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Deconstructing tourism image of Goa

— Photo: AFP

Baga beach in Goa… A higher level of policing is called for.

The immense media focus on young Scarlette Keeling’s death has exposed the degradation that has seeped into the fabric of Goan society, predominantly along the coastal belt in north Goa. However, her tragic death only points to a disease that has afflicted Goa for more than a decade. It is to be hoped that the sequence of developments will expose a nexus of perpetrators who have raped the pristine beaches, and lured a significant section of the youth into drugs. It i s a disease spread through the very construction of the image of Goa as a tourist paradise, a party place, Goa-where-anything-goes. And the pickings have been rich for the powerful, their underlings and the middlemen spread across the globe, within the nation and of course within Goa.

Historically there has been an image of Goa and Goans constructed by British historians and travellers such as Richard Burton in the 19th century. They despised the failure of Portuguese colonialism and hence despised Goan culture — of which they knew nothing. They created the stereotype of a mixed race, of temple dancers, women of easy virtue, hard drinkers, a people with no history and no culture. This stereotype has been reworked in our time by Nirad C. Chaudhuri and V.S. Naipaul, and in Bollywood films. Yet we Goans know we are by and large a law-abiding society, with strong family values. The temples and churches are overflowing, the festivals are celebrated with a typically Goan combination of élan and deep spirituality, and our village life is vibrant and active.

Writers and artists have chosen to make Goa their home. Amitav Ghosh, who now has a home in Goa, feels it is the special quality of the Goan people, their warmth and cosmopolitanism, that draws people here.

How, then, does one make sense of these two contradictory perspectives? What is of concern to me is that the image of Goa constructed to sell tourism has been sedulously cultivated to reinvent for modern times the perverted stereotype constructed since the 19th century or earlier. The notoriety, the quiet wink and knowing look that have been inseparable from the idea of Goa in certain circles, appears to have been co-opted to sell tourism with a kind of tacit understanding that much will be condoned. And these same forces collude to keep the party going, to ignore the crimes, and the despair of a law-abiding population that finds itself trapped between a description of its homeland as one of the best States in the country in terms of human resource development yet also is host to paedophiles, drug pushers, and most recently, gambling, to lure yet another kind of tourist, a State with a high rate of literacy second only to Kerala yet with a 40 per cent dropout rate, and an equal percentage of the educated unemployed.

I lived in Goa in 1962 soon after its liberation when people flocked from our metropolitan cities to buy foreign goods and cheap liquor. Goa itself was not taken seriously except as a place to have a good time. The scene is no better today. There is a sense in which the national tourist ‘others’ the Goan. We are an open society, cosmopolitan, with fewer inhibitions in the sense that we are informal, love music and dance, with time for leisure built into a hardworking day. And perhaps more crucially, there is an easy informality between the sexes, which is wildly misunderstood by the Indian tourist, in particular, who often arrives to let go of his own inhibitions, drawn by the media image of “in Goa anything goes.”

Figures show that the consumption of liquor by tourists in a day in the high season is more than is consumed by Goans in a whole year — although drunkenness is now disrupting family life more than ever before.

Goa has suffered many shocks which have rocked the stability of its society, which is essentially feudal, and its ancient system of land-holding known as communidade. Both received a mortal blow from insensitive land reforms. As a result, rich agricultural lands are lying fallow — and a great deal of it has been converted by unscrupulous politicians into settlement zones. Hence there has been a huge diversion of agricultural land to satisfy the greed of national and international players for real estate. One reads of a sale in Delhi earlier this month at an “Extensive Goa Property Show.” Goans know nothing about this, nor do they know to whom the land belongs. Simultaneously, a signature campaign is on, pleading with Goans not to sell their land. Already large tracts of land have been colonised by Russians and Israelis, and Goa has become the suburb of the rich and the powerful in India, most of whom keep away from the local population.

None of this could have happened without the connivance of those in power, the politicians and/or the police. Despite the exemplary work done by the Goa Bachao Abhiyan and the anti-special economic zone agitation, there is continued scepticism about the intentions of our politicians. Although a task force is busy formulating a new plan, blatant violations of land use are going on despite the embargo.

Goa is in search of an identity that goes with its distinct culture, statehood and language, which is Konkani. Our political class has done little to safeguard any of this, least of all our land. Instead, it has encouraged divisiveness, and a politics of caste and religion in a society that once took pride in its social harmony. It was heartening to see a government-sponsored advertisement on March 21 marking the convergence of the festivals of the three communities — Hindus, Christians and Muslims — in Goa and pleading for social harmony to be maintained. But such gestures can only have meaning if they are followed up with concerted action that is not motivated by personal greed or the numbers game to continue in power.

The instability of governments has been a bane and this has brought in the odour of corruption since Goa became a State in 1987. The population yearns for stability and governance that cuts across caste and communal lines to encompass the wider reaches of Goan society and its aspirations to connect with the national scene and to global resources. Frustrations have led to an easy acceptance of the spoils offered by an underbelly that is steadily corrupting our youth.

There is a dilemma posed by the tourism industry — one of the main sources of employment. Our environment, the main attraction for tourists, requires an embargo on polluting industries. Income earned in foreign exchange is taken by the Centre and does not form part of the subventions from the Centre to the State.

Tourism must survive but so must Goan society. A higher level of policing is called for, with more women constables, preventive intelligence, a parametric and high level surveillance which should elicit the full cooperation of non-governmental organisations and civic action groups who feel left out of the system as helpless spectators of a tragedy.

(Maria Aurora Couto is author of Goa: A Daughter’s Story, Viking, Penguin India, 2004.)

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