Muddling about in Mapusa: Why Mapusa deserves a second chance…

This column should have appeared on the 12^th of May 2010, to accompany the bandh called by the Mapusa Merchants Association (MMA), and to show solidarity with their cause. Failing that however, this column may still have some purpose, to assert the legitimacy of the demand of the MMA and renew attention to the larger issues that the MMA was drawing attention to.

The MMA organized their bandh to protest the step-motherly treatment that they allege (and is evident for all to witness) has been meted out to the once proud market complex. The association of merchants made another important observation however when they argued that it was not just the treatment that was the problem, but the manner in which the ODP (Outline Development Plan) for the town had been created. The ODP proposes expanding roads around the market complex, in a manner that would demolish large sections of this complex. The roads are designed to provide access to the communidade fields beyond the market so as to open these up for development as locations for high-rise apartments.

Given this second threat to the market it is little wonder that the MMA extended its support to the protests of other citizen groups against the Mapusa ODP. Indeed, given the centrality of the weekly Friday market to Mapusa’s contemporary identity, it is significant that a challenge to the ODP has emerged from the merchants of the market. It is indicator to all of us that it is time Mapusa makes a determined departure from the future it seems to be hurtling toward.

There was a time when people from Panjim would sniff when referring to Mapusa. Mapusa was the provincial hick town when compared to its Mandovi-bank cousin. And yet, even today if one looks closely, there is an architectural charm to Mapusa that cries out for recognition. The entire area of Feira Baixa, Feira Alta present a veritable map of the kinds of architectural trends that have passed through Goa and this trading town. Where the harmony of these stylistic jostlings is interrupted is in the high rise buildings that have come up in the past half-decade. The harmony is disrupted not because they are contemporary buildings, but because these high-rise buildings are entirely out of scale with the buildings around them, sticking out, quite literally, like sore thumbs.

Another charming area, one that deserves to be preserved as a heritage space is the residential locality of Dattawadi. Nestled around the Datta temple, the charm and heritage value of this largely Hindu middle-class locality has been unfairly ignored for way too long. Ignore someone or something long enough and they will begin to believe their lack of value. This has been Mapusa’s unfortunate fate. The destruction of Mapusa’s architectural and urban heritage will however, be not just this town’s, but Goa’s at large.

There are a number within Goa’s tourist industry who are waking up to the fact that Goa’s tourism cannot be sustained merely by the beach-bums we have so far been catering to. We need to innovate and expand, even as the beach belt continues to be a major revenue earner. In such a context, the concerted preservation and subsequent utilization of Mapusa’s heritage potential could be the next logical and crucial step. Despite being the logical option to service the beach belt, and elaborate Goa’s tourist industry it is unfortunate that Mapusa’s role has been restricted to a largely utilitarian use.

There is a little lesson for us to be learned from the protest of the Mapusa Merchants, even though it may be an unintended one. Just a very small group stands to gain from the developmental pattern of the high-rise buildings. This group is those associated with the building lobby. As evidenced by the concerns of the MMA, this development pattern hits not just the common man, but even such comfortable groups such as the middle to upper class market merchants. Taking cue from the Mapusa market as a heritage building, we can begin to sense that building from heritage benefits a larger segment. Heritage is after all what everyone already has as capital, it requires only a supporting Governmental framework (like a decent urban plan and tourist industry support) and everyone can cash in on the golden goose. Looking at existing urban settlement patterns and structures as capital allows us to realize another lesson. To pull down priceless heritage buildings is a case of killing this golden goose. It also highlights the poverty of entrepreneurial imagination. But then this is perhaps why Mapusa has gone from a charming provincial town to a dusty trading town; a total lack of entrepreneurial imagination!

The real tragedy of Mapusa however, is that this apparent lack of entrepreneurial imagination is conveying the impression of an absolute lack of a middle class in the city. Where most heritage structures in Goa have been converted to cater to high-end or middle class consumption, the almost absolute lack of such structures in Mapusa seems to suggest the lack of such a class inhabiting the city. This assumption has serious consequences for Mapusa in that it could result in a total lack of any future investment, a flight of capital, eventually turning the town into a large slum catering primarily to the lower income classes. This is not a suggestion that heritage or urban infrastructure is or ought to be restricted to the upper classes, but merely a sad recognition of the manner in which our priorities (especially urban planning) seem to stand. Indeed, one way to display commitment to egalitarian development, and heritage together would be to use the now abandoned building formerly used by St. Anne’s convent as the new location for the Mapusa Municipal Reading room, converting it into a state-of-the-art library and resource centre.

