When heritage goes for a toss

PANAJI: Every street kid in the country knows that Goa tops the list of being a preferred tourist attraction. But what they don’t know is that the state is falling woefully short of dealing with the increasing number of tourists and has hit upon the novel idea of acquiring old heritage houses in the state to convert them into guest rooms.

But, they are facing strong resistance from the owners of these heritage houses, who feel that the state government can not be entrusted with the task of protecting their ancestral homes. Goans feel that if the government is really serious about protecting the heritage then it should merely act as a facilitator and bring in experts to do the needful.

E-mails are flying back and forth, after the Goa CM Pratapsinh Rane said his government is planning to acquire old and abandoned Goan houses. “The heirs have migrated and the houses are being looked after by caretakers. Some of these houses are on a verge of collapse,” said Rane, who himself owns the Rane House in Sancoale.

“The idea is to convert the residences into guest houses and rent them out to earn revenue,” he said. Goa has a bed strength of 30,000 which is not enough for the increasing number of tourists who come here every year. “All this will be done with permission from the owners,” he said.

The idea was mooted after NRI commissioner Eduardo Faleiro received a number of complaints from NRI Goans, who found their family properties being encroached upon by strangers in their absence. One member of the Goa diaspora ended up spending a month in the state, getting legal formalities ironed out, to file a case against the person who had illegally occupied his house.  “The government should amend existing laws to permit summary trials to protect the homes of Goans who work abroad,” says Faleiro. Rane said the process (to acquire the houses) would be initiated after the Global Goans convention scheduled for January.

Fashion designer Wendell Rodricks, who has ancestral property in Colvale, is against the idea of the government acquiring heritage houses. “This is the same government which is handing over the Goa Medical College, a heritage building in Panaji, to develop a mall and also the same government which handed over Cabo da Rama (an ancient fort in South Goa) to a hotelier. With such a track record, how can we trust the government to protect our heritage?” he asks.

“It’s frightening,” says author Maria Aurora Couto of ‘A Daughter’s Story’ fame, who returned about five years ago to live in her 300-year-old house in ldona. “Will the owners ever get their houses back?” she wonders, saying that she had received a flurry of e-mails from concerned Goans abroad.

Patricia Pinto, convenor of the People’s Movement for Civic Action, says that once the government acquires the property, owners will have no control over what is done to the house.

She suggested that instead the government should give soft loans to owners to maintain their heritage houses. People like Austin and Alba Rodrigues who own a grand 300-year-old mansion in Aldona, said they would welcome assistance. Recently, one of the wooden floorboards on the first floor gave way, but their problem is to find the funds to keep the house and all its treasures in tact.

But the government tried this route back in 2001. Following a proposal at a global convention, 30 owners approached the government for loans. The government forwarded the list to a Heritage Houses committee. Heta Pandit, member of the committee, “We selected 22 and the government offered loans. However there were no takers. The committee got the feeling that these owners were looking for hand-outs,” she says.

Commenting on Rane’s recent proposal, she says, “The government is the last body that should be allowed to acquire heritage houses. It can’t protect the 52 monuments it is supposed to protect.” Pandit says the government should handover the houses to a qualified committee or Intach for a solution that would keep heritage intact and owners happy. The Heritage Houses Committee is writing to the government to frame guidelines before acquiring the houses.

Two sides of the coin

• The Goa government, grappling to deal with the tourist exodus, plans to take control over the various ancestral properties of non-resident Goans. They want to convert these houses into heritage hotels, without destroying the essence of the structures, and with the consent of the owners
• Goans are opposing the idea saying that the government cannot be entrusted with taking proper care of their ancestral houses and want proper experts to be roped in to do the job