselves, but we Goans are also wired to bask in the sun. Attacking and fighting was never the Goan way. We have welcomed invaders throughout our long history, allowed them to rule over us and over time merged with them to morph into a new and even more fascinating entity that remained essentially Goan. This time it is different. We have run out of the Goan essentials. Too many of us are okay with the instant gratification policies of the poachers.
Our enemies know only strength. They respect and fear mass disobedience. They quail before the threat of violence. If it is the electorate that has got them into power allowing them to sell themselves and Goa to the highest bidder, it is the electorate that has to curtail that power. I don’t mean we have to wait until the next elections. We have to act now. If we continue rolling over and playing dead, we are in serious trouble.
We owe a very great debt of gratitude to the disparate groups that fight pitched battles with Goa’s new invaders in the hinterland, or the plains, or the hill slopes. We owe Goa Bachao Abhiyan. We owe Claude Alvares and his Goa Foundation. We owe Mathany Saldanha. These are people who have professions, jobs, homes and families, who have given up their time for a larger cause. The cause of caring and protecting the Goa that has been preserved for us by our ancestors and passing it on to our children and our childrens’ children.
We are a package deal. Goans are Goa. If Goa is gone, so too will Goans be gone, pushed out from the one small, beautiful place they have always called home.
We have to come together, get out of our comfort zones, face the heat, both in terms of the fearsome sun and the heat of grappling with police, goons hired by miners, industrialists and builders to terrorize those who dare to object to the rape of their land. We need to unite under one umbrella organization. Form a network that can reach the smallest house in the smallest hamlet to offer support and protection. We already have one organization, the Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA) which is recognized in most parts of Goa. We need to strengthen the GBA and take strength from it. They are fighting an impossible battle, stretched out thin, unable to fight simultaneous attacks from all sides cheered on by our political class who we have selected to fight for us.
We have so many heroes fighting the good fight, Aires Rodrigues who revels in the fact that though many have tried to kill him, he celebrates his 50th birthday tomorrow, Dr Oscar Rebello who is the face of Goan resistance to the rest of the country, the no-nonsense Sabina Martins who thinks nothing of spending long hours into the night to force a promise from one of the slipperiest chief ministers Goa has ever had. Patricia Pinto, Anand Madgavkar, Claude Alvares, the 85-year-old Dora D’Souza, her daughter-in-law Sheryl, and Sheryl’s eight-year-old daughter, Prajal Sakhardande, Pravin Sabnis, Nandakumar Kamat, Rajendra Kerkar, Seby Rodrigues, Carmen de Miranda, Judith Rebello, Judith Almeida, it is impossible to list them all here.
There are easily hundreds of hardworking men and women who love this small state of ours so much that they forgo the comforts of blinkers, ear plugs and gags that most of us use. It’s time we stopped being passengers going along for the ride. It’s time we took the reins, or at least got off and walked shoulder to shoulder with those who are fighting to preserve our identity.
That is the only way we can beat the poachers at their game. This is the only way we can preserve some of our cultural wealth for our descendants. This is the only way the Goan can survive.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Sussaygaaad Goanese
Don’t know if it bothers you as much as it bothers me, but when a non-Goan Indian uses the word ‘Soçegado’ and pronounces it “Sussaygaaadoh”, I feel a need, a burning need, to rip my arm off and whack the fellow across the head with it. It’s worse when they use the word “Goanese” to refer to all things Goan.
A relative who has made it big in the furniture business in Mumbai could not wrap his mind around the fact that the only dealer of wood in Goa he wished to use was not interested in keeping his shop open during the siesta hours. “But I am giving you business worth lakhs,” spluttered the relative. “Gentleman,” said the wood shop man politely, "my shop will be closed from 1 to 4.” “But that is the only time I can come to your shop,” argued the relative. “Sorry,” said the wood shop man, “try and come after 4, but before 7 because that is when I close my shop for the day.” My relative was shocked that the wood shop man had no business sense whatsoever. “He wouldn’t last a day in Bombay with that attitude,” he said.
I reminded the relative of the fabulous times we all used to have during our summer and winter vacations at our ancestral house in the village. The early rising, the days packed with doing things that gave us such joy. Settling down under a stationary bullockcart in the heat of the afternoon sun, watching a couple of butterflies winging lazily by. The wonderful food that tasted so good because it was cooked in earthen pots on wood fires by cooks who loved us and who began slaving over the meals at dawn. The amazing quiet, broken only by the twittering of birds and the soughing of the wind in the trees.
How we were welcomed by the villagers and given small jobs to do, like collecting fat kokum berries, spreading sour mango pieces on coconut mats to dry before being carefully stored for use in those heavenly curries. How we also danced on the cashew fruits crushing them under our dusty feet along with the men who ran the distillery up in the hills. How they laughed that soft high-pitched Goan laugh when we drank the neero in leaf cups made of cashew leaves. How we stole a few smoked sausages from the store room skewered them on sticks and roasted them over a small fire we made of sticks and leaves. How we ate the half cooked, burnt things and still feel nothing in the best restaurants in the world ever tasted as good. How we “borrowed” the fisherman’s canoe and paddled down the river. How one deranged cousin tried to look under the boat, tipped it over and sent all of us into the water. How we tried to turn the canoe back right side up, but our knowledge of physics was non-existent as was our muscular strength. How the owner of the boat waded out, turned it over and then whacked whoever his long wiry arms could reach. How he later taught us how to fish and even prised a catfish that had impaled itself on a playmate’s hand, before pouring feni on the wound.