There is a time and season for everything an old lyric tells us. And so it is that if there is a time and season for something in Mapusa, it is one for urban regeneration, based on a recognition of its heritage value. To do so will ensure not just more equitable development, but also rescue the town from the dark future it seems to have consigned itself to.

(First published in the Gomantak Times 30 June 2010)

Learnings from the Peoples’ Tribunal - II: The Forest Dwellers’ Rights Act and the incomplete Regional Plan Process

At the conclusion of the Peoples’ Tribunal on the Restoration of Adivasi Homelands in Goa, the jury indicated to members of the press, that finalising the Draft RP 2021 without settling the rights of tribal communities under the Forest Dwellers’ Rights Act would seriously imperil the RP Process, leaving it open to legal challenge.

The Forest Rights Act gains the kind of centrality that the jury of the Peoples’ Tribunal attributes to it by virtue of Section 13 of the Act which indicates that “the provisions of this Act shall be in addition to and not in derogation of the provisions of any other law for the time being in force”. The Act operates therefore, as an addition to any law already in force and with an impact on the intended beneficiaries of the Act. For a process such as the RP process which claims to have the interests of the people and their sustainable development at heart, the inclusion of the process of the Forest Rights Act is central for reasons of the aims and objectives of the Act.

The Act intends to right and remedy the wrongs, the ‘historical injustice(s)’ that have been done to the tribal and forest-dwelling communities in India, where their rights on land have not been recorded. The Act aims to “address the long standing insecurity of tenurial and access rights of forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers including those who were forced to relocate their dwelling due to state development interventions”.

These are significant aims, and one that the State Government ought to take into consideration if it is serious about the Regional Plan process. It is a fact that the centrality of this particular legislation was pointed out to the State Government, while the process for the Regional Plan was still on. However, rather than act on the responsibilities laid out before it, the State Government has initiated some half-baked process only for those communities that live within the ambit of the officially designated forest areas of the State. In doing so, the State government (and Forest Department) has continued a long tradition of working to undermine tribal and forest-dwelling community interests. The Act is applicable to all Scheduled Tribe persons, and communities reliant on forest resources in the State. The faster the Government sets about realizing the objectives of the Act, the faster Goa would move toward sustainable development. This means pushing large chunks of the people back from the impoverishment they are being pushed toward.

Very interestingly, the Forest Rights Act envisages a system similar to the 73^rd amendment process that many activists have been proposing for the RP process. It requires a gram sabha to identify the usages of the community and this is eventually confirmed at the District Level. The process at the gram sabha is in fact the process that has been skipped all these past centuries and was referred to in the previous column written by me; the documenting of the various rights and traditional livelihood practices that have hitherto not been recognized by various land settlement and land tenurial systems.

What is most interesting however is that the Forest Rights Act actually stands to radically recognize the rights of not just Tribal groups but ALL Forest resource reliant communities in Goa. While the Act is defined as the Forest-Dweller’s Rights Act, the Act addresses itself to two communities; those who have been identified as Scheduled Tribes and “Other traditional forest dweller” that is to say, “any member or community who has for at least three generations prior to the 13^th day of December, 2005 primarily resided in and who depends on the forest or forests land for bona fide livelihood needs”. Read the latter definition closely and you realize that not just the Scheduled Tribes in Goa, but other communities as well, who have been reliant, and continue to be reliant on forest resources stand to benefit from this Act.

An example of communities would be the Scheduled Tribe groups and other dalit-bahujan Catholic groups who live along the spine of the Taleigao-Bambolim plateau, as well as those who live around the Kadamba plateau. These are groups that have been and will be most impacted by the urbanization of the landscape, as we carve the plateaus into homesteads for the rich and famous. These are groups that have relied on either the cashew and mango plantations on the hills, or continue to collect firewood to fuel their kitchen hearths (and bathing water), and graze the cattle that provide some additional income to the family kitty. None of these areas have been forests for quite some time, and yet this is not to say that these groups are not crucially dependent on the natural resources that they have tended to, or are reliant on for their livelihood needs. In fact the ‘rural’ nature of these locations is being systematically destroyed to create the ‘urban’ environment which not only endangers the livelihood options of these communities, but also places them, both socially and legally outside of the context within which they are imagined.

