TTAG did not object to bus high-end tourists from the airport. Why would it when its members get tourists delivered almost free at their doorstep while you, pay almost the same amount to commute to work? Not a single country would encourage the cheap tourists to drink on their beaches. This is how Goa’s beaches have become toilets and bedrooms for drunken tourists. And yet, TTAG would be ecstatic if the tax on liquor was reduced or simply done away with for the sake of tourism.

May 21, 2019

Lionel Messias

Freebies for rich tourists

The Kadamba Transport Corporation (KTC) plans to run a bus service between Dabolim airport and Mobor soon for what obviously is intended to help high-end tourists and a continuation of the war the government has had with “the bad boys of the taxi trade”. As a tax payer, this will become an additional burden on you because the KTC already has an exclusive tourist service from Calangute and Panjim to the airport at a measly Rs 150-100. In any other tourist destination in the world, business sense would have dictated that the rate would be at least five times that (in the local currency) and this (times five more figure) would still be less than a third of the cab fare in that particular country. The Tourism and Travel Association of Goa (TTAG) naturally did not object.

Why would it when its members or stake holders as they love to call themselves, get tourists delivered almost free at their doorstep while you, the tax payer, pay almost the same amount to commute to work, that too, on a daily basis using a combination of feeder buses and the long route buses from say Margao to Panjim? If you live in the many villages on the periphery of Margao, for example. In addition to the high cost of commuting to work for women particularly; it gets worse, after it was revealed this month that women are harassed and even molested by migrant conductors on the shorter routes in south Goa.

But what is really preposterous is that the KTC claims the proposed route via Cavelossim and Varca has a wide road route (is it anticipating commuter opposition?) for its wide-bodied Volvo buses and that the service will be extended to the Leela Beach Resort which in the past has been accused of charging Rs 1,00,000 per room during peak months. The tourism minister Manohar Azgaonkar (since March 2017) has himself said big hotels charge Rs 50,000 per room per night over the New Year period. Even more absurd is its claim that the proposed route is based on requests made by tourists! A blatant lie in itself, that at the same time exposes the fact that in Goa, tourists come first and Goans later, a subject that will be covered in this series.

Calangute, unruly and unlawful

Meanwhile Goa’s beach scene, primarily Calangute, Baga and Colva, is one of garbage, voyeurs and unruly tourists who unabashedly confess they come to Goa to drink themselves into a stupor over a shortest and cheapest possible two days only, living out of their vehicles literally. There is not a single country in the world that would encourage the cheapest kind of tourist, with the most brazen of manners; to drink with impunity on their beaches. This is how Goa’s beaches have become toilets and bedrooms for drunken tourists to crash out in a stupor. Packs of dogs foraging for food, cows and heaps of garbage, alcohol bottles, fast food wrapping and food containers and broken glass bottles is what you find. And yet, TTAG would be ecstatic if the tax on liquor was reduced or simply done away with for the sake of tourism.

Stop this and you will have got back the Goa that once was, to the extent possible; and possibly get back the missing class of good foreign tourists.