Please save me your angst, I am not calling for suicides of those affected by no mining and the dip in tourism, just stating the difference between crocodile tears and reality. In plain English, tourism does not help all Goans as the media’s stories tell you and Michael Lobo’s almost daily rant makes it out to be. What I am saying is both the tourism and mining industries in Goa got greedy and dived headlong into the mess both created. Greed for money has taken over.
January 19, 2020
Lionel Messias
It has become quite a contest. The English media competing with each other over the death knell of tourism and mining. They even coined a name ‘mining dependents’. Yet I don’t see any destitute on the road during my travels to the mining areas. No suicides either, like farmers in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh or Maharashtra. Please save me your angst, I am not calling for suicides, just describing the difference between crocodile tears and reality. I once read a media report about how most non-Goans involved in mining had long since returned to Karnataka and back to their earlier lives. This report was never followed up or expanded upon as you can expect.
My problem is only this. We really need to stop talking (well, writing) about tourism like it was a reactive volcano full of destructive intentions. The same for the barge industry in which a long time ago I worked at the top level. From Salgaoacars’ river fleet department to managing Maini Shipping. Which is why I know every barge owner, their lifestyles, the huge bungalows they live in. How just two owners from Vasco have been heading the barge lobby for decades. Just as I can vouch that in Velsao Pale where I live, there is one woman employed by the tourism industry at the lower level and one spritely young woman employed by an airline company at Dabolim. But both Velsao and neighbouring Cansaulim are feisty and blessed as well with some of the best heritage homes you will get to see in Goa.
Rules broken as a rule
I can tell you that the Heritage Village Resort and Spa in Arossim, Cansaulim has virtually privatized the beach there to the extent that it has posted a security guard on the stretch of road to the pristine beach and no parking signs as well. I can tell you that the two beach shack allotments in Cansaulim-Velsao (see picture of one of the shacks) went untendered this tourist season. The first time that happened. The owner of one shack Nickytasha Oasis has shut down. The popular Anoshka restaurant chain came to Velsao and quit some years ago. Was it their bad call? Was it the right place but wrong time? We will never know.
In plain English, tourism does not help all Goans as the media’s abundant stories tell you and Michael Lobo’s almost daily rant makes it out to be. Velsao has just one hotel, the Horizon, and probably one of the finest pizzerias/eateries in Goa. Both owned by Goans. The best pork every day and a market almost entirely run by Goans. There are two Goans who breed cows in Velsao, also sell them at a huge profit, and supply fresh unadulterated milk at Rs 30 per 250 ml bottle at your doorstep. There is a Goan carpenter and an electrician on my street, rare finds these days.
Overtaken by greed
What I am saying is both the tourism and mining industries in Goa got greedy and dived headlong into the mess both created. Now, they make it out to be everybody’s fault but theirs. There was iron ore in Goa albeit low grade to be sold to another greedy buyer. Enter China, a far greater menace than Pakistan, both economically and politically which is where it really matters. Look at it this way, you are giving China cheap ore which helped turn it into a superpower militarily, economically and politically. Goa’s ore industry virtually pushed China on its way up. Mine owners, big and small built palatial bungalows, bought expensive cars, travelled abroad. Some bankrolled political parties, contested elections, published loss-making newspapers, and got into the high-end expensive culture, even owned football teams.
Greed for money has taken over. Consider this. The police have created a group on the messaging app and have added all Panjim-based rent-a-bike and rent-a-car operators. They now have to upload ID proof etc of their customers. This happened after several operators complained to the police claiming their vehicles were often abandoned by tourists and also were being given fake IDs. Just like the barge owners who got greedy and went on a barge-building spree, just like the people who had one tipper truck, but decided they needed several; it went on unstoppable. My point is people saw yet another quick way to make money, invested in buying cars and motorbikes but when that happened, the police had to intervene. So just as the stock markets zoom up and crash helping people win piles of cash and lose big because of greed, here too the same principle is in play. Suck it up.
Onions bring tears
PS: Will Chief Minister Pramod Sawant categorise the 35 Tivim and Maulinguem farmers as ‘opposing development’ just because their want their land, forcibly acquired 14 long years ago, returned to them. The 5,00,000 sq mts land, over 1,30,000 sq mts in Tivim and 3,65,000 sq mts in Maulinguem was acquired to build a cricket stadium. There is never going to be a stadium, and of course he will. The farmers want their land back, and Sawant should recall what he told Goans recently ‘don’t complain about onion prices, grow them instead’.
