MIGRATION, IDENTITY, AND LABOR JUSTICE

Like me, many would have read the report about shanties being erected close to the Goa airport with much concern. There is no doubt that the safety of travelers cannot be compromised in any way. The shanties and the people living in them (largely migrant labor who have no proper housing), being directly in the landing and take-off zone, posed a threat to the security of flights, the report highlighted. The birds attracted by garbage left behind could pose grave danger for those traveling to and from the Goa airport, the report further argued. Recognizing this, the governmental machinery swung into action: the shanties were cleared, the people were removed, and a local panchayat was directed to clear the garbage. While the shanties and the people in them were cleared away immediately, the news report indicated that due to some logistical difficulties the concerned panchayat body would clear the garbage only a day later.

It struck me that the incoming and outgoing flights were not exactly out of danger considering that bird-hits were one of the major causes of concern. The garbage left behind would still attract birds, with or without the people. After all, the overriding concern was held out to be not so much with the squatters, but the security and safety of the flights.

Does this incident, therefore, tell us something about the way Goan society operates? How it treats people who don’t own much else than their labor which they sell for a few hundred rupees? There is no doubt that Goa is facing unchecked and rampant migration from the neighboring states. The rich who acquire retirement villas and huge tracts of land here, the hordes of tourists landing every day, and the middle classes from the rest of India who are employed in white collar jobs in Goa also affect the local demography adversely. All these pressures create an anxiety within the minds of local Goans. However, it seems that the poor and marginalized migrants whose services we actually use and exploit are the ones who get targeted.

We can juxtapose the abovementioned incident with that of the Vanarmare tribals in Ponda last October, as one of the issue in the Vanarmare case was access to proper housing. If many had argued for a humanitarian approach in dealing with the plight of the Vanarmares, what stopped the same kind of treatment being meted out to others who don’t even have a proper roof over their heads? The problem lies, I argue, in the manner in which we identify marginalized sections. Whereas the Vanarmares were tribal people and few in numbers, the recent case of people who were driven out from their squatting area were identified as ‘migrant labor’, thus forming a part of a larger group of people whose growing numbers (in comparison) could pose a danger to the local Goan.

But this doesn’t change the fact that neither the government nor the civil society in Goa have not been able to develop a proper policy to deal with the mushrooming slum areas and their possible solutions. There is a larger issue of Goan society being unable to respond to the problem of basic amenities being equally available to all. We observe how large scale resorts which guzzle up Goa’s water and gobble up Goa’s land are given a red-carpet welcome; even by bulldozing and beating up the local people as in Tiracol some years back. But nobody seems be interested in thinking of such measures as welfare schemes for affordable housing that could have checked the problem of growing slums, and tighter labor laws that would make it difficult to exploit laborers.

If there is a large population of migrant labor then the direct cause of it is a certain developmental politics that requires a large amount of labor. This largely goes unchecked as the market for such labor is unregulated. There are very little rights that the laborers possess by way of proper housing, health benefits, and minimum wage. Not to talk about these issues while discussing the mushrooming slums or unchecked migration is to deepen the problem further. For instance, in the recent Dabolim case we simply don’t know where the migrant laborer families shifted to. Following the demolitions in Baina in 2004, the residents simply spread to different parts of Vasco and other parts of Goa. Even in the case of the Varnamares, they were given voting rights but nothing was said about proper housing facilities thereby indicating the absence of proper governmental policies.

From the perspective of social justice, one can observe that most of the ‘migrant labors’ have prior experience of marginalization due to various circumstances that necessitates migration in the first place. Many activists who have tried to help out such communities affected by ‘demolition drives’ highlight how poor people who are forced to live in slums are in fact victims of caste and gender violence and are considered dispensable in the event a development project is envisaged. 

The issue ultimately needs to be understood as one of justice and human dignity. Such issues cannot be thought solely from the perspective of identity (or the threat to Goan identity), or the fact that growth in slums stick out as an eyesore on the Goan landscape. There is an urgent need for a system of checks and balances which while recognizing the rights of laborers also arrests the exploitation of the same people, and addresses concerns of local people about basic amenities and threats to livelihood. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 1 March, 2017)

THE FACE OF ‘DEVELOPMENT’

What does ‘development’ mean to the common man? S/he generally expects that the state should provide infrastructure facilities like roads, bridges, hospitals, sports complexes, transport facilities, etc. But while asking for basic amenities is one thing, development is often used to suggest the urgent need of large-scale investments in various types of industries and projects like bridges, stadia, big hotels, etc. The latter – along with its inherent urgency – is often responsible for the destruction of communities and land. There is, therefore, a gap between what development supposedly seeks to achieve and what it eventually ends up doing.

