Banyan Tree Adventures

by Keith Forrester

  However, the power and influence of the mining industry in Goa is significant. The contrast between images of its wonderful beaches with the pock-marked interior is stark. Open mine operations have left and continue to leave an indelible legacy of flattened hills, razed forests and fields and roads marred by silt runoff from waste sites and processing plants. A recent report written by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which looks at the possibility of sustainable mining, indicates the magnitude of the problem – “With less than 0.1% of the geographical area of the country, this state already has 8% of its land area under mine leases, and produces 15% of the country’s iron ore.” It warns that if all applications for leases in varying stages of processing are cleared, as much as one-quarter of the state will be under mining. And yet in October 2013, a major investigation into illegal mining practices that had already resulted in the arrest of public officials for corruption was wound up without explanation. Vijay Pratap, convenor of the thinktank South-Asian Dialogue on Ecological Democracy, is convinced that it was closed due to the extent of corruption uncovered in the country’s mining sector. “The commission was exposing too much corruption at government level and risked undermining tightly woven corporate collusion with the political class, which has sadly become endemic in the mining industry. This is why the government aborted the investigation.” In September 2012, however, this pressure paid off. Environmental clearance for all mining was suspended “for alleged violation of rules.” But surprise, surprise. On April 2014, the Supreme Court of India lifted the ban on mining in Goa, albeit with a temporary cap on the volume of extracted ore. Goa’s story of battles over its mineral-rich region is a story repeated from around the world – economic imperatives pushing aside environmental, health and social concerns.

  And it is not only the mining of iron ore. In an article in 2013 from the excellent newspaper The Goan, there is an account of the illegal sand mining business. A local owner says, “I have the power, I can show my strength. If you are doing legal business you won’t even be able to buy a scooter. You think I got all this (points to his house) just like that?” Although banned by the Supreme Court in February 2012, the article details the political patronage that allows a flourishing sand mining industry to grow in “Goa’s sand mafia-dom” as the article puts it. Twenty sand miners make up the Goa’s sand mining mafiascope – all their names and location details are provided in the article, as well as the fate of those local people who challenged their illegal activities. In a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch on the regulatory failure of the mining industry across India (82,000 instances of illegal mining throughout India, according to official figures), evidence is documented in Goa of the destroyed or contaminated water sources, the punctured water table, the illegally heaped waste rock and other mine waste near the banks of streams and rivers, the endless streams of overloaded trucks passing along narrow village roads and the widespread coating of metallic dust on homes and crops. Little if any of the income amounting to “hundreds of millions of dollars” finds it way in to the state coffers.

  It was not only illegal mining that prompted negative stories around Goa. On 31st October 2013, a new Goan story hit the world headlines. A Nigerian national was found dead in the village of Parra in north Goa. On the same day, over 200 Nigerians took over the NH-17 Highway near Porvorim, overturning vehicles, damaging the police van carrying the body to the government hospital and refusing to let the police constables take the body for an autopsy. Despite the racist remarks by a Goan minister, the incident has brought to the surface at least two problems that have simmered for some time in the state – the drug wars and the transformation of large swathes of the state into foreign strongholds. The local Herald paper in an editorial said, “We have seen Americans, British, Germans, Italians, Israelis and of late, the Russians and Nigerians come and go but the narcotic trade continues unabated. This is primarily because the major drug barons are local Goans and not the foreigners.” Drug peddling, gang violence and a number of murders every year provide a glimpse into the seamy side of Goa.

  Goa is India’s good-time state. But says the general secretary of the Shack Owners Welfare Society (SOWS), “Goa needs a better class of tourists.” The recently-elected Chief Minister for Goa agreed that change must come soon. “After drugs and prostitution, garbage is the third biggest hurdle keeping away high spending tourists. Three new rubbish plants will be opened within the year,” he promises. “There is a lot of nexus between the politicians and the police and the anti-social activities that are going on. This corruption cannot be weeded out in a short time.”

