Hi Cecil, sent Steve the article, he said it was 500
rupees, credit to your new account ! They think Rats
was the one who poisoned John Paul 1. Eric.
--- Cecil Pinto [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Below is the full text of the article by V.M. in
Herald. it has been posted
here with his permission. Any comments?
Cecil
Goa's Stealth Transformation
by V. M. de Malar
Our state is really hot right now, and we're not
talking about the
oppressively humid weather. Every second person you
meet declares
blithely that he's in real estate, and old houses
and sleepy village
vaddos are suddenly coming to life. We've become a
retirement and
investment destination of choice among those who
used to head to the
Algarve and the Costa del Sol. And seemingly
overnight, in a time span
that's a mere blink of the eye given our long
history, our society is
steadily being transformed.
Real estate agents say that there has never been a
period like this
before. Middle-aged British couples aren't just
tricking into Goa
anymore, they now pound a steady drumbeat of demand
for beach condos.
Israelis no longer come to Anjuna just for a few
months break after
military service; they stay on in the thousands for
most of the year
and have created a closed economy that is for, by
and of the
settlement of Sabras. Italians, Swedes and Danes are
no longer a
novelty; you can scarcely throw a stone at Benaulim
or Baga without
clobbering two. A curious semi-cult of Taiwanese
selling cheap
chappals and expensive tofu lives on our soil, plus
an immense number
of Germans who all seem to either bird-watch or bake
artisanal breads.
You may think you've discovered the real, untouched,
Goa when you
drive through pastoral scenes to a far-flung beach,
passing only
traditional agriculturalists. But pay attention to
the motorcycle
riders zooming imperiously past on snorting Enfields
those are small
French families among the bullock-carts, and
tattooed and nose-ringed
Spanish girls riding pillion to purple-haired
Japanese. Get to the
coast and your completely typical village store and
you'll see a sign
advertising fresh feta cheese and organic rocket
leaves right
alongside the usual plastic buckets and sachets of
cheap shampoo. The
bhaile don't just come to visit anymore, they stay
forever, start
hydroponic farms, cure Danish-style bacon and become
yoga instructors.
How and why is this happening, and should we start
to get worried?
Let's address that last question first. The only
reasonable answer is:
no, not yet. It is irritating, lets admit it, that
this huge influx of
people has made Goans unwanted outsiders to whole
localities and parts
of the nightlife economy. But who among us
particularly wants to
ingest vast quantities of LSD and spend the night
twitching
involuntarily to inhumanly loud electronic noise?
It's their thing,
and if it produces even a small effect for our local
economy then let
these people do their thing without disturbance, as
long as they don't
disturb us egregiously either. And if this sudden
craze for ancient
ramshackle houses results in some of our charming
architectural assets
being renovated, can we really be too perturbed? Our
whole culture is
erected on a relaxed laizzez-faire ethic, why make
an exception now?
But look at the whys, and hows, and then we might
really want to start
monitoring what is underway. Because we Goans are
scampering at high
speed to sell off our limited property for a
pittance, in an unseemly
and often nauseating rush to make a quick buck. Most
of the people who
are buying here are doing so because you can buy
mansions for the
price of half a hovel virtually anywhere else.
Should we continue to
value our last precious assets so unbelievably
cheaply? And should one
of our unique selling propositions really be that
our system is so
broken and corrupt that you can get away with
anything for a price?
How it is happening can be summed up in two words
like a lot else in
Goa: total chaos. We don't know how many people have
settled in our
small state, and we don't really know whether they
stay on and buy
property legally. We don't know anything about the
illegal parallel
economy that used to be restricted to drugs and
flea-bitten bazaars,
but now includes every imaginable service and
consumer item. We have
no idea what the precise impact of this stealth
invasion is on
inflation, on health indices, on water tables, on
green cover, on
pollution. We know next to nothing other than it is
happening in a big
way, and these new Goans are everywhere. It's
really is time to
start paying attention.
=
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