While notions of development may have changed over the years, its core has been the same. Since the day of the establishment of the Indian state, development was linked to economic modernization. More recently this vision of ‘development’ has been augmented with plans for improved urbanization (‘Smart Cities’) and a move to increase the reach of the internet (‘Digital India’). In each of these cases the promotion of ‘development’ is seen as a solution to all, or if not, most of the problems that are faced by the society.

The tourism industry in Goa helps us to see the gap between the theoretical and practical aspects of development. Land and community resources were used in this development, ostensibly, for the betterment of the same land and community that provided the resources. However, this has not been the case with the way the tourism industry has developed. Considering the present situation of the tourism industry, and in view of the fact that the government commissioned a new Master Plan for tourism this year, re-visiting some older blueprints for tourism development such as the ‘Master Plan for Tourism Development in Goa, July 1987’ (MP 1987) that initiated the massive tourism development, leaves little doubt that we need to urgently re-think how community and land resources should be used.

According to MP 1987, the travel industry was growing rapidly and there was a need to catch up with it since Goa could not be “immune” to such a global economic trend. MP 1987 sought to promote tourism, but it had also noted the problems attendant with the tourism industry. It recognized that the “management of tourism is a very complex task. It makes enormous demands on the resources of the place, natural and man-made”. MP 1987 was not in favor of “sacrificing the quality of the local environment” to make quick profit. The destruction of the environment could also lead to the loss of the “cultural mooring” of the local society, the report had warned.

The authors of MP 1987 had also conducted a sample survey of the Calangute-Candolim beach belt, to get a sense of the problems that these areas faced. Even before the advent of large-scale development, the survey revealed a proliferation of unauthorized construction activity, with the commercial activity encroaching on the roads due to a lack of space. The lack of space was leading to traffic congestion. Shortage of drinking water, absence of garbage and sewage management, drug trafficking, prostitution, and high land prices were the other problems identified by MP 1987. The survey also found that tourism development had bred conflict between traditional occupations, like fishing and agriculture, and tourism-related activities. This resulted in social and economic imbalances in the village economy, the report added.

To avoid any adverse effects of tourism development, MP 1987 suggested that it was important to “arrive at a volume of tourism which will bring optimum benefit” to the local people and the national economy. However, the report had admitted, in earnest, that there were “no standards available” to determine the volume of tourists that Goa could handle. Perhaps this might very well be the case as one can observe a contradictory logic running through the report: there are recommendations made for the increase of infrastructure to accommodate the increasing influx of tourists despite the fact that MP 1987 recognized that the carrying capacity of a small place like Goa was limited.

Nearly thirty years later, the Government of Goa has commissioned another Master Plan for tourism. R. Benedito Ferrão recently wrote about this Master Plan and argued that while the Master Plan made suggestions about protecting the environment and involving local Goans, there was precious little said on how exactly to do this. Further, this most recent Master Plan envisaged the role of Goans as only service-providers, and not as stakeholders. This appears to be quite similar to the vision of the MP 1987. While the initial Master Plan was prepared by the government, the recent one was drawn by a MNC. If at all anything has changed it is the shift towards opening of the economy for corporate or private exploitation.

This should force us to recognize that the language and practice of development is marked by a one-way power relation wherein communities – often marginalized – have to bear most of the brunt. While at least the Master Plans of 1987 and 2016 made the effort (or is it pretence?) of involving Goans to benefit from tourism development, other instances such as the often violent and cunning manner in which communities are dispossessed of their lands – in Tiracol, Betul, Loliem, and Mopa – shows us the blatantly brute power of actual ‘development’, as opposed to the subtle variants of the tourism Master Plans.

Rather than the emphasis on development, the importance and utility of public amenities, such as roads, bridges, hospitals for community use, need to be highlighted. The ambiguous language and practice of development needs to be replaced with a concrete vision that keeps marginalized communities and the environment safe.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 23 November, 2016)

COLONY LOST?

An article in The Guardian recently claimed “artists” and “hipsters” to be the new agents that drive the process of gentrification. Though the article was about the current situation in Britain, similarities could be drawn with Goa’s own fraught tourism-led development. According to the article, artists and hipsters “are the neoliberal state’s troops”. Artists first move into certain areas that seem to have decayed or have not developed, and “sow the seeds of cultural capital. ... Both artists and (some) of the hipsters – the ones who haven’t ‘settled’ yet – will move on, exploring, breaking away (again), developing new potential sites for capital investment. And so the cycle of gentrification starts all over”.

