Can we be more sensible and less irresponsible on our roads? -- By Jose Maria Miranda

Years ago, I had written an article on this subject, titled “Goans most uncultured on roads”. My only purpose in choosing a harsh title was not as much to hurt my fellow Goans as it was to drive home and open our eyes to the hard and sad reality on Goa’s roads, which have turned into virtual grave yards for our young and not so young brothers and sisters. Years after my write up, change has only been for the worse.

A death a day in a State as small as ours, sometimes with more than one in a single day, is too much for us to take and cannot be acceptable in a civilized society, where utmost respect for human life is essential. It is extremely disturbing that a substantial number of people in Goa no longer die of old age or due to health ailments but in avoidable accidents and hundreds, if not thousands, languish in their homes and hospitals, often for no fault of theirs. We are heartlessly and mercilessly cutting short, apparently without any remorse, many precious and beautiful lives, some blooming buds, which might have been great assets to our society and particularly to their families.

The traffic scenario in Goa is chaotic.  Vehicle explosion is perhaps one the main reasons for accidents, but rash and reckless driving is surely the single principal cause of road mishaps. Restrictions on ownership of vehicles could have been a solution, but it will never happen being a good source of revenue. Cabinet meeting called to remedy a situation which has been prevailing for years and is only worsening by the day cannot produce any results unless there is sincerity of purpose. Putting the inefficient and incompetent Traffic Police and Transport personnel on the roads, to tame traffic violators,  is aimed only at collecting additional revenue – not a genuine attempt at curbing speed and recklessness, which are main causes of accidents but which merit the least attention from these authorities. Their regular presence on the roads may have some deterrent effect, but it will be for a short while and be restricted to certain areas only.

If there is seriousness in curbing accidents, the first priority must be immediate introduction of city buses, with reasonably priced tickets, to reduce the circulation of private vehicles in the city. Water transport - about which we hear in occasional and ever unfulfilled promises – and a rail link to Panjim will considerably reduce the pressure on our roads. But such steps may not even be considered due to pressures from the bus lobby and the losses that KTCL will incur.  

Immediate imposition and strict enforcement of speed limits on our roads, even in absence of gadgets to check them, would surely reduce major accidents. Stiff and merciless action against reckless driving/riding is needed so that motorists are aware that excessive speed will not be tolerated. The Police, which is always reluctant to tackle this problem, is already finding excuses of absence of gadgets to avoid dealing with such violators. Even noting down the vehicle No. and summoning the owner would prove a deterrent. Fixing speed governors to high powered cabs could also be given a thought. The Director General of Police, whose transfer to Goa was welcomed because of the efficiency with which he handled the traffic in Delhi, surely knows that crash helmets and seat belts, though essential, do not reduce accidents but only fatalities and that indiscipline and rashness are the main causes of accidents. This is unfortunately rarely curbed by his subordinates.

Much was expected from the DGP but little has been achieved.

Absence of traffic lights is another serious cause of accidents and pedestrian deaths. It obstructs safe pedestrian crossing due to continuous flow of traffic. Strange that even the capital city hardly has any and Margao has none. Doesn’t it speak enough of Government efficiency and sincerity, which would have spared many traffic personnel for patrolling and ensuring traffic discipline? Let us hope speed radars will soon make their appearance, as suggested by the Police, and this will hopefully put an end to the rule of criminal motorists.

Jose Maria Miranda

Castigating or blaming the Government and the Police will not help us reduce the pain and agony of our families, unless we ourselves behave responsibly on the roads and are sensitive enough to realize what it is to lose a loved one in an accident or to be deprived, permanently or temporarily, of the family’s only source of income. Have we ever spared a thought for such families we destroy by our negligence, road rage or arrogance in trying to display our affluence, power or position? With so many people dying in accidents does it behoove of us to continue driving or riding the way we do? Does the fact that the Police does not strictly enforce the law, entitle us to ignore or violate it and put at risk our own or other people’s lives? Has it ever struck us that the life of our victim could, at times, be more precious than our own, being the sole breadwinner of the family?

More than being critical of the enforcing authorities or my fellow riders and drivers, I wish to use these lines as an emotional appeal to them to just think of others, of the possible consequences of our thoughtless actions that can destroy one or more families or leave them in total penury. To the Traffic Police, my humble appeal is to be educators rather than prosecutors and ensure that the motorists fear the law, which is meant to protect their own and other people’s lives. This has gone for too long. It is time we join hands to reduce the pain and suffering of our fellow brethren.  

