Goa, Dec. 12 -- AUGUSTO RODRIGUES

For years, despite clear High Court orders, illegalities along Goa's coast flour-ished with open impu-nity. It has taken a man-made tragedy to force a pause a catastrophe that has momentarily stalled an ecosystem of bra-zen lawlessness the government allowed to metastasize unchecked.

Today, in what residents grim-ly describe as a 'welcome lull', the Anjuna-Vagator belt is quieter than it has been in years though that silence has come at the cost of 25 innocent lives. The calm is uneasy and heavy with the knowledge that it exists not because authorities acted, but because disaster struck.

In Public Interest Litigation (SuoMotu) No 2 of 2022, the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court had ordered 175 structu...