Thaindian News

By Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
Panaji, July 9 (IANS) The farmers of Virnoda village in north Goa allege that the sports ministry is bullying them to part with fertile farm land for the construction of a stadium for the 2011 National Games. They have now pinned their hopes on a black, uncastrated billy goat for divine intervention!

Soon after the Virnoda panchayat passed a resolution Sunday refusing to part with 500,000 square metres of land in its jurisdiction for the stadium-cum-sports city project, the anxious council members decided to back up the administrative decision with some help from the goat.

“After offering the animal a small puja (prayer) Monday, we let loose the full grown male goat (locally called ‘bokdo’) on the land which the sports ministry wants to acquire,” Madan Parab, a member of Virnoda gram panchayat, told IANS.

“The garlanded goat is our offering to Lord Baneshwar, who is the guardian angel of our farm lands. In the past too, whenever we have had problems in the village, we have turned to Him.

“Lord Baneshwar will ensure that we will continue to plough our fields in the years to come,” he said, adding that the goat would be allowed to roam free on the very land sought by the government.

“It is the best farming land in the entire Pernem taluka (block) and our families are completely dependent on this fertile farm land. Taking away this land is taking away our livelihood,” Parab said.

Parab is not the only voice protesting the state government’s decision to acquire fertile land to construct the ambitious sports stadium-cum-city spread over 1.3 million sq m.

The farmers are solely dependent on the land, where paddy is cultivated in swamped low lying areas irrigated by the manually controlled flooding of water from nearby estuaries.

According to another farmer Dhondu Parab, who has a flourishing cashew and mango plantation on the land in question, the villagers have resolved to form a resistance movement to ensure that the sports ministry looks elsewhere for barren land tracts to fulfil their National Games stadium and city dream.

“There is simply no way we are going to relent. So many of our generations have farmed here,” said Dhondu, who moved the resolution in the village council.

For Sports Minister Manohar alias Babu Azgaonkar, the sports stadium-cum-city is a dream initiative; more so because the multi-crore project is in his constituency of Dhargalim.

And Azgaonkar is in no mood to relent to any opposition.

“People are opposing for the sake of opposing. This is neither a polluting project nor an SEZ (special economic zone); so why the opposition?” Babu said while acknowledging that some farmers would lose land in the process.

“But they will also be compensated adequately,” he added.

The minister said in face of public protests he had already cropped one million sq metres from the originally envisaged project for the National Games stadium, which covered nearly 2.3 million sq m.

“The National Games 2011 sports stadium-cum-city project will generate at least 1,000 jobs for the locals,” Azgaonkar told IANS.

(Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan@gmail.com)