PROPRIETY OF NOCTURNAL SMARTNESS -- By Cleofato Almeida Coutinho

With the Congress on the downslide and the experiment of Arvind Kejrival on ethical and corruption free governance based on alternate politics fading away, fascist tendencies are mounting attack on democracy itself. As Narendra Modi marches on to have a Congress free ‘Bharat’, new grounds are set with a complete go bye by ‘the party with a difference’.

 In their endeavor to wipe out Congress from the political map, what happened in Utttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh a year back shall find place in the text books of the Constitution of India in case independent authors are permitted to have their say. Post 2017 election scenario in Goa and Manipur has dumped constitutional niceties into a deeper pit.

Take the Goa case - we are told the largest party leadership slept while the minority worked overtime at midnight in fixing the ‘deal’. Pamella Philipose has rightly summed up the present scenario, “an active lie needs a passive recipient. The credibility of the piece of information is in direct proportion to the willingness of the people to invest it with credibility..”.

The Goa governor laid to rest a convention well entrenched in India – that the single largest party gets the first invitation. Who reached the gates of Raj Bhavan first mattered the most. Congress ‘waited for an invite’ while the BJP ‘claimed an invite’. If Governments are formed that way, God save our democracy! The English convention that the ruling party losing majority cannot get the first shot at ministry making did not get the Governor’s approval. The people’s mandate was destroyed by subverting the will of the people and the midnight ‘deal’ became nocturnal smartness displayed as political virtue, worth being emulated by the generation next as political shrewdness. The way this nocturnal smartness was portrayed in the Rajya Sabha is actually an insult to the Goa psyche. The electorate was taken for a ride by the midnight ‘deal’.

In Manipur the politically smart took some time to lure 2 MLAs elected on a congress ticket to shift to ‘the party with a difference’ to give Manipur a BJP government. Changing party affiliations may be justified as a need to keep in tune with changing times. Vishvajeet Rane has done it in Goa but is it highly unacceptable that MLAs elected on a party ticket immediately shifts to the other side after elections. Same principle shall apply to the party brought   into being to drive out the BJP (as Congress was accused of incapable of that!).

Democracy is all about numbers and in a numbers game, it may look legitimate to get the numbers of the opponent depleted, but such maneuvering is not morally legitimate. But who is bothered about morals? Issues like principles, morals, ideology are to be reserved only for TV studios and of course edit pages. Goa had its own ups and downs in it’s democratic foray. In the 90s of the last century we were infamous for having very ‘brittle’ governments that collapsed for money and power. When late Wilfred D’ Souza marched to Raj Bhavan with Ratnakar Chopdekar and Shankar Bandekar both from MGP, despite MGP having majority, it was thought that the anti-defection law would take care of such deviant behaviour, but we made mince meat of the law.

The return of the rejected in 2017 is now explained away as political necessity. Political compulsion is the main disease afflicting the Indian political system much more that corruption in the body polity and administration. Dr. Ambedkar had referred to constitutional morality as “a paramount reverence for the forms of Constitution, enforcing obedience to the authority, acting under and with a habit of open speech, of action subject only through legal control”. A political party functions with certain shared beliefs and collective conscience. At election time the people get their chance to put their seal of approval/disapproval on those beliefs. Government formation must reflect those shared beliefs on which the people lay their trust. Manipulating public will is be a clear case of breach of trust, disloyalty undermining the very survival of cherish values of constitutionalism.

It may look stupid to talk of political morality in present times. Lal Bahadur Shastri’s times were over many decades back. What about propriety? Issues like majority and government formation have become play things in the hands of those who get elected. The deviant have changed the democratic fabric at their whims and fancies. It is the indecent pursuit of power that does not allow them maintain any semblance of propriety. Sacrifice is no long the rule of politics, it is self and the only aim is to be on the ruling side by whatever methods. It is wealth and power that has to be collected to be used at the next elections and for generation next.

 They have been succeeding for too long a time and have exploited the short public memory as a weapon to deal with public anger. They believe that the electorate can be managed by some small favours like arranging a job for someone or grant of a contract  out of turn or may be help someone get out of police clutches. In case you cannot manage that way, dazzle them with mega projects like a second bridge or a third one. If nothing works, buy them out! Our tolerance to such deviant behavior only confirms the decline of political standards and that has its own fallouts. We can never think of becoming a great state or a great country with such behavior by our elected.  Democratic credibility depends upon how democracy is practiced.  Fascism gets breeding ground when democratic institutions and democratic practices are at a low ebb.

