BY tensing rodrigues
A month and half back Goa completed fifty years of independence from colonial rule. And here we are facing an existential question : To be or not to be what we have been during the last fifty years.
That is in no way an easy decision.
It is not an easy decision for simple reason that during these fifty years we have not all moved in the same direction. As a result, today our interests are diverse. Lest I confuse you by this abstract argumentation, let me recall a small memory of many many years back. The Zuari Bridge had just been completed; most of us let out a sigh of relief – no more of those mad rushes into and out of ferries over precariously positioned wooden ramps. But, days before the bridge was to be inaugurated, there was a huge protest demonstration by shopkeepers who thrived at the ferry points. Once the bridge is commissioned they would be out of business. They were absolutely right; they too had a right to livelihood. But did that mean there should have been no bridge ?
The point is simple : truth is not as flat as it may appear; should I say there are layers of truth ? Is it possible to identify those layers and differentiate between them and exercise a choice ? I feel it is possible, if we accept that the layers are basically determined by the time horizon; if we take a shorter time horizon we see one truth - say the loss of livelihood of the ferry point shopkeepers. It is more than twenty five years now since Zuari Bridge is standing; and I have not heard of any of those families dying of starvation. If we take a little longer time horizon, the truth changes its contours. And if you take even longer horizon, the truth may change completely.
Today the air is rent with all sorts of noise about the ills of mining; and, equally loud protestations about the ills of not mining. I suppose that is natural. But what makes it fatal is the political positioning. I would not mind even that; for there is a “cure” for that too. What is really damning is the choice of the electorate to restrict their time horizon to the tip of their nose.
I do not want to take any position on that issue right here. I would prefer to lay down the broader framework for discussion before we come to specific issues - or should I say choose the time horizon ?
In late eighties I was working on a project on Impact of Tourism in Goa (Ave Cleto Afonso, TOURISM IN GOA - SOCIO ECONOMIC IMPACT, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, 1989). During the interactions with the stake holders, and those who had applied their mind to the matter, I got to have a peep into their minds. Some years later I found myself once again in a close encounter with tourism while working on a market research project for a company that contemplated to start a superfast luxury train between Mumbai and Goa. That is when I got the “costa del mierda” view of tourism in Goa. I still cannot forget those prophetic words of Dr. Meenakshi Martins “Upto 200 metres from the high tide line, it is not Goa.” Or my talk with British charter operators who predicted the end of charters in a few years. Well this has not happened. Or has it not really ? Bizarre descriptions of male prostitution involving German widows and local fishermen haunt my mind when I think of the charters. For me the trail of tourism ended there; I changed my track after that and my only view of tourism has been what I get from my daily newspaper. By the way, that superfast luxury train was never started; do not blame me for that; I reported what I gathered from the horses’ mouths !
But the beginning of my encounter with tourism was much earlier. As a young undergraduate student at Dhempe College in mid seventies, it was not rare to have a couple of guys in trance on the backbenches in the amphithetre lecture rooms. But, perhaps for me tourist Goa phenomenon was even more personal. Most of my childhood summer evenings were spent on the then virgin Fatrade beach. Occasionally we would walk along to Mobor and be dazzled by the sheer beauty of the dazzling white line of sand drawn over a shimmering blue sea. My father told me it was the most beautiful place in the world. A few years later when some of us began to work, and have some loose coins in the wallet (some of us a little more as they went on board the ship), we dreamed of buying up that “most beautiful place” ! But when Old Anchor set its anchor in the sands of Mobor, it was the end of our age of innocence. We knew we had lost the damsel we had loved all along.
