The pillage of Goa

PANJIM: Sitting at a table at Quarterdeck, a riverside restaurant in this charming city, we watch the boats and barges go by. Across the Mandovi River are two neon signs: one highlights the name of Airtel, a cell phone company; the other of a liquor company, Kingfisher, with one of the letters missing.

They are intrusive but not more so than the garish development on the hill behind them: a bunch of high-priced apartments and town houses built by the Tata group. I am not an NGO naysayer but these intrusions sully this city’s riverside esplanade that the former BJP chief minister Manohar Parrikar spruced up for the international film festival in 2003.

In fact, the UB Group has built a grandiose palace called “Kingfisher Villa” on a prime piece of property near the Taj Aguada. The place has gained much notoriety because of its high profile parties that attract the detritus of modern India, the so-called “page 3” set.

On the whole, I’d rather that the Panjim riverfront and other parts of Goa host McDonalds, Pizza Hut or Subway because at least they are for the aam aadmi (common people). Goa has a huge activist community that is determined to halt such symbols of consumerism; so why aren’t these jholewalas up in arms about these corporate eyesores?

My assessment is that like their kin everywhere in the country, these activists have a better sense of politics than aesthetics. They clearly don’t see or don’t care or don’t dare make a fuss about the pillage of Goa by Indian companies.

I am not from Goa but my wife is. In 1999, we bought an old Indo-Portuguese villa that she lovingly restored. It took her four years but the neon signs, the Tata housing project, Airtel and the Kingfisher villa have come up in the interim. Each one of these intrusions has been completely oblivious to the charms of this state. One of the main reasons for these buccaneering developments is that the state has had very little political stewardship; unstable governments have been the bane of Goa.

The only government that did anything was by Parrikar, an IIT graduate who gave up a lucrative corporate future to join politics. I am a supporter of the Congress but in Goa, I am convinced that Parrikar was a breath of fresh air given that all manner of aristocrats and hoods have corrupted politics in this piece of heaven.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is a measure of middle class colonisation. For example, on the gorgeous islands of Diwar and Sherron smack dab in the middle of the Mandovi River that runs through Panjim into the sea. These islands are as beautiful as any including Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket off the coast of New England on the east coast of the United States. My guide told me that many of the new houses built in tragic juxtaposition to old-time cottages on these islands are owned by JNU faculty.

These houses look like they might fit into Shivalik, a crass development in South Delhi or in Okhla, an odious growth in the southeast of Delhi. There’s no comparison to Bombay; but if you live in Malad or some such place and wanted to feel at home, there’s always the strip from Calangute running south to Sinquerim where the Taj Aguada is located.

Everybody seems to be buying property in Goa. The wealthy ones would like to convert the gorgeous tableaux of this place into over-the-top developments. The Tatas have already set things in motion with their conspicuous property overlooking the Mandovi River and Panjim.

Meanwhile, the middle class lot has converted Goa’s prize beaches from Sinquerim south to Baga into a strip with the character of some sleazy Southeast Asian resort that attracts the flotsam and jetsam of Western countries including child molesters and junkies. Worse, the less populated northern beaches like Morjim and Mandrem have become a haven largely for Russian drug dealers and Israeli belligerents. In the southern part of Goa, all major beaches are dominated by five-star hotels and its interiors by people from all over India and the world.

To most of us, Goa is a refuge from the urban blight of India. Its landscape is as gorgeous as any you will find in the world; its lifestyle pleasantly uncomplicated. What’s needed is a strong regulatory structure that the present government, a squabbling Congress-led dispensation, cannot provide. So the pillage of Goa will continue until it becomes like every place in India. That unfortunately may be the future of this haven.
E-mail: rdesai@comma.in