Chandor Ganv Vhodd Zaum!

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The Challenges Before Us

Looking around Chandor, it becomes clear that we need to act fast if we are to arrest the trend taking us in a direction that has grave implications for our future. There are signs that all is not well either with our village or with us. Let us address the issues that threaten the integrity of our living space and our lives as a community of friends:

1. The degradation of our environment

2. Our dying agriculture and our stagnant economy as a whole

3. The abdication of responsibility by our panchayat, the communidades, the fabrica and the educated among us

4. The hazards of too much sucegad

5. Our many mijashes

6. The matter of migrants

Our deteriorating environment

Chandor village seems trapped in the decline which began in the fourteenth century when the Kushavati River began silting up and the Kadamba rulers moved their capital from the village. The annual flood has become a fixture in our lives now, thanks to the undredged river, our silted up vodds (creeks), the breaches in the baandh (embankment) near Miriam Jirem and our poorly drained paddy fields. (The silting has even created two islands, which you may see during low tide, at Odnem and Par). We imagine the floods to be an act of God, when the actual causative factors stare us in the face. The consequences of this illusion, however, cost us dearly � we have to get by with just one crop every year (if anyone takes the trouble to cultivate any more, that is).

If the situation at ground level is bad, consider what is happening at the other end of the village, in Hatram Mod, where illegal blasting is levelling hills whose value to our ecology is priceless. The very physical integrity of our village is under threat here. Several houses nearby have been damaged and the affected villagers (in Monte Socol, Sailabhat, Molla and Binddimod) and other environmentally-conscious villagers have had to launch an expensive and time-consuming campaign to stop this attack on our fragile environment. Another pristine hill is also being cut up in Mulem, near the Ghotmorod hill in Cavorim, though on the Paroda side. It is necessary for the whole village, most of all our panchayat, to work with the protesting villagers to resist this destruction. The Nessai and other affected panchayats also need to be enthused to end an industry which seems entirely dedicated to the destruction of our ecology.

That the environment, both in and outside Chandor, is under great stress may be seen from the wildlife descending on our village. The leopards prowling Chandor have become news all over Goa, but other creatures too have begun calling: the monkeys visiting St. Anthony in the chapel in Cavorim and even coming as far as Igorjebhat, the mongoose prowling the house-orchard near the tintto, and the alligator who woke Martin Teresa from his sleep late at night in August!

The industrial units in neighbouring villages have also begun to have an adverse effect on our health. Emissions from the Marmagoa Steel factory in Curtorim not only deposit a fine spray of ash on house walls in New Township and Hatram Mod, but also cause the respiratory ailments people living in the vicinity complain of. In Binddimod, after leopards and alligators, residents have now to also contend with fumes from the smelting units in San Jose de Areal. On the opposite side of the village, there are reports that the Impala beer factory in Assolda empties its waste into the Kushawati. Local anglers complain that fish seem to have disappeared from the river; they don�t bite any more. This contamination of the river must surely affect all fish and plant life downstream of the plant.

Another anxiety is the increasing �slumming� of our village. The haphazard �development� in Hatram Mod and in adjacent New Township seems to have brought open-air defecation into Chandor. Given the absence of toilets, transient construction workers here have no option but to use the surrounding open area not far from the natural spring. A similar problem was reported some months ago from Mamlatemer, where migrant workers in private orchards were sullying the nearby vodd (and still do, going by recent reports). It is a matter of concern, too, that, in true shanty style, there are no streetlights in Hatram Mod. We need to exercise stricter control over local builders and entrepreneurs (amghele ganv bhau!) who, for personal gain, stint on essential amenities to their clients and workers at the cost of the well-being of the entire village.

