A lot of Goa has suffered immensely on account of that unending political greed. One glaring example is Taleigao on the outskirts of Panjim which till that lust of enforced urbanization, land use change and real estate conjecture bulldozed on the farming community was a model of a very sustainable rural agricultural economy.
Taleigao once benefited by the rich and fertile silt deposited by Mandovi estuary and the fertile farms yielded many crops while history will bear testimony that their land was never ever left uncultivated.
The farmers of Taleigao used to cultivate 40 different types of crops that being their one and only source of income. Today the stinking sewage from those concrete monsters flows into the fields while those in Power merrily look the other way.
Farming and fishing were main businesses in Taleigao with the Odxel tribal fishing hamlet yielding bountiful catches. A large variety of vegetables were grown by those farmers using micro irrigation techniques. Taleigao was in fact the Food basket of Tiswadi. All that produce thronged the market supporting thousands of families without any government backing.
It saw prosperity based on agro economy and what survives now are just fragments of the old system as the entire village has been converted into a suburb of Panaji with eyesore and polluting constructions.
Today factually the low lying parts of Taleigao ecologically face a bleak future as the ancient drainage system has been destroyed and the rise in sea level may soon submerge the area right from St Michael Church to Kamrabhat Tonca and all those monstrous concrete structures would not be worth a dime.