  We’ll see. Controls on nightclubs and outdoor parties, police remaining on the beaches until midnight and enforcement of alcohol restrictions after ten at night in eateries are some of the new measures recently introduced in ‘hotspots’. From a perusal of the local daily and weekly newspapers in Goa, it does appear that there is widespread concern among people in the state that ‘something’ needs to be done to arrest the unsavoury and sometimes violent activities together with the constant stream of negative stories about the state. ‘Tourism’ has become an election issue. ‘Crisis’, ‘slippery slope’ and ‘tipping point’ are the new contextual frames for discussion of the issues. Again, we’ll see.

  For most of the tourists visiting Goa, however, most of these unsavoury features are unseen or unknown. Most of the locals don’t like to disparage the state and are reluctant to discuss issues of illegal mining or refuse problems. And there are illustrations of improvements in this or that village together with local campaigns to address grievances. But in Goa, India, Britain or elsewhere there are formidable and powerful forces determined (sometimes violently) to maintain their ‘get rich quick’ ways at all costs.

  And the Goans themselves – being a Goan

  As mentioned above, and as any foreign or domestic tourist is aware, Goa was not that long ago a Portuguese colony. This 451-year period of colonialism brought Catholicism, the Portuguese language, culinary and assorted culturally practices as well as centuries of economic stagnation. Although today around one-third of Goans are from other parts of India and Catholics only constitute about a quarter of the population, Catholics have always dominated life in the state. According to the geographer Arun Saldanha, “it is not difficult to find common themes of Goan-Catholic patriotism: nostalgia, sentimentality, faith, community, folklore, kinship and morality.”

  But it is around the issue of tourism that the cracks and tensions within Goa today begin to emerge. ‘What to do’ about the accelerating problems of tourism begin to illustrate these differences. The dominant framework as in the rest of the world is that tourism=development=wealth. And as in the rest of the world and in India at large, the primary beneficiaries of this tourism are domestic and foreign big capital – the big hotel owners and multinational corporations together with those jobs dependent on this investment such as builders, tax collectors and a variety of shady operators. Ranged against this powerful and dominating narrative are a collection of critical actors. There are for example sections of the media which act as persistent watchdogs of developments, such as The Goan on Saturday. Then there are various activist, village and citizen groups that campaign around an assorted number of issues such as water, rubbish and corruption issues. There are also Christian-inspired human rights groups which criticise aspects of tourism from a predominantly moral perspective. A number of nongovernment organisations (NGOs), such as the Goa Foundation founded in 1986, concentrate on environmental issues and have the resources and credibility to use the High and Supreme Courts of India in their campaigns for conservation of Goa’s natural environment. A number of local groups have been campaigning against ‘irresponsible tourism’ for many years. There are also a number of popular authors, celebrities and academics that regularly comment on the tourist industry. Then there is the considerable Goan diaspora who from afar continue a commentary that harks back to some undiluted, pure-like past.

  As woul
d be expected ‘the Goas’ that these and other groups seek to defend or promote are not identical; there are different understandings of ‘what Goa is’ and ‘who Goans are’. Indeed as Saldanha argues, all these criticisms of tourism “lead to a struggle over the meaning of Goa – Goa’s community, Goa’s culture, Goa’s future.” The issue of ‘being a Goan’ is complicated. After all, historically the State of Goa is the result of the interplay between Portugal, Britain, India and the rest of the world; to put it another way, between colonialism, nationalism and capitalism. More simply, what is the dominant allegiance of ‘indigenous’ Goans today – to India, Portugal or some hybrid ‘identity’ (as it seems to be termed today)? The answer to this question begins to unlock some of the ambiguities and differences towards ‘tourism’ and ‘the tourists’. The ‘Indianness’ of Goa and the inclusion of Goa into the wider India has not been straightforward – indeed, it has been contested. It is noticeable for example that tourist marketing images of Goa appear to ignore the wider India and instead present a very Westernised, gendered and racialised (white women in bikinis etc) series of images, often with reference to its Portuguese past. The contrived ‘fun-loving’ destination could be anywhere in the world; the uniqueness of Goa and of Goa as part of India is absent. Sociologically, Goa is ‘disembedded’. Underpinning such a positioning of the State is the politically dominant Portuguese-Catholic view of the world and of themselves. And the criticism of tourism as centred on sex, parties, drugs and immorality especially by young domestic tourists flows from these perspectives. Foreign tourists are preferred and, especially, rich tourists in search of sanitised, five-star holidays. A strong puritanism permeates the criticisms. The primary focus of this dominant critique is on the hedonism of young Westerners; largely absent is a concern for displaced villagers, scarce water resources and environmental issues resulting from the large luxury hotel complexes with their accompanying golf courses.

