Is Goa Ready for IT?

Mirror, mirror, on the wall…

Someone said the other day, why are you after these poor IAS chaps – they after all have to obey your montris or get transferred out. The former finance secretary Ramesh Negi was actually among three secretaries called in by Sheila Dixit, the Dilli CM. The other two names (not from Goa) won't interest you. It's another matter he wanted out for personal reasons. Ravi Naik transferred out Ujjwal Mishra, Goa's de facto ex-top cop because he was Rane's man and therefore a threat. It goes on and on and you could argue whether the IAS has a spine – ex-CS Kiran Dhingra did and was transferred out. But, there you are, what's the point of it all?

Who's the fairest …….

Point is a very learned man (but must stay anonymous) said this: "There was a clarion call made by Dayanand Narvekar about building an IT park with your tax money. Is Goa really ready for this project? There is a lot of hot air generated about the abundance of jobs this will create." Does the IAS ever put up a semblance of a fight even? I can tell you even that Narvekar's and Parrikar's sons studied in the US of A compounding the hypocrisy all round.

Point he made is: are Goans trained to handle this job profile? To that Narvekar said "they will be trained." Well then isn't it the better suggestion to train them first, than build the IT park? Why should the park be built first? That essentially would mean we have an IT park with no Goans to fit the bill. This vaccuum will then be filled by personnel imported from outside Goa while the intended personnel from Goa are presumably trained. But when our Goan youth are ready with the necessary qualifications, what do we do with the original set of workers? To his mind, the charade was a scam with the objective of letting tax money flow where it has always flowed. Down the drain.

Here's another point to ponder. I tried under RTI to get the cost of ridding the Porvorim landslide of all the mud and debris. Unsure, as an ordinary citizen would be, as to which particular division (among the PWD's maze of divisions etc) I did the next best thing and filed on September 30 an RTI questionnaire with the Principal Chief Engineer in Altinho. After being given the usual run around of a minimum of two counters, I landed up at the desk of a woman with braided hair, who disdainfully shoed me away. Till the friendly male next to her intervened and accepted my application. My subsequent investigations revealed the PWD has cleverly not appointed specific Public Information Officers, and as a result, RTI applications are forwarded to a nodal officer, who may or may not then forward your application to the concerned PIO. All other ministries I have run into have clearly identified PIOs. The tourism department even has one each for the south and north! So, await some interesting details in this column, it'll be worth the wait. Talk about delays.

In any other land, the mess would have been cleared in a matter of three months, considering it was plum bang opposite the Secretariat, the seat of power. However, although the landslide occurred last June, till now they are still trying to remedy it. That is all of 15 months! The amount of labour and public funds wasted boggles the mind. Are we to assume the people in authority have no conception of the amount of resources, manpower and time needed to clear the debris? If they did, why did it take so long (and ongoing still)?

Amongst us all…

So, let's go back to the fun of the joystick. Jayshree Raghuraman's flying costs to you between 18 April 2002-12 July 2005 was Rs 7,10,692. Apart from the Dilli routine she flew to France between 14-24 May 2003 (cost Rs 1,65,116). BS Bhalla spent a huge Rs 10,29,720 flying in a rather short period of 14 November 2002- 28 September 2004. He seems to have gone on a world tour in 2003 taking in Berlin (Rs 1,01,145) and Toronto, Singapore, Hong Kong and the US (cost Rs 3,73,005). Vijay Madan spent Rs 5,29,627 of your hard money between 14 January 2003-6 March 2005 taking off to US/Canada twice and once to Lisbon incurring an expenditure of Rs 7,43,109. Dharmendra Sharma spent Rs 4,20,099 of his total expenditure of Rs 7,36,633 flying off to Boston in the US. That's more than several other IAS officers spent flying during their Goa tenures.

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