Who will save Goa?

By Hartman de Souza
03 Oct 2010

Wild rush to mine Goa has almost ruined the once beautiful coastal state. Alarmed by the widespread destruction, citizen groups have come together to bring some sense to the government’s development planning, but politicians continue to give a hoot to their concerns for nature.

Goa has seen unparalleled exploitation of natural resources

While the Expert Panel appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to look into the status of the Western Ghats had its day-long meeting at a conference hall in the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa on September 27, there is every likelihood that the strong attack launched by citizens' groups and others against the mining industry will be diluted if not waylaid.

At the outset it must be said that the possibility of this bleak outcome must be set against the major gain of this day, which was that Goa-based scientists, architects, writers, scholars and several citizens' groups formed a consortium of common interest that is sure to torment several Goan politicians who depend on mining to fill their coffers. This is not as far fetched as it may sound.

Many of these politicians have made billions through legal and illegal mining operations in Goa but in the process have killed innumerable forests, springs and aquifers of the state. Not to be left behind, the remaining netas have also bought huge tracts of agricultural land and forests, and now wait for the environmental clearances to come through. The story doesn't end here.

When some Goan economists claim that mining is the backbone of the economy, in reality they mean that either politicians and influential officials have turned mining barons or running companies that lease out mining machinery, or own a fleet of barges; or that every Goan official from Road Transport Officer to Police Inspector's level probably owns a few trucks to haul out the ore.

But to come back to the MoEF's Expert Panel that heard what Goans not dependent on mining had to say:
In a 100-minute presentation that drew the expected frowns from those in the industry, they set before the Expert Panel, perhaps for the first time in Goa, the most comprehensive and damning of cases against mining in Goa.

At least one of the panel members, Dr. V.S. Vijayan, a distinguished agricultural scientist, maintained that there should be a total moratorium on mining activities. He echoed Goan claims that a detailed social audit of the mining industry be the need of the day, and certainly not the Chief Minister's much flaunted 'new' Mineral Policy that was conceived to ensure the mining in Goa continues unabated. Lest it be forgotten citizens' groups have long been clamouring that regulations be honestly enforced, and that the extensive damage of earlier mining operations be repaired before any new activities are even contemplated.

Will this be the case? That is a moot point.
Professor Madhav Gadgil, an eminent scientist with the reputation to back him, while chairing the proceedings of the Expert panel admirably, appeared less than willing to disclose either his cards or his heart. He began the morning with a rather long-winded regurgitation of his past achievements in negotiating the terrain between the environment and that magical word, 'development'. However, considering his own admission that the Konkan Railway Corporation totally disregarded the changes he had painstakingly suggested, we may not have the most potent advocate for our magnificent Ghats.

While the morning session provided fact and figure by way of enlarged Google-generated maps, an exhibition of photographs of mining-devastated areas, elaborately marshalled writing, impassioned argument, and a dossier of all this in each panel members hands, the afternoon alas, was given to spin-doctoring.

In a power-point presentation redolent of fake public meetings in the mining areas, the industry's young representative, blissfully ignored figures and statistics given in the government's own Draft Regional Plan, and trotted out reasons that are both painful and false. According to them:
75 per cent of the state population is employed in the mining industry; major tax paying industry giving 25% of Goa's GDP; environmental measures will be taken care of by the new Mineral Policy; social programmes by way of bus stops and clinics and water tankers; planting five to six million trees every year.

Their solutions to the problem of mining in Goa are ridiculously simple and predictably enough, backed by the politicians. That illegal mining be curbed by government, that wider bypass roads be cut through forest lands for higher capacity carrying trucks with air-conditioned cabins. Right now ore from Karantaka coming into Goa has made life around the Anmod Ghat and below a living hell of trucks. The mining industry wants a railway in! As if on cue, a senior member of the industry reminded one and all that if the mining would stop, as it did in Kudremukh, it would fan a Naxalite movement!


In the discussion that followed, Professor Gadgil, before he left for a meeting with the Chief Minister, took pains to tell those concerned with the effects of mining to tone down their rhetoric and give suggestions that could improve the mining industry. While those in the industry opened their notebooks and duly took pen in hand, one trusts that both they and Professor Gadgil got an understanding of the only suggestion that was really made, namely, that a moratorium against mining be enforced and earlier leases cleared under false circumstances, be revoked.

Professor Gadgil perhaps, is not to know that nearly every single one of the Environment Impact Assessment studies mandatory for clearance have been fabricated by one Hyderabad-based laboratory with an office in Goa now; or how independent scientists who have scrutinised these have laughed at the pathetic job made of even fudging data, of 'Siberian salamanders' given home in Goa, or even, 'rivers of Gujarat' for that matter. Professor Gadgil is certainly not to know that the bulk of new clearances in the virgin foothills of Quepem and Sanguem were given by the MoEF panel headed by the infamous Dr. Majumdar, a scientist on the board of at least two mining and mining-related companies, who was then forced to resign. It is because of this obvious conflict of interest if not chicanery, that environmentalists, their lawyers and civil society ask that those earlier leases cleared, be revoked.

Whether one dwells on whether this destructive industry will be caught out or not, the scene perforce shifts to whether the Expert Panel, given their eminence and standing, are inclined to see the trees and water before the state and the central governments see the low grade ore beneath just waiting to be sent to China.

Too many intellectuals in Goa are now disturbed with the regularity that some scientists and environmentalists in Goa have shifted their allegiance to the mining industry, taking on board the myth that mining is the backbone of the Goan economy, and then, rationalizing this outrage in casuistry that would make even a Middle Ages monk blush with shame.
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