Author: Amita Kanekar

By AMITA KANEKAR

India needs to focus on ease of travel, declared Prime Minister Modi while inaugurating Goa’s new airport last month. The PM’s declaration might have sounded like a joke to some, given that his own one-day-long visit to Goa, just to inaugurate the airport, created utter chaos in the traffic here, with some commuters reaching their destinations three hours late, and official announcements that movement of even emergency vehicles would depend on the position of the VVIPs. (more…)

By AMITA KANEKAR

Aren’t the casinos enough? Apparently, no. According to A Study on Human Trafficking in Vulnerable Districts in India, a nationwide study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), partly funded by the union ministry of Women and Child Development, and completed in 2019, Goa is a major destination (as well as a source) for sex trafficking; and – surprise, surprise! – the tourism industry of Goa is the main reason for the trafficking of both women and children for the sex trade as well as other illegal activities. Interestingly, the report, though ready three years ago, was published by the union government only now. Not just this, the report was also taken down from the government website just days after being released. What could be the reason for this cover-up? Could it be the focus on the tourism industry? (more…)

By AMITA KANEKAR

It is two years this month since Dadu Mandrekar passed away. He died on 28^th November, which is Constitution Day, the day of the document that he had spent a good part of his life explaining and celebrating. There is much for which Goa should remember Dadu Mandrekar – his prolific and award-winning writing; his passion for the ideas of Dr Ambedkar, visible in his writing, activism, even casual conversation; his conversion to Buddhism, coupled with a stinging critique of the caste- and gender-specific superstitions rampant in Goa; his resignation from a secure government job to focus on the struggle for social justice.  It is proof of our casteist social set-up that such a versatile and radical intellectual, who viewed the world from a very different location than the privileged folk who dominate all public fora, and who had managed to become a well-known writer after immense personal struggle and sacrifice, was rarely given the space he deserved, either in the media or in literary events. It was the Marathi press, not only that run by Ambedkarites but also others, including the Marathi edition of O Heraldo, that published him fairly regularly, and made him a familiar name for readers in Goa and outside. (more…)

By AMITA KANEKAR

So Goa is among the states with the highest number of government employees per capita of its population – as per the census report of government employees from the state government’s department of planning and statistics. The finding was reported by the press in shocked tones. There is one government employee, they said disgustedly, for every 25 residents in the state. (more…)

By AMITA KANEKAR

The Chief Minister’s response to the almost-daily reports of rampant illegal sand mining across Goa needs to be framed and put up on the walls of government offices, because it could be the motto of his government. So, an environmentally ruinous practice, increasingly violent and criminalised, as well as socially destructive, is flourishing under his watch, despite the repeated complaints of local communities, and revealing the complete failure of law enforcement agencies? The CM’s solution: legalise it. ‘With sand and laterite  in shortage for construction activities,’ this is, apparently, the urgent need of the hour. (more…)

By AMITA KANEKAR

The declaration by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant during the Independence Day celebrations, that the Portuguese looted Goa for 400 years, surely counts as a self-goal, with many Goans retorting that the real loot of Goa only began in recent times, especially thriving under Sawant’s own government. But there is no point in wondering where Sawant gets his ideas from, nor indeed in informing him that, while historians have criticised the Portuguese empire and its rule over Goa for many things, ‘loot’, or economic exploitation, is not one of them. History lessons from Sawant will not stop so easily. He was not even embarrassed when his big plan – and budget outlay – for rebuilding temples destroyed by the Portuguese, turned out to have no data on such temples to back it. Who cares about the facts? The point is just to continuously raise distracting non-issues, the more communally divisive the better, so that real issues get ignored. Bashing colonial rule is the easiest option, with Independence Days and Liberation Days providing a golden chance to indulge in this to the maximum. (more…)

By AMITA KANEKAR

The sociologist Dipankar Gupta recounts an amusing anecdote from the UK in his 2004 book, ‘Mistaken Modernity: India between Worlds’. When Tony Blair was UK Prime Minister, his underage son was caught drinking by a policeman. When questioned, the boy offered a false name and address. But the cop had recognised him and the next day a summons landed at 10, Downing Street. Like any other parents of delinquent children, Blair and his wife had to make a visit to the nearest police station, followed by a vastly-amused media army, where they had to listen to advice about how to bring up their children. That was the law in such matters, and they had to abide by it – something, as Gupta pointed out, that would be unimaginable for a prime minister or any bigshot in India. But the most interesting part, says Gupta, is the lie told by Blair’s son. He gave a false name because he KNEW that his parents would be hauled up; he knew that the law would be followed.  Compare that to India, said Gupta, where nobody like him would have ever dreamt of lying; their question would instead be ‘don’t you know who I am?’. In fact, the cops here try not to interfere with anyone who looks remotely well-connected. That, says, Gupta, is the difference between a modern society and one with just has a veneer of modernism – mostly just in terms of technology and gadgets – but no modern attitude at all. (more…)

By AMITA KANEKAR

To take up cudgels against the latest Hindutva offensive against the Catholic community, on why S. Francis Xavier’s popular title of Goencho Saib (Lord of Goa) is more deserved by the god Parshuram, is fraught with risk in today’s Goa. Because, although one is free to discuss the merits – and even more so the demerits – of the Catholic saint, discussing the Hindu god can, as we have seen, bring down the brute force of the State on you, in the name of hurting religious sentiment. Thus, it has become normal to judge Francis Xavier by the values of today, and therefore to condemn him for advising the Portuguese king to set up the Goa Inquisition. But applying the same modern values to Parshuram is out of the question; the many acts of violence ascribed to him, including against his own mother, are not to be criticised. (more…)

By AMITA KANEKAR

Twenty crore rupees of public money has been set aside in Pramod Sawant’s state budget for ‘reconstructing and restoring temples and heritage sites destroyed by the Portuguese’. The words “and heritage sites” sounds almost inclusive, like the government is actually thinking beyond Hindu temples – except that this is the party that itself campaigned widely and violently against the historical site of the Babri Masjid. What heritage would such a party reconstruct? But let us, for a moment, give them the benefit of doubt. (more…)