By RAJAN NARAYAN

AND A FEW MORE stray thoughts and a few more observations for yet another Sunday. For a Sunday following the week when the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, has been finding it difficult to keep his promises to double defector Isidore Fernandes. For a Sunday following the week when Babush Monserrate launched his own version of the Ambedkar Awaz Yojana. For a Sunday following the week when the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, was desperately wooing kingfishers to be able to pay the IFFI bills. For a Sunday following the week when the GSIDC was engaged in cold-blooded murder of the rain trees of Campal. For a Sunday following the week when the allotment of stalls for the Exposition continued to be embroiled in controversy.

KEEPING PROMISES
AND A FEW stray thoughts on the problems Manohar Parrikar is facing in fulfilling his promises to the new BJP MLA from Poinguinim Isidore Fernandes. Part of the deal with Isidore who was induced to resign his seat and re-contest on the BJP symbol was that he would be gifted a gold mine so that his money problems would be solved once and for all. A gold mine in the form of the chairmanship of the newly-constituted Margao Planning and Development Authority (MPDA). It will be recalled that the South Goa Planning and Development Authority was bifurcated on the eve of the elections to enable Manohar Parrikar to suitably reward Isidore Fernandes. Even more than Isidore, the ‘Viper from Taleigao' who is Isidore's mentor and financer was keen to get his greedy hands on the Margao Planning and Development Authority. So that he could do unto South Goa, particularly Salcete, what he has done unto Tiswadi. Looting and plundering the hapless builders. With the focus of charter tourism shifting from North Goa to South Goa, there is a frenzy of new building activity in the southern coastal belt. Which would spell mega bucks for the newly constituted MPDA. It has been proposed to bring all the coastal villages like Colva, Benaulim and Cansaulim, under the purview of the new MPDA.

But all the best made plans of vipers and men tend to go awry. The proposal for making Isidore Fernandes the chairman of the MPDA has run into stiff opposition from the Sultan of Margao Digambar Kamat. In the first place Digambar Kamat is also the Minister for Urban Development and wants to protect his turf and does not want any competition in South Goa. Digambar Kamat has been receiving support from very influential quarters. Namely the powerful builders lobby in South Goa. Not surprisingly the most vociferous in the opposition to Isidore or rather his mentor Babush Monserrate taking over the MPDA are builders close to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Builders irrespective of party affiliation are painfully conscious of what would happen if Babush and his protégée manage to seize control of the MPDA. Even builders very close to the ruling party and Manohar Parrikar have not been spared by Babush Monserrate when it came to paying a price for the various permits and licenses in the case of construction activity falling under the purview of the Panjim Planning and Development Authority (PPDA). The story goes that when a builder close to Manohar Parrikar complained to him of Babush Monserrate's excessively extortionate demands, the CM is reported to have told him that he was totally helpless in the matter. To add insult to injury Manohar Parrikar is reported to have told the friendly builder that the only favour he could do was not to inform Babush Monserrate that the builder had complained against him.

The Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is caught between two equally strong forces. On the one hand Babush Monserrate who was the architect of the BJP victory in Poinguinim who is insistent on his pound of flesh. On the other hand Parrikar cannot afford to antagonise Digambar Kamat who is the only BJP leader of any consequence in the South. And at least on paper Digambar Kamat is the Deputy Chief Minister. It will be interesting to watch who will win the tug-of-war over the chairmanship of the MPDA.

VOTE BANKS
AND A FEW stray observations on the Ambedkar Awaz Yojana. The conspiracy to consolidate and create new migrant vote banks by the saffron think tank has been dealt with at length in our cover story. But what the Chief Minister and the BJP are perhaps not even aware of is that Babush Monserrate, as always, is one step ahead. The BJP-led government in the State is still in the process of distributing forms. Never mind that the huge quantities of land needed to implement the AAY have not even been identified, let alone acquired. Babush Monserrate is not hamstrung by bureaucratic procedures and niceties. What gives him an edge over the government is the fact that at least at this point of time he is far more solvent than the government. So Babush Monserrate has not lost any time in implementing his own version of the AAY. And unlike the government as Babush Monserrate himself boasted in an interview to the Goan Observer he does not spend money foolishly. And he knows how to optimise the returns from the money he spends even on ostensibly public causes. There are a large number of migrant workers in the Taleigao constituency.

