Panjim used to be an eminently walkable and cyclable city. Except for Altinho and Dona Paula, the rest of Panjim and its suburbs are ideally suited for walking and cycling, the best form of exercise and the most environment-friendly means of getting from one place to another.

As schoolchildren we either walked or cycled to school. I carried on cycling to Dhempe college in secondary school (11th and 12th standard). I even cycled in the initial years of medical school if lectures or clinics were in Panjim, and only took the bus to Bambolim or Ribandar.

We all tend to look at our past with rose-tinted glasses, so it is necessary to state that things were never idyllic in the Panjim or Goa or my childhood and youth, the 1970s and 1980s. This is the 40th anniversary year of ‘Goan Crazy’, the landmark cassette album released by iconic Goan popstar Remo Fernandes (now probably Goan Crazy in faraway Portugal) in which all vocal and other tracks were performed by him. His ‘Rock’n’Road’ is a testament to our deplorable roads even then: There were “roads on the rocks and rocks on the road”. 

   

But four decades on, giving the lie to this government’s slogan ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’, things have deteriorated so abysmally that it is scandalous we as citizens continue to endure such a travesty to our living standard and quality of life. Instead of progress, we have depressing regression. Yet we seem to shrug our collective shoulders and carry on with our lives. Because we feel helpless. We give vent to our feelings in the press or through civic action or through the ballot box. But still nothing seems to change. Any change that does happen is only for the worse, never for the better.

The mind-numbing mantras of ‘Imagine Panaji’ and ‘Smart City’ have been around for so long that they have dulled our senses even to memory of when it all began. It seems like an eternity.

On visiting the relevant website, several things come to mind to this long-term resident. First, the projects, whether completed or ongoing, lack either imagination or intelligence. Panjim’s USP (unique selling point), the envy of other Indian cities, has been its distinctive old-world charm. The proposals seem to want to obliterate rather than showcase this.  Second, they seem geared only to adding to the hordes of tourists that are already a strain on civic infrastructure resources (paid for by residents’ tax money, to add insult to injury) and the emotional and mental wellbeing of long-suffering residents, rather than putting residents first.

Third, where was the pre-planning discussion with Panjim citizens? Why are we excluded from plans that have huge ramifications on how our city is to be laid out, and what our government plans to do with our promenades and streets, public spaces and beaches?

Fourth, even for so-called ‘necessary’ works (which we are told is the case with ‘Smart City’ roadworks), why couldn’t it have been done in a phased manner, keeping the public informed well in advance at every step through the press, radio and social media about proposed works, road closures etc. and offer alternative routes for pedestrians (yes, pedestrians!), cyclists and motorists. This is how’s it is done in the civilized world; why not here? But here, everyone is left to their own devices, so motorists drive the wrong way on one-way roads, endangering themselves and others.

Fifth, where is the accountability for deadlines missed, or deaths resulting from cut corners in safety standards? We get a few glib excuses in the aftermath, but no heads roll, nothing really changes.

Wherever you go or look, there are heaps of mud or rubble or gravel, deep trenches, very few cordoned off with any thought for an unwary human or animal that could fall in and do themselves an injury. God help you if you are elderly, infirm or differently-abled. A road or pavement open today is dug up tomorrow, with no warning on how to get past or around it.

Closer to my home, can anyone enlighten me what is going on in the Mermaid Garden? It is not only cordoned off for months, but there seems to be ominous construction work afoot in what is a vital green lung for my area of Panjim.

The right to breathe clean air, to move freely and get exercise are basic human rights but all these are being inexorably infringed upon while we have been reduced to a silent shoulder-shrugging citizenry. There is a direct link between exercise and good health, be it physical, emotional or mental.

The only reason I switched from walking or cycling within Panjim city limits to a motorized vehicle is not out of laziness but because it is either inconvenient or dangerous to walk or cycle except within a small radius from my home. A good public transport system would have been the most efficient, economical and environment-friendly solution, but successive governments want to push us into air-polluting vehicles instead, and compound already beleaguered parking by pandering to the casino industry, which has also been ‘permitted’ to gobble up and vulgarize a once-beautiful promenade.

My son is in his mid-teens, about to finish school, and has rarely experienced the thrill of exploring the city by-lanes or doing the school commute by bicycle, alone or with friends, as I did. But as a responsible parent, dare I let him loose on our roads when I know there could be sudden road closures, forcing one into denser traffic as a diversion, or an inebriated tourist driving a rented vehicle at full speed into oncoming traffic? It has happened too often in front of me with horrific results, so I’m not being paranoid.  It hurts and saddens me to think that such an innocent, no-cost childhood pleasurable experience is now fraught with such life-threating danger. 

In today’s Panjim, life’s a ditch. And they could kill you.

(An edited version of this article was published on 30 May 2024 in my op-ed in the Herald Goa India)