More glaring, however, is the degradation in the very heart of the village, that is, in the market-place and the church area. Garbage has assumed a magnitude here where it can be ignored only at great risk to our health. Heaps of stinking filth, pig bones, pork offal and paper and plastic litter, along with packs of hungry stray dogs, share pride of place in the place from where we take fish, meat, vegetables and fruit for our table. The tintto is today not just a wet market but also a garbage dump, a stray-dog and mosquito generator, and an open crematorium for all the kochro (even dangerous plastic!) in the village. The health and well-being of not just nearby residents but the entire village be damned! And all this, with the full sanction of the panchayat and the church authorities (the owners of the market) whose premises are just a glance away.

What is criminal is how our panchayat can ignore the need to scientifically dispose our garbage despite numerous discussions in the gram sabha and oral and written complaints, and despite the availability of enough funds specifically earmarked for proper garbage disposal!

Another source of worry is the threat to the few open spaces left in the village, particularly in the market and church area, due to road widening and new, unplanned constructions. The emergence of the main road in Chandor as a convenient link between Margao and Curchorem has seen the considerable diminution of the open areas around the church and the market place. Already, one corner of the small strip available between the road and the Bill Cardoz building has been taken up by a new construction. It is necessary, particularly for organisations working for the welfare of the community, to overcome the builder-contractor�s mentality, which sees every open inch anywhere as an opportunity to put up a new construction. We need to act swiftly to safeguard these essential breathing spaces from these �developers�.

Neglect of agriculture and the local economy

While agriculture has been in retreat from Goa for centuries, a sizable population managed to eke out a living from it in Chandor even as recently as 25 years ago. According to an informal survey conducted by the researcher-writer Olivinho Gomes, some 40 per cent of our people were involved in rice cultivation in Chandor (including Guirdolim) in 1980. Today, however, the figure could have declined to as low as 5 per cent, if that. (Some of our �farmers� (formerly sub-tenants, now deemed owners of communidade land) have become savvy enough to lease their fields regularly to tillers from Gonvol!). In all, we could be looking at less than 20 per cent of working adults sustaining themselves and their families from farm or any other work within the village. In fact, the talathi doesn�t even keep statistics about the number of cultivators in the village nor the acreage under cultivation because, as he asks, who works in the fields any more? Ominously, even the 2001 national census has no data for either irrigated or unirrigated land in Chandor over the past decade. The challenge before us is to see if we can raise the level of local employment from agriculture. We need to initiate activity on this land which can deliver greater returns than the practically nothing we get from it now. If we are smart enough and adopt the right practices, extracting even three crops a year should not be too difficult.

As for other economic activity in the village, we need to go beyond just five dairy farms, a few grocery shops, bars, a few bus-owners, three metal fabrication units, a water-bottler and four bakeries. (Don�t we just love our daily bread? No wonder Goans in Bombay are called paowallas!). We do also have a vinegar maker, a butcher and a liqueur maker. But this about sums up the economy of a place which was the capital of kings once upon a time!

How the panchayat, the communidades, the fabrica and the educated have failed us

It is clear from the foregoing that the institutions and individuals we have entrusted with leadership functions have failed us. We are a people who have lost all sense of direction, except if it�s abroad or towards the sea. It is possible to list a multitude of global factors (historical, socio-economic, political etc.) for why the panchayat, the communidade, the fabrica and the educated have not been able to live up to our social responsibility, but it will be enough to concentrate on just the one factor which seems crucial: the psychology of dependence and the powerlessness that plagues all of us Chandorcars.

The panchayat, for instance, seems unaware that Chandor, like all villages in Goa, is supposed to be a self-governing, independent village republic, but chooses to function to the tune of the state government and the constituency�s MLA. Empires and ruling dynasties have come and gone over the centuries but our village republics in India outlasted them only because self-governing institutions like our communidades and panchayats provided the stability that weathered any change in the political environment. So long as we paid our taxes, we were free to conduct affairs in our village without too much interference from either ruler or government.

