Goa: A year on, Parrikar transforms into a great U-turn artiste

By Mayabhushan Nagvenkar Panaji: Give him a blazing red matador’s cape today and Goa’s technocrat Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wouldn’t look a touch out of place. An IIT alumnus, seen by Goans as a long-awaited political balm after seven years of rapacious Congress rule, he has mastered the art of the political pirouette. Dodging promises one after another with the brazenness of a bullfighter and the skill of a ballerina. But a year down, all the twisting and turning has begun to make heads to reel. If Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was once called rollback PM by the Opposition, Parrikar has been baptised as the king of U-turns by his detractors for consistently going back on several key pre-poll promises. The mother of all U-turns being Parrikar’s sudden and abject surrender to the mining lobby, after consistently exposing illegal mining as opposition leader for several years.[caption id=“attachment_657180” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar. PTI[/caption] “He had the opportunity to oversee an era where the powerful mining lobby could finally be controlled, but instead he chose to join them and fight against his own people who elected him,” says Ramesh Gauns, who has been at the forefront of the anti-mining agitation in Goa. As far as image management goes, his handling of Goa’s multi-crore mining scam could well be Parrikar’s Waterloo. Here’s why. After almost heroically taking on the powerful illegal mining lobby for years together, the BJP as the principal opposition party in 2011, wrote to then President Pratibha Patil seeking action into the Goa’s illegal mining scam, which they claimed was worth Rs 25,000 crore. The number, Rs 25,000 crore, was validated and more by the Justice MB Shah Commission which pegged the scam at an even bigger Rs 35,000 crore. But once the BJP tasted power its mining mathematics went awry. Parrikar, now as chief minister, not only rejected the judicial commission’s assessment, but has also reneged on the Rs 25,000 crore loss theory, endorsed by then party president Nitin Gadkari. Parrikar, in a classic pirouette even went on to tell the Goa legislative assembly in July that there were “no illegal mines operating in Goa”. He now pegs the scam worth at Rs 4,000 crore and thereabouts. His allergy to the casino industry in Goa and dramatic promise to drive the six offshore casinos parked off Panaji “into the Arabian sea” has also been suddenly cured by an unknown poultice. And the Congress is keeping tabs of Parrikar’s flip flops. “Till count he has made more than 30 U-turns on issues of critical importance like Lokayukta, mining, SEZ, education in mother tongue, etc,” says Congress spokesperson Sudip Tamhankar. Parrikar, without a doubt has been one of Goa’s brightest political spark in the recent times. A spark, which has caught the imagination on a pan-India scale, a rare feat for a Goan politician known nationally for being the early masters of the art of defection on legislative assembly floors. His low strung attitude, impeccable educational credentials, a yet untainted, candyfloss-like image and innovation and development-oriented arguments to governance makes him a likeable politician, i.e. when he keeps his streak of arrogance at bay. It is this virtuous image, that seems to be taking a battering in Parrikar’s current stint as chief minister. Take the issue of appointing a Lokayukta for example. After promising a functioning Lokayukta after 100 days of coming to power, a year later the public ombudsman office still eludes Goa. This, despite the government formally notifying B Sudarshan Reddy, a former Supreme Court judge, as the Lokayukta. Miguel Braganza, who has interacted with the chief minister on several occasions as a civil society activist says, Parrikar, in his second stint as chief minister has lost control. “He is a control freak, who has lost control. This is a non performing government,” Braganza said. If performance amounted to dishing out allowances and doles in the last one year, even Santa Claus would curled up in his cold sled in embarrassment. The cancellation of VAT on petrol, introduction of a Rs 1,000 dole for housewives to fight inflation and Rs 1 lakh women on the verge of marriage and hike in pension for senior citizens are promises which have been delivered. On Saturday (9 March), after completing a year in power, Parrikar scooped out another set of lollies for mining workers, truck owners and families dependent on mining, who have been rendered jobless due to a Supreme Court-enforced ban on the industry. This at a time, when the absence of mining revenue has shrunk the treasury considerably following the ban and the government has already been forced to sell stock securities to the tune of Rs 200 crore to raise money. Parrikar, who has won the politician of the year award instituted by a national news channel this year, has been hollering from the rooftops about this being his last stint as Goa’s chief minister. But with the IIT-ian’s mood swings, of late one simply does not know. Should one believe him or just sigh and prepare for yet another U-turn?