Click to play videoGorai (Maharastra): It is yet another battle for land in the village of Gorai.
The Essel Group, a leading business house in India has demanded 14,500 acres of land for building an entertainment park but the local villagers feel being uprooted.
The Union Government has decided to allot only 250 for now.
Residents in this coastal village feel this is only the beginning. They feel that Essel will eat away their ancestral land over time.
Local resident Neville D'souza says, “They haven't even bothered to ask us.”
Sixty-seven –year-old Ashinda Chunekar belongs to Gorai's two-thousand-year-old fishing community whose life revolves around her fishing business feels her future being threatened
Fisherwoman Ashinda Chunekar says (translated from Hindi), “The educated few will find jobs, but what about the others."
Another fisherman Joseph Manorekar says (translated in Hindi), "This is our only livelihood. We know nothing else."
Mangroves need a well balanced ecosystem to survive. An entertainment park poses long term dangers.
Secretary, catholic secular forum Joseph Dias says, "It will destroy the fragile ecosystem and ultimately impact the livelihood of local fisher folk."
The Essel Group however maintains that the project will remain within the Recreation and Tourism Development Zone( RTDZ) regulations by using the wasteland and Essel land and that there is no intent to displace any Gaothans or heritage precincts in this region.
However, there are fears that a land grab might occur through stealth.
D'souza says, "The Essel Group has been in this region for so many years and no one has really benefited too much. They will twist rules to take in more land and then were do we go?"
Even as court battles and referendums may follow, for these residents it's a battle to save their legacy of the only profession that they know and hand it over to their future generations.
(With inputs from Ganesh Shirke)
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