

	h	Dedication
	h	Invocation: To a Friend Most True
	h	Main Proposals, in Brief
	h	Planning and Preparing the Plan
	h	We, the People of Chandor, Direct Our Panchayat to...
	h	The First Step
	h	The Five-Year People�s Plan
	h	A Little Gandhigiri
	h	The Challenges Before Us
	h	Signs of Hope
	h	Quite a Charmer, Chandor! Our Village, Our Home!
	h	Giving the Economy a Little Push
	h	Let�s Use All the Power We Have!
	h	Work We Need to Take Up Immediately � Let�s Begin?
	h	Vaddo View
	h	What We Need � and Demand! � Immediately!
	h	Let�s Improve Things Around Here
	h	Targets for the Village Panchayat

Signs of Hope

In this litany of negatives, however, there is a glimmer of hope too. Over the past few months, some of our villagers have shown that despite the mess we find ourselves in, we can set things right, that is, try to remake the future in the shape that benefits us all. The people affected by the illegal blasting of the Bopcol hill, for instance, have not hesitated to come out and protest militantly. Their reaction even compelled the local MLA, Joaquim Alemao, to come to the village and see the blasting for himself. Our co-villagers are determined to continue the campaign to save the hill and our village, despite the lack of cooperation from our panchayat and our MLA. Let�s extends all our help to them and join them in the effort to stop the onslaught on the physical integrity of our village.

It was a display of similar determination which saw the gram sabha direct the panchayat to shift the planned location of two public toilets from the market to a less sensitive site across the road. The toilets will now be built in the secluded corner behind the church where the old school toilets are. We hope that these public amenities will be designed as tastefully as the Sulabh toilet in Margao�s Old Market and will be maintained to high standards of hygiene. These instances demonstrate how ordinary people can compel selfish and short-sighted �leaders� to act in the general public interest. It also highlights the need for all of us to actively participate in gram sabha meetings and ensure that the village does right by all its villagers, no matter how insignificant in status.

There is also, now, a growing annoyance over the garbage accumulating in all corners of the village, particularly in the marketplace and the church environs. This anger has escalated with the discovery that the panchayat has been sitting on a bank balance of more than Rs. 14 lakhs over the past year while claiming that it had no funds to tackle the garbage problem.

There is also widespread discontent with the neglect of local agriculture by the communidade, the panchayat and yes, all of us who own bandis in the fields. However, despite lack of official encouragement, there is still a great deal of enthusiasm for rice cultivation among actual tillers � if only the government could subsidise fertiliser and labour prices, they say, and if only the annual flooding was stopped by repairing the embankment and desilting and dredging the river immediately.

It seems clear that we Chandorcars are poised for a radical change in our lives. This was particularly evident during the meetings organised by the Chandor Development Forum throughout the village. Villager after villager bubbled over with ideas for a new Chandor. Suggestions for change have ranged from the need for broader roads, to the need to recover the lost dignity of and pride in our historic village, to the total re-making of life in Chandor as we know it. As one villager expressed it in a well-thought out list of the things we need most: The benefits of village development should flow to the people of the village, to improve the quality of our life and our economy.

Quite true. Economic self-sufficiency and pride in being Chandorcars will very possibly end the dependence on a lethargic, self-absorbed state government and bring Chandor back to the state of relative independence we enjoyed not so very long ago.

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