A careful reading of the Forests Rights Act however, would allow us to create a legal and processual framework through which the rights of these communities can also be addressed and justice served to them. The act defines “forest land” to be “land of any description falling within any forest area and includes unclassified forests, undemarcated forests, existing or deemed forests, protected forests, reserved forests, Sanctuaries and National parks;”. Further, the Act also indicates the rights that need to be protected. These include the right for self-cultivation for livelihood, the right to fish, and graze livestock and “rights in or over disputed lands under any nomenclature in any State where claims are disputed”. This final clause is interesting, since it seems to hold in it the seed for the creation of rights in properties from where these marginal groups have been illegally evicted.

The Forest Rights Act is a landmark legislation that seeks to redress the wrongs that have been visited on marginalized social groups throughout our history, both prior to Western colonization and even before this. The Regional Plan process too claims to have the good of the Goan people at heart. If such is the case, it is inconceivable that the Regional Plan process can be completed without the completion of the settlement of rights of communities reliant on forest-resources. It would also be worthwhile, if the details of the Forest Dwellers’ Rights Act, and possible beneficial interpretations are converted into the vernacular languages and appropriate scripts of the State and disseminated post-haste among the intended beneficiaries of the Act.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 24 June 2009)

Fight the Good Fight: A People’s Tribunal and an activist’s Epiphany

On numerous occasions well-meaning friends have come up to me asking me why I have railed, raved and ranted against some of the positions of the GBA. ‘They are trying so hard’ they’d say, ‘why not give them a little credit’. In a wonderfully self-reflexive and honest column in the Herald yesterday, Venita Coelho laid out what exactly was my (and others’) gripe with the positions that the GBA and associated groups and individuals had been taking for a long time, “It was all about land and land use – and not about people and the reality of their lives at all”. Welcome to my world Venita, we are now on the same page!

For another healthy slice of the reality of people’s lives, I would have recommended attendance at the Peoples’ Tribunal held on the “Restoration of Adivasi Homelands in Goa” organized by the Gawda Kunbi Velip and Dhangar Federation (GAKUVED). Over the two days at the end of the last month, close to 60 tribal persons from Goa presented their woes before a jury, indicating the wide number of problems they faced, none of which have been even remotely touched by the Regional Plan 2021 process.

The sorry fate of the tribals of Goa is primarily because of the invisibilisation that they have been subjected to. Goa is constructed both internally and externally by discourses that would see Goa as either Dourada (Indo-European) or Indica (Brahmanical). The originary myth of the first is that of the creation through contact with the Iberian west, the originary myth of the second is of creation through the peaceful extension of the land by brahmanical settlers. Both myths have a basis in fact and both have done much to deprive the tribal population of the rights of dignified existence. As a result of the operation of these two frameworks, the woes of the tribals have as yet never been articulated systematically, and the Tribunal was probably the first time such a systematic articulation was achieved. For this reason alone, the Tribunal was a momentous occasion.

It became clear, in the course of the Tribunal that there were at least three categories of problems that the Goan tribals face. The first emerged from among those who lived on the fringes of Goa’s forests. Like tribals in the rest of India, their interaction with the Forest Department officials is far from ideal. They are harassed by the operation of the Forest Department, their rights not settled and very often are illegally assaulted and interrogated by Forest department officials. The space of the Communidade emerged as the second arena of problems faced by the Goan tribal. All too often their names are not recorded in the Government’s land survey records as the tenant. This is despite their being present on, and tending to the land for at least two generations, and very often also having Portuguese-era documents to prove their title. Somehow, subsequent to the ‘Liberation’ their presence on the land, and their rights on it, were cleanly erased. As a result today, they are unable to claim Government benefits and schemes, unable to extend their homes, get electricity or water and are made to beg for permissions, not from the Government offices, but from the Communidades. The third category of cases is the threat of mining. Many of the tribals who are educated are first generation learners. Their primary skills lies in tending the land. this they have done for generations now. The extension of mining leases threatens to destroy their homesteads (and livelihood bases) either through appropriation for mining, through the illegal dumping of mining rejects in their fields and forests, or through the destruction of the fresh water aquifers that quench not only their thirst but all of Goa. Listening to this last category of problems, the audience realized with a shock that the large sightings of wild-life in Goa, and the large number of reports of crop destruction or at least straying into villages, was the result of the aggressive extension by industry into the forest areas. As is normally the case however, rather than deal with industry, it is the tribal who gets caught by the Governmental machinery.

