Almost a third of the Goan population lives outside the state; but this has nothing to do with the Portuguese passport
Devika Sequeira devikaseque...@gmail.com In recent months, the Portuguese nationality issue has been spun into a perverse weapon to ensnare a political or professional adversary, or to expose a larger prey, sometimes just for the heck of it. In some cases, self-anointed moral vigilantes in Goa have gone about sadistically compiling names of people who have, or might have or are in the process of acquiring a Portuguese passport. The sordid game, triggered by the legal challenge to the election of two MLAs in 2012 -- Glen Ticlo of the BJP and Caitu Silva of the Goa Vikas Party which supports the BJP -- compelled the government to seek some clarifications from the Union Home Ministry. So far the Centre has chosen to cast a benign eye (one never knows when this view will change) on those who have merely 'registered' (Portuguese agencies prefer to use the term 'transcribed') their births in Portugal's Conservatória dos Registos Centrais. One can well imagine the political fallout (which one suspects was the reason the BJP tread ever so cautiously on the issue) on the ruling party itself, had the Government of India ruled that registration of birth in Lisbon was itself tantamount to securing Portuguese nationality. More recently, the Goa police decided to wind up the case against some 500 people -- a few of them MLAs, some cops, some lawyers -- alleged to have registered their births with the Conservatória in Lisbon, saying it had found no tangible evidence of them holding dual nationality. The case had been filed by a self-styled 'RTI activist' and a former employee of the state's electricity department who has assigned to himself the honourable duty of weeding out 'anti-nationals' from this state. None of this will however deter the hundreds of other hopefuls. Not because they are middle-class Catholics (the community believed to have sent out the most PPGs -- Portuguese passport Goans) and 'have no love for their homeland', as some self-righteous 'patriots' would have us believe; or because they're dying to swear allegiance to the Portuguese flag. But because in the current global economic climate, they are able to find work in the UK -- however tough it is to live there -- on salaries they could never earn in this country. Matters could change of course if the UK decides to change the rules, or even exit the EU. The campaign to vilify PPGs -- some 25,000 are currently estimated to be working in the UK -- conveniently skirts the bigger picture. Taken in the global and national context, the numbers of overseas Goans (Canadian, English, Australian, American, Portuguese, Pakistani, those in the Gulf and others) is really insignificant. According to United Nations data recently released, 16 million Indians live outside of their homeland making it the largest diaspora globally. Mexico, with 12 million living abroad, accounts for the second largest diasporic community. Government of India estimates though put the Indian diaspora at 25 million strong (more than twice the population of Portugal) and spread across 200 countries globally. The disparity in estimates has probably to do with the unavailability of statistics that differentiate between the non-resident Indian (NRI) and Indians who've acquired nationalities of other countries (some of whom have now taken the overseas citizen of India (OCI) card), putting both into the all-embracing framework of 'diaspora'. The Goa office for NRI affairs estimates that some half-a-million Goans -- equivalent to a third of the state's population -- live outside of this state, 200,000 of them within the country, and 300,000 abroad. These rough calculations --0 understandable, given the absence of more reliable data -- suggest that half of overseas Goans are NRIs, working in the Gulf mostly, the other half (150,000 roughly) have acquired foreign nationality. If one goes by UN estimates, Goans make for less than 2 per cent of overseas Indians (less even if one uses government data). So much for the notion that we, more than any other Indians, are foreign-bound. The Union ministry of overseas Indian affairs (MOIA) is more than generous with its praise for the country's millions of immigrants, describing their dispersal as "an engaging saga of trials, tribulations and the eventual triumph of determination and hard work.... This community having overcome considerable adversity represents an eminently successful Diaspora in the host countries with several of its representatives occupying leadership positions there. We could look at them as a significant strategic resource for India as they have considerably added to knowledge, innovation and development across the globe." In his address at last year's Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, Prime Minister Narendra Modi who described himself as a 'Pravasi Gujarati' (non-resident Gujarati) saw the Indian diaspora as "great capital" for India, and one that could "create a lot of respect for the country globally". One would imagine this "great capital" includes Goan Portuguese passport holders as well as the thousands of Gujaratis from Daman and Diu who've also taken the Portuguese nationality, but are rarely spoken about. -- This article was first published in The Times of India on February 19, 2016 under the headline 'The Portuguese Passport Demon'