Panaji: This is a charred afternoon.
Some young girls and girls bent outside their homes, grilling Rotis on Chulhas or washing clothes on a narrow path from the Lamani colony.
Trapped within their fate boundaries and hutments, the words ‘democratic festival’ or ‘Valentine’s Day’ have no meaning.
For occupants of 2,000 oddly from this Loomi colony, they are everyday struggle for water and respect.
And they know that the assembly selection offers a little hope.
After a day of work as a househelp, Rukmabai Rathod waited until 3am, waiting for the sound of water dripping into the drum standing outside his house.
Erratic water supply will decide whether the clothes and plates will be washed the next day.
Sometimes, the water doesn’t come.
“Over the past year, we have terrible water problems, and only for the past 15 days, everything has increased.
Each election, politicians come and they promise us things, but nothing has changed,” said Ravi Lamani.
These residents are among thousands of third-generation pages migrating from Karnataka to live in slums near the large agro Zuari industry industry, and they live under the constant threat of eviction.
They make a living like daily wage workers, contract workers, and garbage collectors, while women work at home.
Goa offers the highest per capita income of the country, but for the inking voters in Kiran Niketan School, 15 polling station, multiple engine growth words and rapid development does not mean anything.
“There is no value for our lives.
Our educated children have nothing, they cannot get a job.
When we submit government work or personal work, they see our address and then the file is lost,” Rathod said.
Furthermore in Zuarinagar, the story remains the same.
When four Lane Verna-Airport NH-17B was built, Skirting Zuarinagar, residents of slums studied what the phrase ‘of the vision’.
Standing on the road at one of the setup tables by political parties, Yallappa and Vittal said that for the past 10 years, nothing has changed.
“We have seen various governments come and go, but Zuarinagar remains the same.
Locals don’t get a job.
They say we are from the slums,” Yallappa said.
Vittal offers serious insight.
“No one can get up from the slums.
The politicians who came to ask for the voice we lived in Vasco or Chicalim.
They don’t really care about us,” he said.
Height, Yashwant Lanky Desai witnessed a long queue outside the voting and miracle transfers about demographic changes over the years.
“Unemployment is a big problem here.
Nothing gives work.
Water is a problem.
Only when the nominees are submitted to do the water situation improved,” Dessai said, a coaching instructor.
Vittal and Yallappa claim that they have chosen to change.
The last time they were promised change.
However, it never came.
Goa polls do not offer hope for locals Zuarinagar who says ‘they don’t really care about us’