In the context of the Regional Plan, it also became clear that there was wild confusion as to what was the status of their proposals. Would proposals in the light of recent information be accepted? Further, it became clear that there was no uniform system that was followed with regard to the articulation of the village plan. Interestingly some villages in Sattari that were in opposition to the Eco-I status of lands in their village had this decision taken in the chamber of their Legislator in Porvorim. Interesting!

On another front, one that would have been hilarious if it weren’t so tragic, it appears that most developmental schemes formulated by the Government have compounded rather than relived the condition of the tribals. One case in point was that of the Bandharas, that dam water in the rivers, but instead of proving any use, make impossible the traditional cultivation of the river bed. When Venita therefore realizes that planning is about people and their problems, and listening closely to what the facts on the ground, as articulated by the people say, she has hit the nail squarely on the head.

Both Venita and the representatives at the Peoples’ Tribunal would have agreed on one fact. That a mere gram sabha deciding the Village Plan is not enough. What is necessary is an honest collation of the factual conditions in the village, and the building of claims and decisions on the basis of those conditions. What was very clear through the representations however, and through the dossier submitted prior to the Tribunal, was that what was required was first a recognition of their land rights (rather than solely that of the landlords) and secondly a system for consultation with the tribal groups in villages across the State.

The next couple of columns will identify a few issues that emerged in the course of this Peoples’ Tribunal and deal with them at some length.

Before concluding however, we must recognise that Venita’s epiphany, and the Peoples’ Tribunal were made possible primarily because both the GBA and GAKUVED looked outside of Goa for inspiration. This is not to say that Goa is lacking of ideas, but that they have hit on a very vital ingredient for successful social mobilization; networking. All too often Goan struggles have refused to take lesson from similar struggles in other parts of India. The tragedy of the Regional Plan process is exactly this. Rather than looking across our borders for communities that have already invented the wheel, we attempted to invent it ourselves. In the process, we have failed to draw strength from across our borders. But, as Venita’s realization, and the Peoples’ Tribunal indicate, it is not yet too late and there is much that can still be salvaged.

One last point. It should be seen as part of a divine plan that the GBA consultation that Venita benefited from and the Peoples’ Tribunal occurred at around the same time. If networking and listening to the voices of the people are the lessons that we are being asked to learn, then surely, the renewed process towards a Regional Plan must see a networking between these two groups?

(Published in the Gomantak Times 3rd June 2009)

Keeping Goa Clean and Green - Scrap dealers, Regional Plan and Sensibility

Last Thursday (5 March 2009), Azad Maidan in Panjim was the site for a protest demonstration organized by the All Goa Scrap Dealers Association. The reason for demonstration was to draw attention to and protest the sealing of scrap-yards in various parts of Goa, as well as the harassment that they face at the hands of the police, various authorities as well as village organizations and panchayats in the State.

The scrap dealers at the meeting recounted a tale which indicated that though they have been harassed since at least 1999, this official harassment has now become unbearable. Their scrap yards are being summarily sealed, without notice, based on the argument that these sites are hazardous and the breeding ground for disease. Now this is a bizarre argument and needs to be addressed.

It is true that scrap-yards are sites of potential hazards and disaster. However, this is only when scrap-yards are not subject to controls and not properly managed. To their credit, the Scrap Dealers Association has itself indicated that there is a need for a law under which the operation of the scrap yards could be recognized, managed and monitored. There is no law they argue that can deal with us and our livelihoods, and rather than just shut us down, the State needs to actively create a system and framework through which we can be regulated and monitored.

