Living to eat - 5

Make a meal of it

Imagine 40 more fortune-hunters

Ram Niwas Mirdha, chairman of the National Akademi of Music, Dance and Drama was singing a different tune. Or, was he dancing to one? Imagine increasing the current strength of 40 MLAs to 80 fortune-hunters to avoid the constant toppling games? How will another 40 constituencies be carved out? The only thing I can think of is reclaiming land from the sea with all the iron ore rejects that are clogging up the hinterland, but that might be too expensive. Already, from two expenses totaling Rs75,891 mentioned below, good money was apparently spent dining the delimitation commission and this is only one element of what could be a whopping expenditure. So, which is worse, creating 40 more corporations for them to head, clothing, feeding and flying around another bunch of spendthrifts or, paying for reclaiming 40 more constituencies from the sea? Be my guest and guess.

Ladder 49

On June 12 a friend called up saying a fallen mango tree was blocking the access road to the Ribandar ferry from the Divar side. Could I call up the fire station? It was a few minutes past seven in the morning. I called up Ashok Menon, the station director's residence, whom I've never met before. His wife answered and promptly gave the phone to him. Most police officer's I know would have been busy in the loo or too grumpy in the morning to come on the line. He said call 101, the control room, it promptly told me to call a DG Pednekar at the Old Goa Station. Unfortunately through some misunderstanding in our communication a fire tender was dispatched to Ribandar instead when it was meant to cross the river at Ribandar to Divar. Mind you all this took just 20 mins or so till I could rectify the situation and the firemen crossed over eager to do their job. So eager, they kept frantically calling me trying to find the exact location of the tree. Unfortunately, by then my friend had disconnected his mobile and I spent the next 20 minutes embarrassed by the quick fire response of the officer, a man called Michael Braganza and another unnamed man. Embarrassed because none of the people I called in Divar and particularly in my area Malar had any information or were reluctant to give me as I kept requesting each, a phone number close to where the tree had fallen. Embarrassed because the firemen kept pleading with me to hurry so they could respond to their next call, which evidently were piling up. An Englishman Jan Bostok I called eventually, yes, those of the tribe who are the flavour of the month for venting our anger upon, asked (1) his driver to go looking around for the fallen tree (2) drove around in his second vehicle looking for the tree in a different direction. Me, I was still calling up one islander after another, till another good friend Corina's Joe Vaz gave me the phone number of Mario Pinto, a panch and former sarpanch of the Divar panchayat. Mario fortuitously knew where the tree had fallen and I asked him to relay the location to Braganza. Moral of the lesson: Divar continues to be comatose, but don't blame the Goa Fire and Emergency services for it. Their rapid reaction to a call for help was an embarrassment and I don't even know what Braganza looks like.


DS Negi, Chief Secretary
04.05.04 dinner for secy, Ministry of Labour, GOI Goa Marriott Rs17,720.
14.05.04 dinner for central observers, senior officers Mandovi Rs32,831.
01.06.04 dinner for RC Sinha, advisor to Goa government Cidade Rs16,418.
14.06.04 lunch for RBI officials Nova Goa Rs1,800.
18.06.04 dinner for ex-DGP Seva Dass and others Mandovi Rs14,458.
05.07.04 dinner for Rajeev Verma, IAS Goa Marriott Rs21,213 + gifts Rs845.
23.08.04 dinner for Rajya Sainik Board Mandovi Rs5,802.
01.09.04 dinner for secy, I&B, GOI Fort Aguada –no details.
10.06.04 dinner for dignitaries Cidade de Goa Rs24,674.
12.09.04 dinner for ITTB review meeting Goa Marriott Rs26,510.
14.09.04 dinner Justice Kuldip Singh, BB Tandon, Election Commission Cidade Rs20,774.
15.09.04 lunch for Japanese delegation, water supply and sanitation Cidade Rs20,673.
21.09.04 dinner for Murdhup Vyas, addl collectior, Meena Chowdhury, SDPO Cidade Rs16,471+Rs650 gifts.
29.08.04 dinner for KG Mathew, secy, Karnataka Cidade Rs10,169.
17.11.04 dinner for KP Singh, addl. secy. MHA Goa Marriott Rs17,350.
11.12.04 dinner for Krishnamurthy, secy, GA Fort Aguada Rs24,393.
13.12.04 dinner for delimitation committee Goa Marriott Rs43,526.
28.11.04 farewell dinner for DGP Amol Kanth Cidade Rs20,114.
20.12.04 farewell dinner for BS Bhalla Fort Aguada Rs21,442.
01.01.05 dinner for Arunachal Pradesh CS Goa Marriott Rs26,310.
02.01.05 dinner for Ashok Misra, IIT, Mumbai Goa Marriott Rs22,060.
14.01.05 dinner for GN Pegu, IAS Goa Marriott Rs10,615.
05.01.05 farewell dinner for LS Shetty Nova Goa Rs8,865.

