Where are the candlelight vigils?

Goa's 'Big Goenkar' Rajendra Kerkar is a solitary man ploughing a lone furrow these days. In his battle against those who mauled a tiger in the Keri forests, he has everyone ganged up against him. Now, even in his village where he has this huge father figure image among youth and elders alike, he has become a persona non grata, following a suspect, orchestrated campaign against him.

Pitted against him in this battle for the tiger is almost everyone -- the villagers, the politicians, and even the Forest Department officials, whose job it otherwise is to be on his side. The Chief Conservator of Forests, Dr Sashi Kumar, who's otherwise frugal with information, voluntarily announced to the media that "preliminary reports" from Dehradun indicated that the animal killed is 'not a tiger'. It turns out that the highly credible Dehradun Wildlife Institute, to which the forest department sent two samples - a tooth and blood on leaves -- has confirmed, do not belong to a tiger. Why Dr Kumar chose to make this morsel of information public when results of tests on 10 other samples of the slain animal are yet to come, beats us. But no sooner Dr Kumar did what he did, the campaign against Kerkar which borders on ostracising him in his village, gained wings. The campaign is reportedly backed by powerful political families who have for decades erased from government files, the evidence that striped cats live in Goan jungles for the obvious benefit of lobbies with mining interests in these forests.
So, Kerkar is left to fight his battle all alone. Except for the band of dedicated volunteers he himself groomed under the banner of Vivekananda Environment Awareness Brigade, he has no one else to bank on for support. And, in these trying times for him, not one of our so-called greens have lent him their shoulders. Instead, all of our civil society activists find it more appealing to hold candle-light vigils for the causes of Aires Rodrigues et al. But then, why should they bother about a Rajendra Kerkar? If they did, wouldn't they be soiling their Pierre Cardins in the forests of Keri?

FOOT NOTE: Suryakant Majik, one of the accused in the tiger killing case, based on on whose complaint the Goa police have booked one of Forest Department's most deligent official, Paresh Parab, for assaulting and torturing him while in their custody, was a friend of Kerkar's. In fact, a couple of weeks before the tiger killing incident came to light, Majik had borrowed Kerkar's two-wheeler and had met with a terrible accident while riding it. The injuries that Majik's medical examination has unveiled, some forest officials believe, were sustained by him in this accident on Kerkar's two-wheeler.

Politics of HSRP

And now, those opposing the High Security Number Plates have announced another bandh on September 25. So fearless of the administration and the law are the agitators that they had the gumption and gall to tell the media on Sunday when they announced the bandh, that they would appeal to educational institutions in the state to close down on that day to avoid inconvinience to students.

Now, one of the main figures in this agitation whose political hue is getting exposed with each day that passes, is the Goa Pradesh Youth Congress (GPYC) president, Sankalp Amonkar. Far from fighting for the interests of the youth including school and college-going students, Amonkar it seems is engrossed in this political exercise to earn the scalp of Transport Minister, Sudhin Dhavlikar.

Another prominent anti-HSRP agitator is the Bharatiya Janata Party's spokesman, Govind Parvatkar. A former teacher, it surprises us that Parvatkar is party to this decision which is bound to affect scores of students whose parents cannot afford to send them to school in plush private cars. In short, he has no business to endorse the bandh on September 25, and hold a large section of the population that does not own vehicles and are solely dependent on public transport to get to schools, colleges, places of work, etc, etc.

Friends in distress?

Days after the unthinkable happened -- the Alemaos and Mickky Pacheco joining hands -- the reasons why it happened are getting unravelled.

Apparently, both Mickky and the junior Alemao, are under attack in their respective parties for behaviour bordering on impropriety. The latter has a running battle with greens in Quepem taluka where he is being accused of mining iron ore in verdant forests and the former has earned the ire of his party bosses for his much-publicised misadventures in casinos.

But the casino episode is not the only one haunting the bandana-sporting flamboyant minister.

One rainy day, he apparently got into some 'deadly argument' with the staff of a North Goa five-star hotel, which is the darling the state administration, and whose promoter is a pal of his party boss, Sharad Pawar. Unfortunately for the minister, every detail of the fracas at this hotel, like the events in the Treasures Casino at Majorda Beach Resort, have been recorded on tape through CCTVs. While the tapes from the casino have reached the cops, the one from the North Goa hotel has reached Krishi Bhavan in New Delhi!

The elections in Maharashtra may have bought Mickky and the junior Alemao some time during which the duo have decided to try out this out-of-the-blue friendship among Goa's worst political foes in an attempt to pre-empt any action being contemplated against them by their respective parties.

An aside: The other day, I bumped into an youthful looking Radharao Gracias in Panjim and spent a good 20 minutes in conversation. This rare meeting, coming as it did in the immediate aftermath of it, couldn't have skirted the Alemao-Mickky truce and it didn't. Politics, what politics? It's all about making money, was the response my probing got, in typical Radharao-speak. Minutes later in the conversation, when I drew attention to his youthful, freshly-dyed look, this is what he said, like only Radharao could: "I'm now into black topping. The PWD does not charge me.

Not even the 10 per-cent V-added tax."