by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 287 Date: 24.06.2019
Contents:
1. Rahul Gandhi Should Remain Congress President Not To Give
Narendra Modi A Free Run
2. Afghanistan Did Almost A Zimbabwe On India
3. Goa Needs To Have Its Own Power Generation
4. Responsible Goa Tourism
Rahul Gandhi Should Remain Congress President
Not To Give Narendra Modi A Free Run
Rahul Gandhi by continuing his intransigence on his resignation is ceding the political space completely to Narendra Modi and the BJP in India today. With a leaderless Congress and the inroads that the BJP is making in encouraging defection from all political parties to its ranks, we are likely to have no credible Opposition. The defections from the parties to the BJP is in trickles now but with an increasingly wishy washy position among the leadership in most parties it will not be long before it becomes a steady stream and then a torrent. The Opposition will then be counting on their fingers the numbers that belong to them in the halls of Parliament. It is for this reason that Rahul Gandhi needs to take a stand now on confirming his continuing leadership of the Congress party. The reasons for this are clear. The Congress is the largest Opposition party in Parliament. It still commands a substantial portion of the national voters whilst other parties are mostly restricted to their home States being more of regional parties. The Congress thus remains pan-India and is still a voice to heard across the nation. If the Opposition is in tatters then the BJP will be given the opportunity to walk over all constitutional proprieties and fundamental rights without a fight. That is where Rahul Gandhi needs to take a stand to lead the Congress and the Opposition against the fight with the BJP in Parliament and beyond. This may lead to his Battle of Waterloo in 2024 and that battle needs to be fought for the survival of democracy in its true form in this country. Throwing in the towel at this stage will be playing into the hands of Narendra Modi and the BJP in their stated objective of a Congress mukt Bharat. After the 2019 elections the BJP is quite far down this road and with the agenda of One Nation, One Vote is planning to consolidate its position and bring in the US Presidential style elections to India banking on the charisma of Narendra Modi. If that happens and Modi does not make any major blunders in his term of Modi 2.0, there will no longer be any meaningful elections in this, the world's largest democracy.
Afghanistan Did Almost A Zimbabwe On India
Afghanistan almost did a Zimbabwe on India a la 1983 World Cup and with no Kapil Dev to rescue us it was left to Bumrah and finally Shami with his magnificent hattrick with 2 of those wickets with balls crashing into the stumps that sent peals of joy into the hearts of Indian cricket fans on 22June 2019. The story of the match could easily have been different but yet again Kohli was able to pull a rabbit out of the hat to seal an Indian victory. But for how long is what is worrying the hearts of some of India's cricket fans. What should have been a cakewalk victory for India was turned into a fight to the finish by the tough and resilient Afghans. Where one thought that India would put up a record total in excess of 400 to challenge the Afghans, we ended up close to half that. Where one thought that India needs to play strategic and post totals beyond the reach of the opposing team and keep a watch on scoring run rates even while batting first in case of inclement weather forecasts so that we are always ahead of the D/L method, we end of scuffling in the dirt. But then when things happen like in the Afghanistan match shades of suspicion relating to match fixing rear up. There is definitely no truth in it since you can fix a player maybe two players but to fix an entire team is not possible. The argument here is not to criticise or pull down the Indian cricket team but the desire is to see them play like real champions and to their full potential putting the opposition far far behind. This is one Indian cricket team that can play with their mind as well as their cricketing ability and we need to call on this so that India not only wins the World Cup 2019 but also straddles the world of cricket in all formats of the game.
