Violators make hay, regulators don't shine

Nauxi is a small village, close to the capital city of Panaji. People here are angry. They say the hill adjoining their homes is being flattened. A builder has acquired the land and is constructing holiday homes, whose buyers are rumoured to be the most glamorous faces of the country. How did the builder get the land? It gets murky hereafter, but it seems names of tenants were deleted in the survey records. Powerful landlords and the local administration have apparently connived. But clearly, villagers were not consulted.

In a related case, a resident of village Orda in Candolim woke to find his house on fire. The miscreants were suspected to be those behind the cutting of hills around. The resident was targeted because he was fighting against this devastation.

Again a land deal is signed by a hotel company to buy 100 ha of rich forest at Tanxi-Loliem, reports the daily Herald. Some portions belongs to the comunidade of Loliem or is forest land. Nobody knows.

But local people who sold their land reportedly made big money. The paper quotes one young seller, "many people who sold their ancestral property ages ago and settled abroad are now telling us