The Draft Regional Plan on 89 indicates that there is a legal framework for solid waste management, the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules 2000. It also indicates however, that “it now needs to be addressed at the implementation end. It is here that the institutional framework and the “will” to tackle the problem seems to be lacking”. However, this is where the brilliance of the Draft Plan ends. It makes no reference to the clearly widespread network of scrap dealers across Goa who would be a useful ally in the attempt to keep Goa clean and green. This gap merely reiterates the point that I, and others, have been consistently making; that the Draft Regional Plan, needs a lot more work before it can be presented to the population as a serious effort at Regional Planning. What is even worse is that the absence of any process to actually involve groups in discussing these policy issues (since the pro-developer State government is only interested in spatial planning issues) has meant that this and other crucial issues are being left unattended to. As the Scrap Dealers Association warns us, a failure to attend to issues of scrap, and on the contrary to attack those who deal with it, will result in Goa being awash in a sea of highly hazardous waste materials. The crucial point that we have to grasp is that while scrap yards are hazardous, they can be managed. To leave industrial waste just lying around, is to invite large scale pollution and health risks over generations.

Where does one locate these scrap yards is a crucial question that even the Association tries to deal with. They point out that when the scrap yards were started they were located at the edges of towns and villages. However, with the expansion of the cities, these scrap yards are now surrounded by dwelling places. The Association suggests to the government that they allocate sites for scrap yards in remote locations, and that those managing these places be licensed and that there be regular and frequent inspections of these sites within the framework that needs to be articulated.

I would however differ with the scrap dealers, and I suspect with most of the Goan population, on this point. One of the fundamental problems with industrial and consumeristic society is that it seeks to hide the unpleasant aspects of production so that we can continue to consume by focusing on only the pretty stuff. As a result, we continue to generate waste and problematic social relations. I would argue that scrap-yards must be allowed to exist within the limits of villages and towns. Such a location would resolve a number of issues. By placing it within the limits of these areas, it would generate a natural system of monitoring where the residents of the area are themselves interested in the systematic maintenance of the scrap yard. It is such stimuli that produce the socio-political context for effective local self governance. Further, such a location would impose on the now rather unaesthetic scrap yards, the requirement to improve their aesthetic appearance. An aesthetic location also holds the possibility of being a more labour-friendly location. Too often the issue of waste-management is not seen from the perspective of the labour employed there. To include such a perspective and focus would generate a more holistic and sustainable waste management system.

It is possible that these scrap-yards would need spaces outside of towns and villages as well. My argument is that in placing these scrap yards within habitations, we also create a more effective system of collection, where merely by the locating the scrap yard within the village or urban neighbourhoods, people realize that throwing tube lights or batteries outside the house, is not only a waste management problem, but also an economic waste that also lays the foundation for health problems of future generations. In one shot the majority of waste-management problems in Goa could be resolved by integrating the Scrap dealers Association into the attempt to keep Goa garbage free.

Locating the scrap yard within the village and town, would allow us the opportunity to prevent the demonisation of the communities engaged in scrap-collection. Lets face it, one of the fundamental problems with the opposition to the scrap dealers is the fact that they are largely ‘lower-class’ Muslims. Building an integrated system of waste management, and marketing the same, would also help us resolve the communal tensions that are being produced, by showing how Muslims in fact contribute to the safety and economic well-being of the villages and towns in our State.

Rather than extract payment from the scrap-dealers, the State ought to subsidize their efforts by providing them land, providing them at subsidized rates the necessary technology to maintain responsible scrap-yards. In return for this State support, the scrap yards could be required to ensure basic labour standards within their establishments, and also further their outreach into the communities that they already service.

There can be no doubt that the Scrap dealers perform a valuable function to Goan society. To hound them, is to lay the logs for our own funeral pyre. What we need to do, is to involve them into the Regional Plan process, so that we can emerge out of the process with a legal framework, an administrative setup and social engagement that would ensure a lack of mistrust, misinformation and a healthier (both economically and physically)

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 11th March 2009)

A Right to Public Comment?

How to have an effective say in the draft Regional Plan

The announcement of the period of public comment on the Draft Regional Plan 2021 gives us the space to raise a number of rather interesting questions about the whole process of public comment. What exactly do we mean by public comment? What should constitute public notice? And does the state have any obligations in aiding the articulation of public comment?

The Task Force apparently prevailed on the Government to allow for not the usual 60 days period for public comment, but a period of 90 days, three months for the public to comment. The Task Force no doubt had good intentions, but it is my contention that this extension of time alone will not serve the purpose of greater public participation. At the most, without being tied to a genuine rethinking of the whole process, it will remain a mere token gesture while the game continues to be played as always.