  For other Goans there is a different perspective on changes. For local villagers for example, the threat of losing a steady income from young tourists staying in their houses or vacant rooms is viewed with alarm. Many of the Western tourists are now family friends returning frequently to the same village accommodation, attending family weddings and catching up on the local news and developments. Familiarity and understandings are constructed which have little to do with the stereotypes of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

  In a way, tourism represents a contested issue for Goans that is almost unique in India. It is a proxy issue that masks deeper, more fundamental issues that are wrapped up in the state’s (almost unique colonial) history, culture and aspirations. Put bluntly, there is this tension between those who still attach significance to the – or at least a Portuguese – past and a more pragmatic majority whose primary attachment is to India, rather than some Portuguese sentimentality. This tension rivets the state – in its understanding of the past, in the composition and priorities of the political elite, in its religion and strongly in its culture. Many of The Goan daily newspaper articles and long-running grumbles have to be read through this prism. The cleavages which continue to characterise Goa lead to a disputed type of patriotism within the state. Understandably this leads to different views on what should be happening in the future. Nowhere is this clearer than in comments on the aims and ‘hidden agenda’ of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) whose recent rise to political office in Goa from 2012 was not only a surprise but seems to be strengthening since the elections. As argued in the previous chapter, the BJP under Narendra Modi is generally seen as an aggressive, right-wing Hindu party. Its success in the state elections from 2012 has resulted in much soul-searching especially in Luso-Catholic circles, such as daily Goan newspaper the Herald (“The Voice of Goa since 1900”). The resentment against the continuing ‘Indianisation’ of Goa by the influential but small old guard seems to be weakening – individual Catholics although not the Church itself are moving away from the traditional political parties. For the traditionalists, this is simply another example of the takeover of Goa. Because Goan landowning and business families were slow to realise the economic potential inherent within the rise of the tourist industry from the 1980s onwards, big capital from outside the state (Mumbai and Bangalore, for example) moved in. Big hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, holiday apartments and resorts steamed ahead.

  Central to this contested, complex mix that is Goa unsurprisingly has been the tourist sector. Are ‘hippies’ and ‘sossegado’ – easy-going, fun-loving, laid-back ambience – to be promoted or ignored? Is ‘fun’ in Goa to be marketed or downplayed? Should there be more emphasis on domestic tourism at the expense of foreigners? If the publicity material for Goa or tourist Internet sites are examined, there seems to be a clear answer. Patriotic pride in the global popularity of the state seems to outweigh any moral misgivings. Maybe another way of formulating this ambiguity is the simple recognition that the ‘bottom line’ always wins, or at least at the moment.

  The sheer scale of tourist numbers domestic or international arriving every year until recently in Goa requires strategic decisions that focus on long-term plans and developments. Private capital initiatives from either a state, national or multinational source will only acerbate the problems without direction and regulation; infrastructural initiatives are not headline news and rubbish collections don’t generate the same financial returns as does tourism. Yet it is the construction and delivery of such strategic thinking that is likely to bedevil tourism in the state in the years ahead. The politics are too complicated and too contested. And underlying this contestation are the competing notions of ‘being a Goan’ – that is, of Goan identity.

  A vignette: the Great India Roadtrip

  While Braganza House might be the most sumptuous of the Portuguese mansions remaining in Goa (referred to as “The lost Versailles of the jungle” by one British journalist), it is not the only one. Many other examples, more humble and less grandiose, are not difficult to find. Wandering around on the back roads even when lost is never wasted time as smaller and more dilapidated villas keep popping up around most corners. They contribute towards reminding you of Goa’s particular and distinctive history.

