Montris guzzle

Things go better with …..

Methinks our montris should be poster boys for the cola companies. And everything is official about it, in a manner of speaking! With due respect to Pepsi, Coca Cola and our very own desi Thums Up who have spent big bucks getting Shah Rukh Khan/ Ranbir Kapoor/ Deepika Padukone, Aamir Khan and the energetic Akshay Kumar respectively to sell their product. In fact, I quote here another popular oldie line Coke’s Ad boys scripted: ‘Continuous quality is quality you can trust’. Nuff said about the makers of carbonated drinks, but I couldn’t resist this, because look at the one liner from the point of view of our montris on the Hill (Porvorim Secretariat) and it simply wouldn’t hold water, not a drop of it. Because where is the continuous quality as far as our montris are concerned and also the fact that you simply can’t trust them?

Your montris guzzled an enormous Rs 3,52,417 worth of refreshments and I guess lots of tea (also called the “cup that cheers” or “cuppa” if you are British) as well. Well a lot of undeserved others did consume bottles of it courtesy them and of course your tax bucks came handy. Raise a Thumbs Up to the Minister for Panchayati Raj & RDA who continued to entertain between April 2008-March 2009, as he did with gusto in the previous year (Rs 71,650), this time spending Rs 58,580. Bottle caps continued to pop and cha continued to flow in the chamber of the Minister for PWD, Science & Technology where the cost of the guzzle went up to Rs 44,990. In that year, April 2008-March 2009, the Home Minister spent Rs 37,937. The Chief Minister spent Rs 37,399. The Minister for Education spent Rs 34,227. The Minister for Tourism refreshed his visitors to the extent of Rs 32,321, the Minister for Water Resources & Forest Rs 28,069, the Minister for revenue Rs 24,779, the Minister for Health & Craftsmen Training Rs 23,599. The Minister for Urban Development Spent Rs 15,233.The fizz continued to effervesce in April and May 2009 and your political whiz kids or should we be saying fizz kids spent Rs 40,609 and the bubble cost your tax bucks the most inside the chamber of the Minister for Panchayati Raj & RDA – Rs 8,217. As well as inside the chambers of the Minister for PWD, Science & Techonology – Rs 6,138 and Minister for Education – Rs 10,291. Really, what goes on inside the chamber of the Panchayati Raj Minister? Grassroot democracy or is it just letting grass grow under their feet! As I said before their fizz is your fall.

An aside

BTW, with sugar prices going off the charts, cola companies have been told to import their own sugar. All these years, the aam aadmi went thirsty because water got diverted to make soft drinks. But when the government realised in addition to the aam aadmi’s miserable life, things were turning bitter for itself, it’s moving to plug usage. If nothing, UPA-2 would have the blessings of parents of impressionable children who emulate their role models. But what will our guzzlers on the Hill do? Nada.

Fence Eating the Crop

Whatever happened to the Rajiv Gandhi IT Habitat dreamt up by Dayanand Narvekar whose mental image of it was really to make it a realty habitation at the very least? Everyone thought of it as idle hope because only recently I too met yet another young person from Goa (this time a woman from Divar) who found work at a call centre in Bombay that pays her a monthly salary of Rs 30,000 and health coverage for her family: “Do you think I would ever get that in Goa”. You can’t argue this even in a daydream. Mr. Narvekar pushed through an outrageous scam that nestled between Dona Paula and the Goa University that was as outsized as its physical area of 2,47,525.02 sq. mt. The so-called IT plots of which some clever realtors had already begun to lay their grubby hands on, was planned to be on a sizeable 1,80,868.40 sq. mt or 73.07 per cent of the proposed IT park.

Gravitate in the Habitat

The green areas which the Info Tech Corporation of Goa Ltd made a song and dance about when I interviewed its overpaid director (remember his salary was increased to Rs 1,00,000 per month later?) was earmarked at 37,174.06 SQ. MT (1.91 per cent of the park) and another 2,47,535.70 sq. mt designated as area for ‘circulation, parking and walkway’. Yeah right! Imagine if some of the plotters (oops, plot holders in the Habitat) decided to take that literally and walk(a)way, as is done in most of Goa’s industrial estates, with a bit of extra land with the connivance of the Info Tech Corporation which would have learnt by then from the Goa Industrial Development Corporation that has mastered the art of turning a blind eye on encroachment! Well, ask yourself why 2,47,535.70 sq. mt or, was there sure to be another in-house developed route to encroachment? For now that’s all you and I can ask because as they say conveniently these days there is a status quo on at the Habitat. And so till the guys at the Hill decide, we won’t know the fate of a budding scam that was nipped in the bud.

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