Today, as Goa marks your birthday, Manohar Parrikar, there is a silence that hurts more than noise. Not the silence of peace, but the silence of absence. The kind that reminds us that a towering figure is no longer in the room, that the chair is occupied but the authority is missing, that governance continues but statesmanship has evaporated.
Goa misses you, Mr Parrikar. And it misses you desperately.
You were not perfect. You were blunt, often politically assertive. You upset many, bruised egos, and refused to play to galleries. But you had something that Goa today is painfully short of – moral authority. When Parrikar spoke, Goa listened. When Parrikar acted, systems moved. When Parrikar warned, even the corrupt paused.
Today, the corrupt don’t pause anymore. They celebrate.
You governed not from air-conditioned detachment but from intimate knowledge of Goa’s soul. You knew our villages, our temples, our churches, our schools, our people. You knew the difference between development and destruction, between tourism and terror, between growth and greed. You understood that Goa is not just real estate by the sea but a civilisation rooted in balance – ecological, cultural, and ethical.
That balance is collapsing today.
Illegalities flourish openly. Files move faster for those who pay. Rules bend for the powerful and snap for the ordinary Goenkar. Nightclubs operate like death traps. Hills are cut, forests flattened, coastlines violated, and human lives reduced to compensation amounts. The system has become numb, transactional, and frighteningly inhuman.
You would never have tolerated this rot.
Under you, bureaucrats feared accountability. Ministers feared embarrassment. Contractors feared scrutiny. Panchayats feared audits. There was a constant reminder that someone at the top was watching, questioning, demanding answers. Today, that fear of the law is gone. The motto is Bhivpache Garaz Na. And where there is no fear of the law, there is only fear for life.
You believed governance was not about announcements but about outcomes. You were not obsessed with optics, PR events, or hollow slogans. You focused on delivery. Whether it was education reforms, infrastructure, or financial discipline, you believed every rupee was public money, not party money or personal privilege.
Contrast that with today’s Goa, where public money leaks like a sieve and responsibility is always outsourced – to committees, inquiries, or conveniently timed silence.
You also had the courage to say “no”. No to reckless projects. No to mindless concretisation. No to pressure – political or corporate. You knew that leadership is not about popularity but about conviction. That saying no today can save a generation tomorrow.
Who says no today?
What Goa is witnessing now is not merely administrative failure; it is a crisis of conscience. And that is where your absence hurts the most. You brought conscience into governance. You reminded Goa that power is borrowed from the people and must be returned with interest – in safety, dignity, and justice.
Even when illness weakened your body, your commitment never wavered. You governed from hospital rooms, reviewed files between treatments, and fought for Goa even as you fought for life. That grit, that sense of duty, that refusal to abandon responsibility – those are qualities no notification can manufacture and no election can guarantee.
Today, Goa has rulers, but it lacks a guardian.
Your birthday should have been a moment of celebration. Instead, it feels like a reminder of what we have lost – clarity, courage, and character in public life. Goa does not just miss you as a former Chief Minister; it misses you as a moral compass.
As corruption claims lives, as illegality becomes routine, and as accountability is diluted into sound bites, one cannot help but ask – what would Parrikar have done? And more importantly, why is no one doing it now?
Goa misses you, Mr Parrikar. It misses your spine, your simplicity, your stubborn honesty. It misses a leader who understood that governance is not about surviving in power but about serving with purpose.
On your birthday today, Goa does not light candles. It searches for courage. It searches for conscience. It searches for leadership.
And in that search, your absence is felt more than ever.
