Shohail Furtado

~ Youth activist Shohail Furtado highlights the need for youth activism in social matters that endanger Goa’s culture, beauty and natural environment.

~ Approximately 90 square kilometres of green cover have been converted to concrete structures in the past decade, signifying rapid conversion of valuable land.

Goan youth need to be vigilant and serve as a bulwark against the abuse of land resources in the state and keep track of dubious projects being pushed through village panchayats as well, according to Shohail Furtado, a young social activist, who was speaking recently at the Museum of Goa as part of the latter’s MOG Sundays series.

Varca-based Furtado’s talk session, ‘Uttai Re Goemkarano’, was a call to action urging Goan youth to challenge the unchecked spread of megaprojects in Goa that threaten the state’s villages and environment. “If you start following the paper trail, you unfold a series of internal settings. It’s a castle of cards, and it can come tumbling down.

But who is going to do it? The youth need to engage in their gram sabhas and panchayats,” said Shohail Furtado. “Corruption is present even in the grassroots of an administration,” he added.

Using data, visuals and direct action like beach clean-ups, surveys, and petitions, Furtado also spoke about his experiences with youth and locals resisting on-ground injustices, citing the course of his wellknown campaign highlighting the pollution of the Varca creek, in south Goa.

Questioning permissions from grassroots bodies like village panchayats for large-scale multi-dwelling projects in the guise of “development,” Furtado said: “We’re told we need more tourism, more housing, more growth. But who is it really for, and who pays the price?”

and personal development. “Why do political parties have youth wings? They know that the minute the youth mobilise is the day they cannot do anything, because the power lies in the hands of the youth,” he emphasised.

Furtado said it was time for the youth to take the lead to preserve Goa’s identity and ecological balance, but noted a lack of awareness among his contemporaries. “I noticed a gap—our youth were aware, but not deeply enough. They weren’t fully engaged with what is being destroyed in our state,” Furtado said.

“My parents’ generation is still holding fort and fighting. But they’re not doing it for themselves; they’re doing it for us. Because we are the ones who will inherit a ruined Goa, not them.”

The session, and the interactive discussion that followed Furtado’s talk, explored the possibility of networking among like-minded non-governmental organisations working in tune with each other for the betterment of the state, and included a call for young people to become more proactive in their local governing bodies.