Goemkarponn desk
CANACONA: Beginning with intensive demands for 50% Bus Concession and GMC Scandals, the inspiring history of Goa’s students’ movement of the 1970s and the 80s will be unfolded with the first-person accounts by the former student leaders of Goa.
ManoShobha Kalaghar, a cultural centre set up in Loliem village of Canacona, will serialise the history of the students’ movement. It will include significant historical agitations as well as work done by students’ unions in the fields of literature, the monthly magazine, the theatre including street theatre, village camps, and public welfare amongst other achievements of the students.
Edition 1.0 of the programme, called Ganthvol (गांठवल), will be launched on Saturday, 28 September 2024, in association with Palash Agnii Studios.
The first-person accounts will include the historic 50% Bus Concession agitation of 1978-79 as well as joint agitations against two GMC scandals about reserved seats and the Marks Scandal of 1980.
Mohandas Lolienkar, the former students’ leader, will speak about Goa’s first mass-level students’ agitation he led of 50% bus concession. He is now a successful businessman, a senior political activist and has set remarkable standards as the former sarpanch of Loliem-Polem village panchayat.
Adv Cleofato Almedia, who was the general secretary of the All Goa Students’ Union, will speak on the two agitations he led simultaneously of the reserved seats at the Goa Medical College and the marks scandal by former education minister Francisco Sardinha to get his niece admitted at the GMC. The senior counsel at the Bombay High Court of Goa and a former judge is also well-known today as a political analyst and a constitutional expert.
Many other student leaders, who had participated in both the agitations, will also provide their inputs at these sessions.
The session on the 50% bus concession will be moderated by Sankalp Gaunkar, a student of the VMS College of Law and President of the Centre for Political Leadership. Dr Sachin Moraes, the HoD of the Sociology Department at Chowgule College, will moderate the session on the GMC scandals.
The programme will be held between 4 pm to 7 pm and is open to the public. ManoShobha Kalaghar General Secretary Sudesh Prabhudesai has appealed to the younger generation, especially the student community to attend the programme in large numbers.