Goa Needs To Have Its Own Power Generation
The Goa power situation has been always dicey with frequent interruptions and quality of power issues which are compounded more during the monsoon. The reason apart from many is the fact that we do not have our own power generation and have been forever dependent on supplies from neighbouring States, Karnataka and Maharasthra. These States will look after their compulsions and needs first and then supply the remaining to Goa is what we realise but we have no other recourse. This recently led our Power Minister to switch the power supplies of South Goa to the Maharasthra grid also for improved quality and availability. North Goa is already linked to the Maharasthra grid. So now we get all our power from the Maharasthra grid which is absolutely single sourcing which has its own problems. People would remember the major Western grid failures of which Maharasthra is a part some years back because of excess drawals by some States with a major collapse about 3 years ago which led to outages for extended times over all of Western India. What happens if such a situation occurs in the future and since we are connected to the Western grid through Maharasthra, we will be faced with a blackout in Goa. That is precisely the reason for us to have our own generation with a minimum 250MW plant each in North & South Goa or depending on the exigencies of economies of scale a single 500MW maybe either coast based for convenience of supplies of coal by sea in South or North Goa or at Mopa. The ideal thing would would be to have now 2x500MW, one each in North & South Goa. This with the allocation of about 500 MW from the Centre should last us till the turn of the next decade or more. Even if the Central allocation is reduced considering our own generation, we will be self-sufficient and not be dependent on others and ward off emergency situations of blackout etc. The above plan was advised to the Goa government more than a decade ago almost but nothing was done mostly because of land availability and the generation proposed in Chattisgarh under the acquisition of coal mines policy which had first got stuck in litigation and then equipment issues for wheeling the generation through the national grids to reach Goa. Even today the Goa-owned Chattisgarh power has not reached the State. Thus in the spirit of better late than never it is time that we thought of achieving at least 50% self-sufficiency in electric power generation in Goa as above. At the same time the government should go all out to increase the capacities of solar and also wind power generation and encourage industries, institutions and large housing complexes to invest in these options so that we have more balance between conventional and non-conventional generation. We need to remember that for anything we should not be forever dependent on others be it power, vegetables etc. and waste or use optimally what we have now in plenty, that is water.
Responsible Goa Tourism
Background: An out of State car, a SUV, speeding on an internal road of Goa while overtaking a vehicle in front of it, got onto the wrong side of the road and collided head-on with a car driven by the son with the father next to him and 2 other people in the backseat. The son died on the spot while the father died in hospital later. The 2 others were injured and admitted to hospital. The occupants of the SUV abandoned the vehicle and fled. The villagers who rushed to the accident scene found opened alcohol bottles in the SUV. In anger they set the SUV on fire.
In relation to the Chopdem incident where an out of State car was set on fire and another incident of a similar kind in Pernem where the people in a car were beaten up, CM Sawant's statement that Goans should not take the law into their own hands and think of the tourism for the State is completely irresponsible. In both cases alcohol bottles were found in the car and that is why the angry public decided to attack the occupants of the car and set fire to one of the vehicles. This is the natural outcome which had to happen since the Goa Government mouths inane platitudes like drinking in public places is banned or driving under the influence of alcohol will be penalised, but rarely implements the rules it sets out. We see blatant violations of public drinking on our beaches and elsewhere. We have our own children and youth drinking under the pretext of birthday parties or weddings until the morning in mixed gender groups which one sees on our morning walks. Nothing is done about this and the respectable local people and responsible tourists prefer avoidance rather than confrontation. But there is a limit to patience and that's where the tempers of the people involved in the Chopdem incident have boiled over. It is correct to say that people should not have taken the law into their own hands but what is the alternative. If you call the police they take hours to come and those involved in the accidents will flee as it happened in the above referred incident. So the CM needs to get the police to have patrolling in their vehicles across all our roads in a random manner and check vehicles, both local and outstation, for speeding, rash driving or any suspicious activity. But the police will not get off their bottoms because they are busy making out challans under the Traffic Sentinel scheme booking local Goans while tourists run riot across the State. The IGP learnt quickly and he is on to making holy statements with no intent enjoying his cushy posting in Goa. Once the police on patrol intercept a few vehicles word will spread that the police are active and the people taking to the roads will be wary. Why does not the government have all liquor vending outlets display prominently notice boards that drinking in public places and vehicles is banned or driving under the influence of alcohol will be penalised spelling out the fine? This could reduce the incidence of these violations. On the other hand we need to have responsible tourists come in to Goa and not the lumpen elements that throng our beaches in their underwear. Thus it is time to weed out those that come to Goa seeking liquor and drugs and who do not know how to behave properly in public. Why does CM Sawant not have have pamphlets or booklets distributed to tourists from the GTDC outlets, on all long distance buses, at our bus stands and railway stations about the do's and don'ts of Goa Tourism and set out what we Goans expect from the tourists while they are here? This along with other ideas given above can be a start to make Goa a responsible and beautiful tourism destination than running to seed like it is right now.
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