Today, however, the financial dependence on the state government and, therefore, on the political party in power makes independent functioning of the panchayat all but impossible. Another factor is the sheer ignorance on the part of the panchayat of its mandate to work on behalf of the village community rather than against it. Is it surprising, therefore, that our panchayat watches passively as our communidades give private individuals the right to completely blast out of existence an entire hill? Is it surprising, therefore, that the panchayat passes on to the affected villagers the responsibility to move the authorities to stop the blasting? (It is tragic that, despite having been in office for two terms, that is, for over ten years, our sarpanch still does not know that it is the panchayat�s responsibility to preserve and maintain the village�s community assets, like hills, water bodies and embankments. When (at the gram sabha on 10 December, 2006) he tried to explain his criminal inaction over the ongoing destruction of the Bobcol hill by saying it was not his responsibility to stop the blasting, the sarpanch had to be gently referred to the relevant section of the panchayat law (item 23, Schedule I of the Goa Panchayats Act, 1994), which specifies that it is the job of the panchayat to preserve and maintain the community assets of the village!).

That panchayats all over Goa routinely condone illegal constructions is also a fact too well-known to be made an issue here. One could even say that our panchayats are the fount of all that is illegal in our villages! Consider the flower saplings sold so openly in our tintto which provide precious sopo to the church and the panchayat. Does the panchayat know that these flowers are known to be dangerous to our other plant life, and that states like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh forbid their sale in their domains?

It is possible that our panchayat doesn�t know this � after all, it also doesn�t know what the land area of the village is, nor what the cultivated acreage is, nor the number of small cultivators, and it only has a vague idea of the exact population of the village. It is, of course, the panchayat�s duty, according to the Panchayati Raj Act, to maintain the essential statistics of the village and be up to date with them. The question therefore arises: How can you run a panchayat efficiently if you don�t even know the number of villagers in your panchayat area? If, for instance, you don�t know that we have some 26% illiterate people in the village, will it strike you that we need literacy classes so that we can bring them on par with the rest of us? If, for instance, you don�t know the number of households without toilet facilities (our panchayat doesn�t know the exact number of Sulabh toilets in the village), will you do something to supply the deficiency?

The other self-governing institution, the communidades, seem to be a law unto themselves, even though they appear to have been killed off after the agricultural tenancy act of 1976 which made cultivators deemed owners of communidade land. Today the communidades have control only over hilly tracts and non-agricultural barren land (but if you heard people, most of the land in the village, paddy land in particular, still belongs to the communidade and they themselves can, therefore, not plan anything on it beyond letting it lie fallow and useless!).

Having been deprived of their main function in life � overseeing land use in the village � the communidades in Goa now see themselves as mere estate agents, leasing and auctioning land, or watching passively as smart operators and unscrupulous politicians with dubious schemes usurp and destroy our common property resources. Thus it is that the Cavorim communidade merrily gives away pristine hills for blasting and hands over precious water bodies (Voil� Todem lake) and land to private individuals and usurpers. There is no question now but for all Chandor-lovers to reclaim the heritage of our common lands and restore them to the place of dignity in our lives that they deserve.

We may also do well to recover the love for our native village, our Chandorponn, in the face of the nationalist and globalist ideologies threatening to wipe out our individuality, our autonomy and our relative independence. We need to take defensive measures particularly against our Goan business-MLAs, and those businessmen in Chandor, who have found a lucrative main line in selling away our land and thinking up projects which benefit themselves personally but have disastrous effects on our environment, on our polity and on our culture.

The Catholic Church is, by and large, a benevolent and well-meaning presence in the village, if you go by the activity of the somudaiyo (little communities), the monthly parish magazine Prokas, and the temperance movement which has completely taken liquor out of ladins and funerals. However, the fabrica, which manages the church�s local financial affairs, appears to need a crash course in aesthetics and, not the least, neighbourly love. The edifice of the Church of Our Lady of Bethlehem is the most striking architectural structure in Chandor. Its white frontage and pointed towers make an imposing sight against the patches of green (from the surrounding foliage), white (from the tower-shaped monuments alongside) and blue (from the sky above). The flying buttress on its right side, surmounted by crowns of swaying coconut trees, and the quiet grotto below, complete the picture postcard view. (You should see the church at night, with the full moon hovering over the roof, or over the flying buttress and the fan of coconut fronds!).

