Alibaug - November Editorial
Alibaug - Aerial View
Alibaug, enigmatic capital of Shivaji’s admiral Kanoji Angre, home to a Jewish Synagogue and cemetery, the only place in the konkan to have a Portugese and a Maratha seafort on opposite banks of the same inland waterway.
Raigads rich history has been painstakingly and sometimes passionately documented by the collectors of yore in the gazetteer. The Nawabs of Janjira descendants of the Siddis of East Africa, the British Admirality, the Portugese and the Marathas constantly battled for territorial control of this region.
Chaul the village of temples, some claim one for every day of the year, was probably the earliest settlement in the area. There is even a statue of an unnamed foreigner in the village square whose manner of dress appears to hint at Russian ancestry.
Today Alibaug is the capital of the Raigad District of the state of Maharashtra, and houses both the Court and the Collectorate. It has a population of approximately 50,000 inhabitants, with agriculture still being the main means of livelihood.
Alibaugs proximity to Mumbai, the financial capital of India, has put the area smack in the middle of the path of development. The verdant interiors with its agricultural base and the unspoiled coast with its roots in fishing are rapidly giving way to commercial development. Local land owners look to short term windfall gains by selling their inherited lands to eager buyers, who cannot seem to get enough of a now limited resource.
It is a time of transition. What had long been an oasis for the enthusiastic traveler, who took the long and winding road overland, or by the intrepid sailors, who cut across the harbour waters, to take refuge in their quaint club house by the sea, is now a bustling haunt for the daily picnicker or the weekend householder.
By virtue of our hitherto inadequate infrastructure the region had long escaped the blight of so called progress. However, with the help of our short sighted political electorate and with the collusion of our ever opportunistic business czars, this scenario is fast changing.
No sooner had the government changed it’s mind about building an ill conceived airport in the area (for which they had notified large tracts of land, which till date has not been de-notified), when they, under misguided compulsions, decided to sanction a port in Rewas (on part of the land originally notified for the airport), an SEZ (special economic zone) between Rewas and Bhaimala, a port in unspoiled Digi, and the mother of all SEZs (Maha Mumbai) in the adjoining district to the north.
A new airport in Navi Mumbai, new link roads through the proposed SEZs and a recently tendered sealink between Mumbai and Nhava all threaten to make this area an extension of the mega metropolis of Mumbai. And with development, for better or for worse, comes opportunity, with the opening of this new frontier a new avenue to prosper.
We were the lucky ones who enjoyed the pleasures that this pristine environment afforded us for so many years, our children will have to delve deeper and travel further to find another Xanadu.