I reminded him of the village feast, the food served to the villagers on banana leaves in our grandfather’s massive balcao, the pigs that had human names, the slow, measured rhythms of life in the village. That was socegado, I told him. It meant contentment, not laziness. Goans were not lazy, they were content with a little, but that little was so rich in quality. It was a quality of life that allowed them to live a healthy, happy and really long life. People hardly ever died of unnatural causes in the village. They were very fit. My grandfather could hurdle over a two foot stone wall to chase a woman who was robbing fruit from his trees. He was in his early eighties at that time. No one had cars. There was one Mercedez Benz taxi in the village, that was hired to bring us from the ship to the house and take us back to the ship when the school term was beginning. We used to be in tears as we left and our grandfather and his retainers would also be in tears. We were the privileged ones. Privileged to have lived and laughed in what I can only call Paradise.
The relative spent the siesta hours with me talking about those days that we realized were so special and went back to the shop at 4.30. “Let’s give him half an hour to get organized,” he said with a smile.
Socegado, I would like to tell my non-Goan friends, is the common goal in the traditional Goan ethos. All actions were aimed towards doing enough to get by, so that there was enough time for the things that mattered, like song and dance, fishing and feasting, conversation on the balcao with family and friends, family prayers, the laughter of little children and a sip of feni as the shadows lengthened. The pity of it is that all our actions today are resulting in socegado dying out, slowly but surely, and taking the traditional Goan away with it. Then “Goanese” will be the correct term for us. And I’m the idiot who will live out the rest of her life with only one arm.
A relative who has made it big in the furniture business in Mumbai could not wrap his mind around the fact that the only dealer of wood in Goa he wished to use was not interested in keeping his shop open during the siesta hours. “But I am giving you business worth lakhs,” spluttered the relative. “Gentleman,” said the wood shop man politely, "my shop will be closed from 1 to 4.” “But that is the only time I can come to your shop,” argued the relative. “Sorry,” said the wood shop man, “try and come after 4, but before 7 because that is when I close my shop for the day.” My relative was shocked that the wood shop man had no business sense whatsoever. “He wouldn’t last a day in Bombay with that attitude,” he said.
I reminded the relative of the fabulous times we all used to have during our summer and winter vacations at our ancestral house in the village. The early rising, the days packed with doing things that gave us such joy. Settling down under a stationary bullockcart in the heat of the afternoon sun, watching a couple of butterflies winging lazily by. The wonderful food that tasted so good because it was cooked in earthen pots on wood fires by cooks who loved us and who began slaving over the meals at dawn. The amazing quiet, broken only by the twittering of birds and the soughing of the wind in the trees.
How we were welcomed by the villagers and given small jobs to do, like collecting fat kokum berries, spreading sour mango pieces on coconut mats to dry before being carefully stored for use in those heavenly curries. How we also danced on the cashew fruits crushing them under our dusty feet along with the men who ran the distillery up in the hills. How they laughed that soft high-pitched Goan laugh when we drank the neero in leaf cups made of cashew leaves. How we stole a few smoked sausages from the store room skewered them on sticks and roasted them over a small fire we made of sticks and leaves. How we ate the half cooked, burnt things and still feel nothing in the best restaurants in the world ever tasted as good. How we “borrowed” the fisherman’s canoe and paddled down the river. How one deranged cousin tried to look under the boat, tipped it over and sent all of us into the water. How we tried to turn the canoe back right side up, but our knowledge of physics was non-existent as was our muscular strength. How the owner of the boat waded out, turned it over and then whacked whoever his long wiry arms could reach. How he later taught us how to fish and even prised a catfish that had impaled itself on a playmate’s hand, before pouring feni on the wound.
I reminded him of the village feast, the food served to the villagers on banana leaves in our grandfather’s massive balcao, the pigs that had human names, the slow, measured rhythms of life in the village. That was socegado, I told him. It meant contentment, not laziness. Goans were not lazy, they were content with a little, but that little was so rich in quality. It was a quality of life that allowed them to live a healthy, happy and really long life. People hardly ever died of unnatural causes in the village. They were very fit. My grandfather could hurdle over a two foot stone wall to chase a woman who was robbing fruit from his trees. He was in his early eighties at that time. No one had cars. There was one Mercedez Benz taxi in the village, that was hired to bring us from the ship to the house and take us back to the ship when the school term was beginning. We used to be in tears as we left and our grandfather and his retainers would also be in tears. We were the privileged ones. Privileged to have lived and laughed in what I can only call Paradise.
The relative spent the siesta hours with me talking about those days that we realized were so special and went back to the shop at 4.30. “Let’s give him half an hour to get organized,” he said with a smile.
Socegado, I would like to tell my non-Goan friends, is the common goal in the traditional Goan ethos. All actions were aimed towards doing enough to get by, so that there was enough time for the things that mattered, like song and dance, fishing and feasting, conversation on the balcao with family and friends, family prayers, the laughter of little children and a sip of feni as the shadows lengthened. The pity of it is that all our actions today are resulting in socegado dying out, slowly but surely, and taking the traditional Goan away with it. Then “Goanese” will be the correct term for us. And I’m the idiot who will live out the rest of her life with only one arm.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