Someone would think the fabrica would do everything in its power to safeguard this jewel of a view. No such luck! What do we see instead? Newer buildings, fabrica constructions at that, coming up just a few yards away and all designed to completely cancel out the good feelings the church induces! Grey asbestos to the left, on an ugly block of concrete (the church shops) festooned with hideous signboards; some more mind-dulling grey on the school roof behind; and a filthy, garbage-strewn tintto, swarming with stray dogs, by its side!

We seem to have forgotten that the church building and its environs are a valuable trust, a priceless heirloom, to be cherished and preserved for as long as we can recognise and appreciate things of beauty and joy.

As for the educated lot among us, we may as well not exist. No such things as citizen�s forums for us, or discussion or study groups, or readers� circles, drama groups or debating societies, or anything requiring the slightest application of mind. In the absence of proper guidance, our youth, while waiting for the magical visa or CDC, loiter around, pilfer tender coconuts, or play matka. It is hard to believe that, despite the 2001 census, the village has a literacy level of 73 per cent!

Too much sucegad

While our local institutions may have let us down badly, we haven�t done too well by ourselves either. A streak of fatalism, powerlessness, dependence and apathetic indifference seems to colour our variant of Goa�s famed sucegad. Our environment can go to pieces, our orchards and paddy fields be overrun with pests, and our lives be spoiled by self-styled leaders taking us for a ride, but we will do nothing to resist.

In fact, we could be so laidback we could be dead!

If you ask the panchayat why they cannot be more proactive and progressive, the answer is, we don�t have the powers, the rules don�t allow it, we don�t have enough funds, it is the job of some other government department, you�ll have to take it up with the BDO or the collector, the sarpanch won�t be coming in today, come again on Thursday, the secretary is gone for audit to Guirdolim, the talathi is gone to the BDO, we don�t know when the gram sevak will come � in short, one long parade of negatives, a flood of we can�t do this, we can�t do that, every time you have the misfortune of visiting the panchayat office. And we very quietly accept this disrespect for our dignity and our time.

If you ask the communidades why they allow the illegal blasting of our hills, the privatisation of our water bodies, the usurping of our precious common lands and the criminal neglect of agriculture and the village economy, the answers you will get range over: we don�t have the powers, the Code of Communidades doesn�t allow it, we are at the mercy of the state government, the managing committee of the communidade has to act, the previous managing committee is responsible, we can�t give land for socially useful projects because no one is applying for it �! Not a whiff of any ability to act independently, not the slightest concern for the welfare of the village or their co-villagers � except, of course, when it comes to making petty change from destroying the environment the communidade is charged to protect!

As for the rest of us, the same maldisao affects us too. We too look for relief from our troubles to them, to others, to God, to the state government, to the MLA, to the panchayat �� to everyone but ourselves. �They must do something about it, they are not doing anything,� is the familiar chorus. We seem to have lost the ability to get angry, we have forgotten that we are human beings, not zombies, and that it is possible to change things if we accept that the responsibility to do so is ours alone.

Our many mijashes

Nowhere is our mental sluggishness more evident than in the persistence of such attitudes as male chauvinism, ethnicism, casteism and language and work snobbery, to name only a few in our endless litany of mijashes. There is a total lack of fit between our educational attainments, our sophisticated, gadget-filled modernity and the cobwebs in our minds.

Given a few exceptions, our women certainly know their place and function in life. If they don�t, we lock them in structures where their feminine roles are emphasised � mahila mandals, cookery classes and somudaiyos, which seem to have become the reserve of women who must engage in the good works that their macho men wouldn�t be seen dead doing. We have yet to have a full-fledged sports club for women, for instance, or even a playing field only for them. Having recently completed a half-century of existence, perhaps Chandor Club may wish to now consider a programme of sporting activity for its members� daughters and wives, in its brand new premises?

