Saving Goa from itself
Daily News and Analysis Rajiv Desai
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 22:38 IST
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All these years, we have spent Diwali at our house in Goa. The weather is
nice: warm in the day; cool at night. In our little village, the only sounds
we hear are the strains of Indian classical music from the temple close by.
The sky is clear and starry, playing hide-and-seek with the swaying fronds
of coconut trees. Forget climate control systems, we don't even need the
fans. And so it was that we arrived in our paradise in early November.
But wait a minute: the skies are hazy with ominous black clouds on the
horizon; it is hot and humid. "It's like May," I tell my friend. It was his
first time in long years and certainly a first for staying in a Goan home.
Our place is not a second house; it is our home in Goa. We come here not
just to take a break but to be part of this wondrous whirlpool, to be sucked
willy-nilly into the vortex of civilised chaos and earthy culture.
As we wended our way home, we heard drum rolls in the sky: thunder, followed
by a spectacular display of lightning. This weather continued for a couple
of days and then it exploded into a cloudburst of rain amid the sound and
light display. Awesome as it was, we felt an immediate threat: impaired
driving and traffic snarls. Wonderful as Goa is, there are still the
problems of an India that is becoming rapidly rich.
This is the problem in Goa: wealthy Indians are buying up properties as a
second house. It is perhaps the most global enclave in India, not just
because of tourism, but because the local ethos is civilised; at the law
office of my friend Antonio Filipe Cordeiro one morning, I saw visitors wish
the receptionist a hearty good morning. If you have such a civilised place
on your doorstep, why look at England, France or Spain? Goa provides a
wonderful alternative.
One of the offshoots of globalisation has been the huge increase in the
wealth of people who run or own companies. For every Infosys or Wipro, there
are hundreds of smaller firms that are riding high on the economic boom.
They have generated enough resources for people to seek get-aways to greener
pastures. At one time, not too long ago, it was travel; now it is setting up
second houses, especially in Goa.
Trouble is, Goa is at the mercy of venal politicians, a sluggish
bureaucracy, greedy and homesick NRIs and a wide variety of idealistic NGO
naysayers who don't understand change. Add to this a bunch of rapacious
builders and developers and you have the recipe for a disaster. The complete
lack of governance at the state level is balanced somewhat by the active
communidades with their limited powers and susceptibility to ATM persuasion.
In the end, Goa suffers from a deficit of governance. After last week's
storm, the power grid collapsed, leaving much of the place in darkness for
hours. The government-owned utility simply shut down its wobbly network,
leaving us without power during the festival of lights. As you cross the
bridge from Panjim, just across from the assembly building, an entire
hillside collapsed onto the national highway during the monsoon, leaving a
scar on a tableau that counts among the most picturesque in the state.
There are horror stories about the unseasonal storm as well as the ferocious
monsoon. But the politicians are busy scheming; the bureaucrats slumbering
and the activists, armchair and otherwise, railing against SEZs and mines;
the one paper I read buried the weather story on its inside pages.
As an increasingly wealthy India puts pressure on this haven, the local
regime, locked into its own internecine battles, is coming up spectacularly
short of ideas and values to deal with it. Many people see it as a
get-rich-quick opportunity; others see it in a muddle-headed way as a threat
to nature and are treating it as a fight between good and evil. The
government is clueless, pulled every which way by fixers and protesters; the
resultant paralysis is taking its toll.
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Pamela D'Mello
Cell 9850 461649
http://pameladmello.goa-india.org
