Koti Tirth corridor
The decision of the state cabinet to clear the ‘Koti Tirth Corridor’ project in Divar was a good piece of news. The project will come up at the place where Shree Saptakoteshwar temple once stood in Divar. The temple was destroyed by Portuguese and later built by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Narva in Bicholim taluka. I remember years back ex-MLA Nirmala Sawant also tried to get officials to maintain the place when she was the power minister. Legislator Vijai Sardesai also visited the place in 2018 or 2019 when he was the deputy chief minister and minister for archaeology. He had directed officials to start the process of building a temple at the ruins of the Saptakoteshwar temple, which is a historical place, with many tourists visiting it. The government deciding to build a temple at the original site in Divar will be a tribute to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj whom we admire a lot. Moreover, the project will also benefit the locals, who will get business and job opportunities.
Jerry Luis De Souza, Divar
Theatre of the absurd
Recently videos and photographs of Manish Gupta, the husband of Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, sitting in on government meetings, conducting site inspections with civic officials and issuing instructions have emerged. He is neither a part of the state cabinet nor has he been appointed in any administrative capacity as a consultant or adviser. It seems the Delhi government is a family business now, akin to the Phulera village administration in the popular web series ‘Panchayat’. What is surprising is that this is being brazenly done under the nose of the Centre without any pushback from the citizenry or censure from the BJP’s top leadership. Tomorrow the CM’s son or daughter may also preside over official meetings and run government departments, truly a theatre of the absurd, which can happen only in India.
Rekha Sarin Trehan, Benaulim
Wealth inequality
According to The Forbes’ list of ultra high net worth individuals (UHNI), Mumbai is home to 69 billionaires possessing $445 billion in assets, the highest in India and the fourth largest concentration in the world after New York, Hong Kong and Moscow. But what does that really translate into or mean anything? A city with Asia’s largest slum, pothole-riddled roads, crumbling infrastructure, mountains of garbage piled high on the sides, a defunct storm-water drainage system ensuring annual flooding during monsoon,
encroached water bodies, building construction debris strewed in green areas, wires dangling like cobwebs, permanently dug up roads, not a single footpath you can comfortably walk on, a bursting-at-the-seams transportation network and aggressive beggars at every traffic signal. The billionaire numbers make for a flashy statistic, but on the ground it means absolutely zilch. All it shows is the massive inequity in wealth distribution; the Mumbai billionaires control 50% of the nation’s wealth, while the rest of the citizens fight for crumbs. It shows government apathy and neglect and a builder-politician quid pro quo nexus. The British left us a great gift but our avarice and apathy turned the city of dreams into a megapolis of nightmares.
Vinay Dwivedi, Benaulim
Goa’s IIT project
After Melauli, Sanguem and Canacona, the Goa IIT campus project is now being planned to be set up at Codar in Bethoda village. The people of Melauli and Sanguem objected to the project. Now the Bethoda and Codar locals are claiming that while a small portion of the identified site is rocky, much of it is cultivable land used by them. They have warned that the project would result in destruction of trees, farmlands and biodiversity, besides posing a threat to wildlife. The villagers also said that if the project was set up on the proposed land, it would affect tribal people of the village, whose livelihood depends on the farmland. Crops like chilli and others are cultivated in the village. According to the residents of Bethoda and Codar, most of them are Krishi cardholders and agriculture is their only source of income. They also claim that the IIT project will not be useful for Goans. The only option now left with the government is to see if any existing structure of some company that has closed down is available in an industrial area like Verna. However, here too, the land available will be less than that required. An IIT campus requires a large area and such a project is only possible in remote areas. The people’s objection is over the loss of land, which they claim is being cultivated.
Raju Ramamurthy, Vasco