Babush Monserrate is acutely conscious of the fact that the migrant workers along with the backward classes are his principal vote bank. And Monserrate is making doubly sure that his vote bank will not go bankrupt. On a large plot of land just a kilometre away from the Taleigao market on the Taleigao-Santa Cruz Road, Babush Monserrate is in the process of putting up several blocks of Mumbai-stye chawls. Each of the chawls will have several score one-room kitchen tenements of the area of around 250 to 300 sq.ft. As in the case of the older Mumbai chawls there will be a common toilet block for the residents of the chawl. Babush Monserrate has offered to accommodate a big chunk of the migrant workers from his constituency in these chawls free or at a nominal rent. To ensure that they do not migrate to some other part of Goa which would cause a serious erosion in his vote bank. Unlike the government of course Babush has no intention of even leasing the tenements to the beneficiaries, let alone transfering the ownership of the tenements to the migrant workers who may move into them. The chawls will continue to be owned by Babush Monserrate. And at the slightest signs of any of the tenants or groups of tenants shifting their political allegiance to any other leader including his historical enemy Somnath Zuarkar, they will be promptly evicted. Unlike ordinary landlords or in this case chawl lords Babush does not anticipate any difficulty in getting the occupants of the chawls to vacate. Because Babush does not only have money power but more than adequate muscle power to recover possession of his property. As he has successfully demonstrated for quite some time now in his career as the most successful and prosperous loan shark in the State.

SKYROCKETING IFFI
AND A FEW stray thoughts on Manohar Parrikar's desperate attempts to raise money to meet the skyrocketing IFFI bills. When Manohar Parrikar started on his grandiose plans to convert Panjim into Cannes the BJP government was in power at the Centre. Manohar Parrikar staked Goa's claim to becoming the permanent venue for the International Film Festival of India. In the confidence that the Centre would help him out with generous funds. The fact that the then Information and Broadcasting Minister Ravi Prasad was even more enthusiastic than the Chief Minister in making Goa the permanent venue for the IFFI made Parrikar complacent. Parrikar went on a borrowing spree to create the infrastructure needed for holding the IFFI. Unfortunately for Manohar Parrikar the BJP lost and a Congress-led coalition captured power in New Delhi.The new dispensation was not very enthusiastic about the IFFI being held in Goa at all leave alone it becoming the permanent venue. Historically, the Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit who is very close to the Congress President Sonia Gandhi has been vehemently opposed to the shifting of the festival out of the capital. If Sheila Dixit had her way the new dispensation would have revoked the decision to shift IFFI to Goa.

ZANUSSI VIEW
THE DELHI CM is not the only one who is against Goa becoming the permanent venue for IFFI. Recently, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Buddhadev Bhattacharya, has also voiced his opposition to Goa being the permanent venue for IFFI. Bhattacharya believes that IFFI should be held in turn in the principal cities in the country. Even when the proposal for making Goa the permanent venue for IFFI was being considered Kerala had staked its claim as a superior venue which already has the infrastructure to hold events of this magnitude. Presumably, at the suggestion or instigation of the Kerala government the internationally reputed Polish film maker Zanussi recently commented that just the fact that a location had nice beaches did not qualify it to host an international film festival. Zanussi in his interview to the national media had pointed out that Goa has no film culture and therefore was not a suitable venue.

But the Centre had already made a commitment to hold the IFFI in Goa this year. The Directorate of Film Festivals had accordingly informed the International Film Festivals Federation. All countries holding international film festivals or aspiring to hold them have to inform the Federation and coordinate with it about the dates. This is because more and more countries have now begun to host international film festivals and it becomes necessary to ensure that there is no overlap. The centre therefore decided to let Manohar Parrikar have the privilege of hosting the IFFI in Goa this year. But the Centre made it clear that along with the privilege and honour of hosting the film festival Manohar Parrikar would also have to foot the entire bill. Parrikar himself has acknowledged that the State has not received a single paisa towards even the running cost leave alone any contribution for the infrastructure which is in the process of being completed for the film festival. The consequence is that Manohar Parrikar has been awarding contracts left, right and centre. Not only that he has been pressurizing them to speed up the work so that the deadline would be met and the Union Ministry for Information is not given any alibi for cancelling IFFI Goa at the last moment.

