Dear Editor
I attach an article in which I have expressed my views on the kind of
organisation that might best serve an overseas Goan community. It may
be of interest to your readers and, in particular, to those attending
the forthcoming Global Goans Convention in London from 22 July.
Yours sincerely
Alvaro Collaco
Do we need
A GOAN COMMUNITY ORGANISATION?
The Goan Association in London is to be congratulated for seizing the
opportunity it was offered of hosting a Global Goans Convention by the
Commissioner for NRI Affairs of the Government of Goa. Even Qatar had
hosted one and Goans in this country were rightly beginning to question
whether, as FIFA had done in the soccer arena, the UK with its earliest
and significant concentration of Goan diaspora had been consigned to the
wilderness in the Goa Government’s mindset. The obvious benefit of
hosting a convention is that it enables a formal link to be established
at corporate level, as it were, through which interests and concerns of
Goans abroad could be addressed and, in turn, serve to achieve the
‘worldwide Goan solidarity’ that the Commissioner has often said at his
secretariat meetings, he is aiming for. But is the Goan Association
(UK) an appropriate body to bring about this development?
The Goan Association, commonly referred to as the GOA, is essentially an
organisation charged with the promotion of its members’ interests even
though, in a vague sort of way, it is required also to ‘foster good
relations with the people of the United Kingdom and among the people of
Goa’. Yes, in the latter context it organises an annual Goan Festival
attracting at times over 4,000 visitors but sadly in the process it had
brought about the demise of its Standing Conference of Goan
Organisations (SCOGO) which, albeit indirectly, gave it some influence
over 3,000 or so Goans in the U.K. who are members of Goan village
associations as opposed to the mere 800 GOA members. The GOA had waded
in to the rescue of three Goan seafarers who had found themselves in
prison in this country unbeknown to anyone outside and it had striven to
find justice done for another Goan seafarer who had been murdered in
Southampton. Years earlier, the GOA had also put in a tremendous effort
and raised a huge sum to pay for the treatment in London of a deaf Goan
child from Anjuna, even though locally some of the villagers considered
the money could have been better utilised in establishing an entire
clinic for people with hearing problems. These and several others are
rather spasmodic efforts by the GOA to be seen as a community
organisation but the nearest it had come to being one was in the early
seventies when it set up the Standing Committee for Race Relations and
Immigration (GOASCORRI). However, GOASCORRI appears to have forgotten,
in carrying out a very useful and important role, that it was, in fact,
a committee of the GOA and accountable to it. The result was that, a
decade or so later in a pique an AGM decided to abolish GOASCORRI , in
the process throwing out the baby with the bath water!
The Goan diaspora now faces even more important and contemporary issues
that, in the light of the experience we have gained over GOA’s
forty-five years, need to be addressed by an entirely independent and
community wide organisation. For example, we need to explore how far
down the generations are Goans in the diaspora going to be recognised as
’persons of Indian origin’ for visa, nationality and property holding
purposes; how the processes of acquiring PIO and OCI status by second
and subsequent generation Goans, can be simplified; how the exorbitant
charges India imposes, say even for the surrender of an expired Indian
passport, can be reduced to more modest levels and so on. With the range
of skills Goans have acquired in this country we will be looking for
business and even educational links and opportunities given the recent
and massive increases in university fees and simultaneous reduction of
places here. The difficult times ahead will also generate more welfare
cases affecting the Goan diaspora and all this is clearly going to be
beyond the resources or remit of a members’ association already
struggling to deliver the services its members demand and to deliver the
wider Goan network in the UK recognised as a necessity as much as a
decade ago. Without in any way diminishing what the GOA has achieved,
we need to ensure that from the forthcoming Global Goans Convention
there emerges a resolution and possibly the framework for setting up a
truly representative and independent Goan community organisation in this
country with channels of communication to authorities in Goa. Some of
the East African countries had such a parallel setup and it served the
Goan community well. Otherwise, as in previous conventions, all the
discussion will merely boil down to an airing of individual difficulties
relating to houses and property in Goa, not that these are, by any
means, unimportant themselves.
Álvaro Collaço
LONDON
18 July 2011
