Planned IIT Goa campus to relocate after village protests

A permanent campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in the western Indian state of Goa has hit a roadblock as the government abandoned its plan to build the campus at Melaulim village in the face of widespread protests from area residents and a major clash with police.

The Goa government on 15 January announced that the new IIT campus would be shifted to another, as yet undecided, location in the state. But the events this month could also jeopardise Goa’s bid to become a higher education hub in the country.

The Goa government had formally handed over about one million square metres of land in Melaulim village, Sattari sub-district in North Goa District, more than 50 kilometres from the state capital Panaji, to set up a permanent IIT campus in May last year.

IIT Goa Director BK Mishra had said in a statement on 3 January that the preliminary design for the fully residential permanent campus was ready and the first phase for 1,200 students would be completed by October 2023. Mishra said at the time that work on the project was likely to begin within a month.

But it was met with stiff opposition from locals, who organised a massive protest involving hundreds of villagers, including women, on 6 January when government surveyors, along with over 300 police, arrived at the village to demarcate the land.

Stones hurled

Saying they would not part with their land, local people hurled stones and clashed with police. At least 12 policemen and several protesters were reportedly injured. Cases were registered against over 100 protesters.

Villagers had been refusing for months to allow government surveyors to enter the mainly forest area, which includes cashew trees that sustain local livelihoods, by setting up a human chain at the entrance to the site. They also turned down the state government’s offer to exclude lands surrounding the village temple from the campus as well as concessions for those who claimed to use the land for agricultural purposes, according to reports.

Goa’s Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, who represents the Valpoi constituency where the IIT campus was planned, had urged Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant to stop the project in Melaulim village and withdraw cases registered against protesters.

“I will not bring in any infrastructure project in Sattari using police force,” he told local media on 13 January.

Earlier, Rane had supported the project on the grounds that it would bring development to the villages, but changed his stance as protests escalated. He said the state government had decided to relocate the project bearing in mind public sentiment.

“We will form a four-member panel which will go through different sites available for the proposed IIT campus. The land options available for the project would be carefully examined so that a situation similar to Melaulim will not arise,” he told local media on 18 January.

Goa as an educational hub

Sawant said this week that Goa was becoming an education hub with many universities and institutes interested in setting up campuses.

“It is a matter of pride for us that Goa is witnessing significant development in higher education and especially in technical education,” he said at a conference at the National Institute of Technology Goa on 20 January. Last year the state government approved regulations to allow private universities to set up in the state.

“Over the mid- to long-term, there are enormous economic benefits for the local economy,” Dr Pushkar, director of the International Centre, Goa, and former assistant professor at Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in Goa, told University World News.

“The Goa government has rightly declared its intent to develop the state as a higher education hub. The sooner the government resolves the issue of finding a home for the IIT, the better.”

Pushkar said higher education institutions, especially brands like the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management, bring prestige and enhance a state’s status. For a small state like Goa, typically associated with tourism, an IIT will “help change the old, popular and tired image of Goa as a place for fun”, he said.

Two sites earlier identified by the government in Canacona and Sanguem sub-districts for the permanent IIT campus were also rejected after similar opposition from local residents there.

The IIT was allotted to Goa by the central government in 2014. It has been operating from a temporary campus within the Goa Engineering College premises in Farmagudi village, South Goa.

‘Threat’ to Goan identity

Many academics said an elite technology institute like an IIT would enhance the state’s prestige, but local people are opposing it because they see it as a threat to their identity. Many in the local area belong to forest tribes listed as scheduled tribes under the country’s laws for disadvantaged groups.

Koshy Tharakan, professor of philosophy at Goa University, said Goans had also opposed the university becoming centrally funded a decade ago.

“At that time we witnessed similar resistance although the idea then was only to convert the existing Goa University from a state university to a central [university],” he said. “That was opposed by many, including the faculty, saying that it’s the prerogative of every state to have a university of its own.”

“Now the issue with the IIT is more to do with land,” Tharakan told University World News. “Earlier, there was not an issue of land because the university was already in existence. It was not acquiring new land,” he said, adding that there was a connection between land and identity.

“In both cases the larger question of concern for locals is identity. Goa is a small state, but its demography and typography has changed with the kind of tourism and development which has been taking place in the past decade or more.”

Tharakan said people feel their livelihoods would be threatened as more students and faculty come into the state from elsewhere in India, but added that diversity among both students and faculty would enrich the academic atmosphere.