The Draft Regional Plan was apparently notified on the 8th of October 2008 via the government gazette. Some amount of the population got to know of it a few weeks later via newspaper reports. When these good citizens got to know about it, they rushed to the relevant offices and asked for their copy of the draft plan and the maps pertaining to their village (prohibitively priced for an average citizen by the way). The answers they received was in the ‘they are not ready yet, come back next week’ range. Close to a month after notification, a good number of Panchayats have not yet received copies of the plan and the maps pertaining to their jurisdiction. If such is the case, can we seriously argue that the period of public comment has begun? Or is this just another perfunctory exercise, where we move through a ritual and say “hurray, we did it!” and move along with out any genuine public debate?

To understand the ridiculousness of this practice of publishing prospective legal change in a gazette and presuming that the period of public comment has begun we need to look into the beginnings of modern democracy; where the checks on the powers that be, came from a powerful bourgeois (commercial and business) class that demanded it have a say and stake in the running of the state. For this class, unfettered with daily menial chores of the working class, discovering the joys of the print media, and encountering a world with familiar limited issues, obtaining information via a newspaper, or the odd governmental gazette was perfectly convenient. Democracy in the old republican model comprised a club of a small group of gentlemen who debated issues over tea. Information from the newspaper you had all day to pour over, and the club to discuss issues over, allowed for a fair amount of participation in governance. Goa under the Portuguese Republican regime provides us an appropriate example. It gave to a small class of Goans this taste of democracy, and for this little club, it was a very satisfying experience indeed.

Democracy has since moved on though. It has itself been subjected to democratic urges, and democracy today is also the space for the working class and the rural peasant. These groups are finally demanding not merely technical compliance, but effective communication, to allow for genuine participatory governance. If the Government (and indeed the well-meaning Task Force) is serious, it will ensure that the period of public comment begins not from publication in the gazette, but from the moment the Regional Plan in entirety descends to every Panchayat in the state of Goa. If not, lets take it as fact that the Government is not really serious about this participatory exercise.

There is another question that emerges though, when we recognize that the forms of the law are geared toward a privileged class that inaugurated the first phase of democracy. When we say open for public comment, who exactly is this public? Theorists of popular culture inform us that there is no such thing as a ready-made and existing public. A public has to be created. And definite kinds of public are created through definite kinds of contexts. What is the kind of public that these public comment provisions create therefore?

The sad truth is that the Regional Plan does not really bother with identifying the public that needs to comment, or indeed enable it to be in a position where it can effectively comment. In the case of the Regional Plan, the public resides in the gram sabhas and municipalities of the state. Creating the public therefore would require the State to actively convene special assemblies where the technical details of the Plan are explained to this public. Only subsequent to this process, can we effectively say that a period of public comment has in fact begun.

This proposed process may seem ridiculous to those who accept the current procedures as sufficient. But if we agree that the current procedures are insufficient and incapable of enabling genuine participation, then clearly there is a need to move towards more effective procedures. Such renewed forms of participation alone will allow us to move back from the precipice of populism that the Indian democracy has moved to.

To carry forward the idea that form determines content, have reference to the phrasing of the law that invites the public objections to a government proposal. The phrasing ensures that the ‘public’ is eternally trapped in the role of the objector. There is nothing positive that this public has to say, since they are objecting. Even if it is a positive assertion that this public makes, the phrasing ensures that the bureaucracy looks at the public comment as an objection to all the blood, sweat and tears that they may have poured into the proposal. In asking for objections, what we have effectively done is to minimize the space for dialogue (which marks a democracy) and set up two sparring partners.

There are good many aspects of the law that are based on a liberal and bourgeois understanding of the world. A law rooted in these notions is no good for a democracy composed largely of labouring classes. The ongoing upheaval in Goa is a perfect route for us to examine these notions, change them and work towards effective democracy and social stability. Towards this larger end, challenging the period of public comment on the draft Regional Plan, would be an effective first step. The period of public comment can logically and ethically begin only when every panchayat and municipality in the State has received the relevant documents, and only after an initial explanation of the features and the proposals of the Regional Plan have been explained in all these bodies. If this is not done, then we would have had no effective realization of our right to Public comment.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 5th November 2008)