Vijay Madan, as acting CS
20.02.05 dinner for delimitation commission Goa Marriott Rs32,365.
12.02.05 farewell dinner for DS Negi Delhi Darbar Rs4,200.
28.04.05 farewell dinner for Nandini Paliwal, IAS Goa Marriott Rs21,658.

Kiran Dhingra, Chief Secretary
20.05.05 farewell lunch for Vijay Madan, DC Goa Marriott Rs10,896.
21.05.05 dinner for N. Gopalswami, election commission Goa Marriott Rs20,379.
28.05.05 dinner for Tsunami affected footballers of Andaman & Nicobar Mandovi Rs28,370.
15.07.05 farewell dinner for Jayashree Raghuraman, revenue secretary Foodland Rs11,925.
03.10.05 dinner labour secy, GOI Goa Marriott Rs25,215.
09.12.05 farewell dinner for Debashree Mukherjee Delhi Darbar Rs28,451.
19.10.05 dinner for Rajya Sainik Board Mandovi Rs3,448.
23.12.05 dinner GOI Secretary Goa Marriott Rs25,691.

JK Dadoo, as acting CS, but he was the Development Commissioner then
23.11.05 dinner for chairperson, Coconut Development Board Mandovi Rs10,659.
13.01.05 dinner for Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy officer Rajshahi Rs25,535.
08.08.05 dinner for chairman, Coconut Development Board Delhi Darbar Rs7,697.
30.12.05 dinner for IAS trainees FABR Rs35,100.
19.01.06 lunch for GOI Secretary Goa Mariott Rs8,961.
25.01.06 lunch for new CS and 10 Secretaries Delhi Darbar Rs8,899.
23.01.06 dinner for GOI secy, Mrs CT Misra Majestic Rs10,410.
17.09.05 lunch for PMA Huken, secy, GOI Cidade Rs5,243.
22.01.06 farewell dinner for Kiran Dingra Raj Holiday Village Rs1,20,850
28.05.06 dinner for National Commission of Religious and Linguistic Minorities Rajshahi Rs19.917.

Israel's turn
Yaakov Engel and Hezi Hermoni have purchased land to build three residential complexes in Goa through Engel's privately held real estate developer EngelInvest Group. Cost: $500 million. Apartments: 2,030. Engel Invest expects to make a $1 billion profit. EngelInvest's CEO for global operations is Alon Avdani. The projects: a 1,600-apartment complex in Cortalim overlooking the Zuari, a 160-unit complex in Panjim and a 270-apartment complex in Dona Paula. These apartments will reportedly sell at $5,000 per sq mt. EngelInvest operates in India through local holding company Venosa, which it jointly owns with Hermoni, who has been active in India for 15 years. EngelInvest owns 75 per cent and Hermoni 22 per cent. The CEO of Venosa is Ronen Hermoni.

Tailpiece
Did you get this SMS: "Finally it has happened! Beer is now cheaper than petrol! Now only drink, don't drive."

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