 

 

Fears of a Totalitarian State are now looking real…-- By Jose Maria Miranda

Development is a word that always attracts us and rightly so, as it generally makes life simpler and easier for us and often also provides jobs or self-employment, particularly for our youth, who are otherwise constrained to move out in search of livelihood. However, it is imperative that such development be sustainable and not in any way destructive or beneficial only to selected few.

It is unfortunate that we are often selfishly concerned about development of our own constituency or surroundings, while least worried about damage caused somewhere else. In Goa, we cannot afford to overlook the substantial additional influx of migrants in a State already bursting at its seams, solely for creation of politicians’ votebanks or further demographic changes or steps detrimental to our environment. It is here that the views of the Government clash with those of the people – because unfortunately for our Governments, development means massive constructions and grandiose projects which would bring accounted and non-accounted revenue for the Government, its Ministers and bureaucrats and only minimal benefit to the people.

Keeping the people in the loop of Government plans and understanding their genuine problems and feelings are the essence of democracy and ought to be the tenets of a people friendly administration. However, almost every project of the Government or supported or promoted by it with an eye on the cuts it will get, runs into rough weather because either the people have not been taken into confidence or proper procedures have not been followed or are in contravention of established laws.

Where on earth does one see  Governments regularly flouting or subverting their own rules and regulations and going ahead with projects throwing to the winds all the laws, which they would normally insist on being implemented by private individuals? Why is the Government waving or making a mockery of Environment Impact Assessments on big projects? Is it not because it knows that they would hit a roadblock if proper EIAs are done? Are we not watching helplessly thousands of trees being felled for road widening, particularly in Salcete, while general directives of the Supreme Court to plant five times new saplings to offset the damage are not being followed? Does it cost much to thus protect our environment from possible adverse consequences?

Narendra Modi’s Government is in mighty hurry in going ahead with development in the country at any cost and at the fastest pace possible. There is nothing wrong in that, though environmental issues cannot be overlooked, just to please his industrialist friends. The consequences could be tragic, as have already been experienced by various States. People are not averse to development though they are, at times, oblivious of its possible unpleasant consequences. But they are now turning apprehensive that “development” and the so called “welfare of the poor”, which the Government so much brags about, are only a cover for the regressive and dictatorial policies this Government is indulging in , which only confirm the predicted fears that we are marching towards a totalitarian State. Modi’s Government record on transparency has been uninspiring and in fact abominable. Anonimity in political funding, delay in appointment of Lokpal, attempts at diluting both the Lokpal & the Whistle Blowers Protection Acts – these are yet to become operational, even after three years of being notified - proposed increase in fees for filing applications under RTI and charges for obtaining documents, Taxation Laws allowing search and seizure of properties by tax authorities and giving them sweeping powers to open cases as early as 1962 and much more that would be long to enumerate – are some of the steps this so-called “democratic” Government needs to be credited with.

Remarking on the failure of this Government in the appointment of Lokpal, the Supreme Court remarked that cleansing of economy “must be matched by strong steps to cleanse public life” and that the Lokpal Act cannot remain a “dead letter” The Taxation laws were surreptitiously introduced by Jatley in November last when the Lok Sabha was busy debating demonetization. They were passed recently in a hurry, without any discussion and did not have to go to RS, where NDA is in minority, as it was a money bill. The recent murder of a trader in Alwar, Rajasthan, beaten to death by “cow vigilantes” for transporting bovines – the 9^th ninth such murder in last three years, according to some TV channels – reported even by international Press, was shamefully denied by Union Minister Naqvi and is yet another example of how emboldened rowdies are getting in the present unruly and communal  set up.

Jose Maria Miranda

It is now only a question of time – once the BJP has the numbers in Rajya Sabha, there won’t be any looking back – even the Constitution may not be spared. The fanatic followers of BJP, whose interests seem to be mainly in the construction of Ram Mandir, establishment of Hindu Rashtra, beef ban and perhaps even prohibition, do not unfortunately anticipate what could be the possible consequences of having a dictatorship with draconian powers being exercised over everyone to stifle dissent and curb opposition. Goans must be given the credit of having rightly rejected the BJP, perhaps for these reasons, though the Party may still be ruling the State. Yet, my fellow Goans need to be cautious against being carried away by small acts and overgenerous with praises to some politicians’ abilities to perform, thus offsetting the credibility they lost for good reasons. While we need to appreciate such acts, let us not lose sight that such individuals are also well known for their ability to hoodwink people. They may strike when least expected…