An architect and four engineers from Socorro embarked on the onerous task of correcting many errors in the village map provided by the RP 2021, and then to put on paper the many aspirations of co-villagers on what they want their village to look like in the future.
BY VIBHA VERMA
reporters@gomantaktimes.com
PANJIM: Socorro is a village where nullahs become roads. This was the case when the committee formed to work on the draft regional plan took a look at the village map provided by the Town and Country Planning Department.
Talk to any of the committee members and they all point to serious errors in the map. This made their task all the more difficult.
Socorro has a population of about 18,000 villagers spread across 11 wards. About 30 percent of the land has been demarcated for settlement and the remaining is either fields, orchards or hills.
Soon after the draft of the Regional Plan 2021 was submitted to the Panchayat by the Town and Country Planning, a gram sabha meeting was called and six committees were formed. However, in reality the hard work was undertaken by a few.
Former panch and expert on Panchayati Raj Soter D'Sousa had this to say, "Initially many came forward to join the committees, but their enthusiasm evaporated and the burden had to be borne by a few."
The first task at hand was correcting errors in the draft.
“Many aspects were not covered while others were wrongly demarcated," said architect Hyacinth Pinto, a former government officer. "It was a bigger mess than I expected.”
Some of the roads were not shown in the plan. Crematoriums, water bodies, grounds, school buildings, village institutions, road junctions were not listed in the draft regional plan.
“We made at least five rounds of the village to correct the errors. The government has all this data but it was not provided to the people," she added.
Since many of the committee members used to work during the day they would gather in the evening to debate issues concerning the village and wind-up by about 9 pm. “After the meeting, I would sit with the plan and other materials up to 1 am,” said Hyacinth.
Haycinth was joined by four engineers who played a crucial role in giving shape to the plan in three months after adding microscopic details which were missing.
Kishore Asnodkar, a civil engineer said the groundwork would not have been possible without the assistance and co-operation of other committee members. “We attended meetings everyday in the evening after office hours. We used Sundays to tour the village," he remarked.
Taking villagers into confidence was not an easy task. At least four gram sabha meetings were called to note down points, suggestions and grievances. "It all worked well,” he stated.
“I enjoyed every bit of the work as it was a unique opportunity to work for the development of the village,” Asnodkar said. This view was supported by Irrigation engineer R P Shetye, mechanical engineer Dinesh Bhobe, who incidentally headed all the six committees, and engineer Sham Kamat.
“It was difficult in the beginning but we conquered it soon. For example some nullahs were shown as roads. Wells were not marked, forest areas were not shown, garbage points were not indicated...," Shetye explained.
The key members organised corner meetings at different places, physically surveyed areas and analysed all the data before formulating the plan. Information provided by residents was also incorporated. “The extra inputs were also of great help to us,” said Bhobe.
The draft finalised by the committee was kept open in the panchayat for 20 days to enable villagers to file their objections. "No one came forward, except for a few selfish villagers who wanted to know the status of their land," said Soter.