All of which is fine and we along with the rest of Goa appreciate and commend Manohar Parrikar's energy and enthusiasm in fulfilling his date with tinsel town. The catch is that even the IFFI in a jiffy has to be paid for. I understand that the GSIDC is heavily in arrears even in clearing the bills for work already done. While there is a penalty clause for any delay in completing the allotted works there will be equal pressure on Manohar Parrikar to pay up the moment all the contracted works are fully finished and ready. Parrikar decided to abandon the bulk of the road beautification and the four-laning not because of the lack of time but because of the lack of money. I understand that some of the key contractors who are working under tremendous pressure and have to bear the insults of the arrogant chief minister in the bargain are threatening to abandon ship of all the payments due to them are not made immediately. In panic Manohar Parrikar has turned to the King of Good Times. He even took the King of Good Times on a personal guided tour of the Kala Academy complex and the multiplexes. The King of Good Times is willing but is driving a hard bargain.

NO MONEY
OBVIOUSLY, Vijay Mallya will want his pound of flesh. I understand that Vijay Mallya has been insisting that he wants co-sponsorship. Which means it will become not the International Film Festival, Goa, but the Kingfisher International Film Festival. Or may be Vijay Mallya will settle for having the Kala Academy renamed as the Kingfisher Kala Academy. And maybe as part of the frantic, frenetic attempts to raise funds, Manohar Parrikar will agree to re-name the Dayanand Bandodkar Road as the Azad Panchi Fosters Beer Road.

Though all this may boomerang on him. The biggest challenge before Manohar Parrikar is not the completion of the various infrastructural facilities but where he will find the money to pay the bill. If he does not come up with the money the contractors, particularly the international suppliers might just about decide to take away all the fancy digital equipment including the screens just before the film festival commences.

MURDER MOST FOUL
AND A FEW stray observations on the systematic and cold-blooded murder of the rain trees and other mature, senior natural citizens of Panjim. The GSIDC is known to be virulently anti-nature. It will be recalled that the GSIDC mercilessly butchered several trees in the Old Goa Medical Hospital Complex to make way for the multiplex. When Manohar Parrikar's plans for four-laning were exposed last year there was a storm of protest. A large group of concerned citizens including artists and painters and even Goa's best known cartoonist, Mario Miranda, literally and metaphorically hugged the rain trees of Campal. And finally when even Nandkumar Kamat who was appointed by the Parrikar government to study the four-laning alignment ruled in favour of the trees, the government was forced to modify its plan. What the government could not do officially it has been doing deviously.

Instead of chopping off inconvenient trees in one stroke it has been strangulating them quietly. In its great zeal for widening the roads by a few paltry centimetres and creating the equivalent of a Parisian pavement the roots of the trees have been insidiously chopped. The entire area rooting the gigantic rain trees has been paved and cemented leaving them no space to breathe.

No wonder the magnificent rain tree next to the Bal Niketan gave up its ghost a few days ago. The other trees are likely to follow suit. Just as a building will collapse if the foundation is undermined so also will a tree. It would perhaps be in the fitness of things if the trees decide to collapse while the stretch limousines carrying the stars from Hollywood and Bollywood are en route to the opening or closing ceremonies of IFFI. All delegates are advised to insure themselves against injury or death due to collapsing trees engineered by the GSIDC. The biggest irony is that the GSIDC officials have been attributing the falling of the rain tree next to the Bal Bhavan to gusts of wind. The tree was firmly rooted till the GSIDC began chipping away at its roots, and if it had been left untouched it would have even withstood a typhoon. We hope the multiplexes and the new structures in the Kala Academy will not be as susceptible to gusts of wind as the trees are alleged to be.

AND A LAST stray thought for yet another Sunday. The latest controversy surrounding the Exposition is to do with whether choricho pao and sanna-sorpotel , which are the culinary mainstays of the Exposition, will be available for the Exposition 2004. This is consequent on allegations being made by Mummy Dearest that choris-pau stalls are being barred from the Exposition venue.

PS: Will the Dempos please look after Vasantrao Dempo Marg please?

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