  Most tourists staying in Goa rent a scooter or motorbike. Some prefer a bicycle but being mobile seems to be part of spending time in Goa. Safety is getting better slowly and insurance cover and helmets are no longer met with vacant stares. While most tourists settle for a scooter there are those that cannot resist riding one of the most iconic and oldest of British motorbikes, the Royal Enfield. Now manufactured in Chennai (on the east coast and formerly known as Madras) these single cylinder bikes are instantly recognisable – very old-fashioned, heavy tank-like design and probably leaking oil – and you can hear them chug chug chugging away long before they are in sight. The Royal Enfield Bullet is probably the most famous model having been produced continuously since 1948. The lack of Japanese competition for most of this period together with the closure of the British company in 1970 ensured that the ‘Indian’ Royal Enfield maintained its iconic status. It is not unusual to see advertisements for Royal Enfield Tours in India in the British motorcycle press. Lasting a couple of weeks these tours on the bikes cover great distances in some beautiful parts of North India. Mechanics, doctors, guides and accommodation are all provided. Up into the foothills of the Himalayas, across the dusty hot plains of eastern India or meandering through the Ganga valleys must be some trip.

  Inspired by these adventures, I decided to do my own ‘Great India Roadtrip’. It wasn’t quite as ambitious as the Royal Enfield epics – instead of the 2,000-odd kilometres, it was only a 40-kilometre Goan coastal journey on a beat-up scooter but what a lovely route. I have done this journey a few times and always look forward to the next time. It provides a wonderful uncovering of Goa far away from the beaches and crowds, and also, an insight into the complicated historical past and present of Goa. The secret of this particular ‘Great India Roadtrip’ is taking it slowly, stopp
ing frequently for cold drinks, a chat with locals if possible and sightseeing; instead of completing the journey in an hour, done properly the 40 kilometres should take the day. Anything quicker suggests a rushed trip. Like the best of all tourist experiences, the slower the better.

  The route is in south Goa and starts halfway down the magnificent 24-kilometre beach lining the administrative region of Salcette, passes the northern edges of the Quepem region in Goa before finishing at the coastal village of Agonda in the Canacona region. They say that the essence of Goa is in its villages and this is a village route, largely through an unbusy countryside with little traffic, lots of shade from the overhanging trees and a lovely twisty up and down road. This is a glimpse of an older unhurried Goa with few signs of Western tourists outside of one or two coastal resorts such as Cavelossim. Occasional lumbering trucks carrying water, sand or quarried building blocks of laterite were the only nuisances and disturbances I encountered on my 2016 February trip.

  The first part of the route is comparatively busy, down towards Varca before leaving the coastal road to cut inland so as to get over the Sal River before rejoining the small coastal road. Just beyond the village of Chinchinim, you leave the road and head down towards the villages of Assona, Ambelim, Betul (on the banks of the Sal River) and south towards Cola and Saleri before reaching Agonda. The further south you go, the quieter it becomes. Around Varca at the start of the journey, there are the schoolkids on their way to or from school, traders getting into the market or buses on their way to Margao, the big city in south Goa. Once you get over the Sal River, you are on your own. Dried paddy fields (at this time of the year) are common as are salt ponds with their brilliant white heaps of drying salt alongside the Sal River. Unused concrete irrigation channels spread out on one side of the road while the Western Ghats are visible on the eastern skyline. Some of the fields have recently been burnt, presumably to encourage new growth with the approaching rains during the monsoon. When entering each of the villages, there is usually a sign from the elected village official (the sarpanch who is in charge of the local government of the village – the panchayat) welcoming you to the settlement. When arriving at Betul I usually stop at the same general store on the main road for a drink. A large proud notice announces the Rolina General Store. The store is down in a dip and has a seat outside and is in the shade. From here I can watch the comings and goings in the store. Fishing seems to be the main work in the village, and from the bridge spanning the wide, mangrove-lined Sal River when entering the village, there is a lovely view of the boats and houses (some on stilts) on the side of the river. A campaign to clean up the Sal River from pollution has been running now for a few years.