Living in lament: Goa in the 21st century For DEVIL'S ADVOCATE/ Frederick Noronha
A German friend, married to a Goan, agrees with the view that Goans can indeed be quite "melancholic" about their present. It's surprising how pessimistic and lament-prone a people we can be. Even though we have positive things happening around us, we choose to focus on the negative. If you listened to the overwhelming tone of the Goa debate, you'd think that things are so bad we might as well give up even trying. In my life as a journalist, I've had the good fortune to come across so many interesting people and institutions. It makes one realise how determined -- if not heroic -- these people are. How steadfastly they believe in their dreams, and how much energy they are willing to put into it. Take for instance, an octogenarian expat writer who believes in mentoring young writers back home. Or an institution run by a set of elderly priests, who may not be highly educated themselves, but have given education to a few thousands and opens new careers to them. Or, the 'cudds' of Bombay, that allowed generations of poor migrants from Goa to find their toehold in a big and heartless city. Should we lament their death, or keep busy building institutions that serve our tomorrows? Isn't it amazing how Goan women sacrificed to ensure that their children got access to the best of education possible, as noted by the UK-based academic Stella Mascarenhas-Keyes? You can come across an encyclopaedia of such stories, where small people -- often individuals without any big backing -- worked for, and obtained, change. Take the case of the large number of educational institutions built up, often with bare government funding, which subsidises Goan attempts to improve. Talk to anyone who studied in urban India in the past generation or two, and there's good chance he or she had at least one Goan teacher. Why, the Indian diasporic writer M.G. Vassanji features Goans as teachers in distant Africa of the yesterdays, and not without reason. How else does one evaluate a tiny section of the population -- approx 1% of India's -- which has had such a big role in the world of sports (specially football), music, food, and education? * * * Of course, what is impressive is the way in which The Small Goan has lived his, and perhaps more often, her dream. In recent years, the Internet has been a very useful place through which to share ideas and inspiration. Since the mid-1990s when one first got involved with cyberspace, scores if not a few hundred people from all over have been sharing their ideas and questions over small projects and plans. Each one adds to the uniqueness of Goa. It's only when we see how others respond to things Goan that we recognise the unrecognised talent we have here. A foreign colleague who was visiting some museums in Goa was positively amazed by the energy and enthusiasm with which at least two are run. Left to ourselves, we don't even notice the uniqueness of such institutions. In such a situation, what would you think would be the attitude we should take up? One of cautious optimism? An attempt to build more institutions that could take such initiatives forwards? More active attempts at scouting for such positive signs that could take our society forward? Indeed not! For some reason, we seem sunk in pessimism, and in lamenting how bad things are, and blaming each other for making them worse. This is not to suggest that we have no problems in Goa. Someone discussing this issue in cyberspace -- and for some reason expats who opted for greener pastures are much more pessimistic than the local resident -- had a long laundry list of complaints. Right from mining, to mega-projects, the "uncontrolled" migrant "influx", large-scale land sale to "outsiders including foreigners", the "slow death" of Konkani, destruction of the environment and ecology, land and water contamination, a "faulty employment policy forcing Goans to leave Goa", and "illiterate or corrupt MLAs". For argument sake, let's accept that Goa's problems and priorities are exactly as described above. As my German friend noted, much of the critique of the present is based on a subconscious hankering for the past; the very past which saw a Goa that was so unproductive and mismanaged that large droves of its population had to migrate elsewhere. Today, at least, as he pointed out, some section of the population can live and work in Goa itself out of choice rather than being forced to move out. Of course, Goa will never have enough for our growing aspirations, unless we perform a small miracle to change that. This, also, should not be taken as an excuse for decision-makers to push just about any controversial industry, and use the factories-mean-jobs logic to line pockets. It is not just vocal expats and the influential chattering classes that are negative about our future. Look at the news in our media, and you'd easily believe that the only things that happen in Goa are bad things. Why are we, as a society, so particularly negative when we have reason to be just the opposite? Something I read recently helped partly understand the process. Rochelle Pinto, the Bangalore-based (or is it Pune now?) academic, makes this point in her book 'Between Empires: Print and Politics in Goa'. Her description of The Goan Elite and their Nineteenth Century begins with: "If there was a single dominant perspective through which Goa's Catholic elite viewed their nineteenth century, it was as a condition to be mourned." This is certainly true today too, and not restricted to Goan Catholics alone, but also their Hindu counterparts. Reviewing the book in the journal 'Parmal', the FundaƧao Oriente delegate Paulo Varela Gomes takes the argument further to say that this is not restricted to Goa alone. He writes: "In fact, some of the Portuguese and Goan elites of the 19th century perceived their own times as times of decadence -- a vision that we inherited. 'Between Empires' shows that Goan elite's cultural links with Portuguese cultivated and political milieus were so straight that we can actually say that they constituted one single dominant elite. They shared the same conceptions and the same myths: Goans, like some of the more important and famous Portuguese writers and journalists of the 19th century, looked upon their collective destiny with sadness and discomfort as they compared it to what they perceived as happening abroad: Europe in the case of Portugal, British India as seen from Goa." * * It's time we quit blaming politicians and corruption alone for what we perceive to be our many problems. Being so negative would surely paralyze our potential to do something positive. Negativism can indeed become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Goa has had problems and challenges for centuries together. We've been ruled from outside the region -- by empires next-door or five thousand kilometres away -- for generations and more. We've had in-migration, and in fact are a melting-pot. Yet, we've come out strong from each challenge. The late Prof George Coelho, whom one met in the 1990s, was most enthusiastic about the possibility of a 'Goan Renaissance'. When we spoke at Baga, he pointed out that the new forms of sharing information then just coming on the scene was infact making this more possible. When I think of his words and his enthusiasm, it strikes one that we might never know how close to the goal we actually are... or how we ruin things by getting caught up in negativism, and probably not even seeing the goalpost! ENDS Earlier published in the Herald, Panjim.