Some solutions coming up have focussed on Goa having an efficient yellow-pages, or ringing the 2414141 enquiry service.
Needless to say, while these options are important, these cannot be an alternative to Goa being deprived of a workable telephone directory for the past four years. Information should be at everyone's finger-tips. Ideally, one shouldn't need to go to an info-mediary to access local information every time. If I need to phone someone to locate someone else's phone number, it only makes me so much more inefficient. It breaks one's momentum too. But the issue, as stressed earlier, is not about phone directories alone. These are some areas where Goa obviously lacks in information: o Transport time-tables, specially buses (both within and outside Goa). o Good maps for the state (other than for the tourist areas, which are catered to, more for the affluent visitor. o An efficient service for finding jobs available. Navhind Times' classifieds is interesting on this front, but unfortunately jobs advertised are mostly low-end. o Information about careers available to Goa students (the Vasco Rotary had done a good job with their booklet some years back). o Elaborate listing of not-for-profit initiatives in Goa. o Educational courses in Goa, hobby courses, and a systematic listing of what people can do in the field of self-development. o Sufficient information about Goa via the radio and TV (the later gap is somewhat filled in, but the news on the evening channels is mostly political and commercial). o Listings of all official schemes available under the Goa government. o Details about where exactly Goa's officialdom spends its money, specially in remote village areas, say via panchayat budgets. o List of all official records and documents maintained by the Goa government, which can be accessed by the citizen under the state of central Right to Information/Freedom of Information Acts. o Enough information about all the political representatives and senior officials, who could be contacted whenever the citizen has a grievance, which needs to be taken up. o Details about self-corrective mechanisms in the state sector, such as anti-corruption channels for action, the ways of drawing attention of the Comptroller and Auditor General to issues of financial mismanagement and irregularities. There are many more... Just some loud thinking. FN