Caste is another anachronism we will not let go. Neither politics nor religion, nor education nor modernity, nor a common Goan or Indian identity, nor even friendship, seems to make the slightest impression on our belief that some people are inferior to us. We routinely talk disparagingly about �OBCs�, �the British,� or �they,� little caring that perhaps it is our callous indifference which keeps �them� inferior. If they are as illiterate and poor as they are, is it because we refuse to stretch out a hand of help and friendship towards �them�?

What is, however, amazing is that it seems easier for us to shed our reservations about migrant settlers (no matter how humble) than to give up our strong feelings about the people we consider lower in caste, that is, those people who have always been with us. Perhaps we need to remember that we ourselves are guests, migrants and settlers, in the land which �they� settled and developed much before we took it from them? If we still have the expanse of paddy fields to make grand plans around, could it be primarily because these first settlers cleared the forests or reclaimed the land, and then, working the fields for millennia, preserved it for us?

Which brings us to the snobbery we show as regards physical labour. Let�s face it: better salaries abroad, our superiority complex and our �education� make it difficult for us to dirty our hands doing jobs we don�t flinch from abroad. We are high fidalgo when we are at home! Like the whites in the US and UK, we now give all our low-end jobs to migrants or the local desperate. Agriculture too is work that doesn�t befit our exalted social standing. We think nothing of leasing our fields to the hardworking people of Gonvol and Assolda, or if they are not available, simply let them lie fallow. Any plan to revive agriculture is met with puzzlement and contempt for the suggester�s naivete: �Where in the village will you find people to work in the fields now?�

Good question.

Which brings us to the people who will.

The matter of migrants

Many of us are understandably anxious over the new faces, new languages and new cultures we see sharing our living space. Having lived comparatively sheltered lives all these years, it is not easy for us to quickly adjust to a world where people of different cultures are expected to live together in harmony and understanding. Our fears and insecurities are but natural � we are few in number, our culture has yet to find a firm foundation and there aren�t enough local jobs for Goans in the first place for us to be able to share the precious few there are with new arrivals. We certainly need to be concerned about the impact of in-migration on our culture and on our access to jobs and on our means of livelihood. An absence of reaction would imply a lack of a fully-developed Goanness, would imply that it doesn�t matter that jobs continue to be elusive in Goa, and that we are content to have to emigrate in search of a livelihood at the cost of the people and place we hold most dear.

At the same time, our awareness of the economic and socio-cultural bases of our fears has helped temper our misgivings about migrants. We realise, for instance, that most of us niz Goenkars are essentially migrants too, not just in Goa but now also throughout the world. This awareness, as also the recognition of our interdependence � Goa�s infrastructure would collapse if our more humble migrants were not here to help us out � helps us see migration more pragmatically and fairly. In this, we are in line with countries elsewhere who have devised mechanisms to cope with new arrivals. Some countries even welcome immigrants, so sure are they of themselves and their ability to co-exist with new arrivals. We need to develop a comparable resilience.

Another concrete way of coping would be to improve our own work ethic, meaning, we start doing some of the work we pass on to the willing migrant. We rediscover the dignity of labour in just about any form of work. This way we restrict the number of migrants coming in and (ha! ha!) also the number of Chandorcars going abroad! (One wonders if we�d be willing to make this trade-off, given our fixation with jobs at sea and overseas!).

But above all, it is necessary to have a strong mooring in our own culture, in amch� bas particularly. It is disturbing how quickly we supplant our ways with elements received through cable tv, films or through the physical presence among us of English, Hindi and Kannada speakers. Instead of being blown off our feet by their ways, let�s start Goanising new arrivals as quickly as we can.

After all, don�t we believe that our ways, and our culture, are so much superior?!

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