The Goan parallels with the quote above may not be obvious on first reading. Goa’s unchecked development of the tourism and real-estate industry started with Goa being exposed to the neoliberal economic setup of India. What has this to do with the influx of artists and hipsters in Goa? The idea of Goa as a ‘touristic heaven’ or a ‘pleasure periphery’ was constructed on a Goan landscape that was populated by agrarian villages, making the acquisition of  real-estate, in due course of time, elite status symbols coveted by the artists, writers, and the upwardly mobile professionals from Indian metros – or the catch-all desi misnomer, “culturewallahs”. The neoliberal economic setup and the easy mobility afforded by the Indian nation-state led to the large scale gentrification of sea-side villages that we are witnessing today – a process either exemplified by the rise of ‘mega projects’ or the emergence of ‘Portuguese houses’ as markers of chic and luxurious lifestyle.

Another parallel is how people who drive this gentrification in Goa can leave anytime for better pastures. Very often the “culturewallahs” who move to Goa claim that their commitment to Goa and its people is much deeper than a sudden decision to shift to Goa. It is not simply an investment in Goan real estate. However, a recent assertion by Deepti Kapoor, who had moved to Goa but has now decided to go elsewhere due to the deteriorating situation here, testifies to the skin-deep character of this commitment. It also reveals the disaster that gentrification is, for Goans, who unfortunately have to live in the mess that such a development leaves behind. What does Goa get out of this? Art? And what is the relevance of such art?

To say that the affluent global and Indian elites can move to Goa due to the financial resources available to them is only half the story. This is why we need to dwell on the notion of ‘colony’ in relation to gentrification. Like the colonies established during the height of European imperialism, the ‘colonies’ established by the real-estate industry have an element of exclusivity to them. One’s social location determines who gets access into these ‘colonies’. To think of gentrification as a process by which ‘colonies’ get established allows us to see that rather than being harbingers of modernization and progress – or of art or culture – they are, in fact, a recapitulation of South Asia’s age-old and timeless hierarchies. 

It is the emergence of such ‘colonies’ that defines the ‘brand value’ of Goa in recent times. These gentrified places, while a good economic investment, also simultaneously become a refuge for the rich…a utopia tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the world. Thus, while these places are physically enclosed by way of allowing access only to a privileged few, they are also cut-off from the social and political realities of the world. Only when these utopian places are threatened for any kind of reason – then one sees a remarkable outrage that gets blown out of proportion.

 

Pic: Vishvesh Kandolkar

Consider the recent case of the unfortunate murder of a perfume-maker who had made Goa her home. Her death was mourned by a huge outrage. The critique that the same attention was not paid to another murder which happened on the same day is insufficient. The reason why one person’s murder was discussed down to its last detail and the other was almost ignored was also due to the fact that the other murder occurred in a nondescript ‘vaddo’. To be fair, most of the gentrified neighborhoods that have emerged in Goan villages have been constructed in various ‘vadde’, but the gentrification makes all the difference. Compared to the genteel location of the murder of the Goa-based perfumer, the nondescript ‘vaddo’ in a Goan village is insignificant.

Juxtaposing the social and physical locations of the two murders allows us to see that the comments by numerous glitterati and literati to declare categorically that the crime against the perfumer signaled the demise of the once great Goa, is nothing but a fear of losing privilege. It is not an outrage marked by concern for Goa. For the same people couldn’t care any less when large chunks of Goan land were (and are) grabbed from ordinary, hard-working Goans. Considering that most of the land grabbed from Goans goes largely to build resorts, second-homes, and ‘colonies’ made available for the disposable pleasure of the same elites, one can understand why there isn’t any outrage.

Gentrification thus is a process by which localities get taken over by the rich, simultaneously pushing out the locals. It is also a process by which the locals are slowly rendered powerless. Goa’s problem with gentrification does not need any outrage or lamentations of demise, but to recognize first that the problem exists, and what and who engendered it. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 26 October, 2016)

TROUBLED TIMES AND THE LIBERATION BUGLE

Over the past few weeks, I have been reading with much interest a few letters addressed to the editor of O Heraldo. These letters, in one way or the other, argued for the necessity of ‘liberation’ for Goa. While Victor Ferrao, the Dean of the Rachol Seminary sought a “second liberation”, others rather felt that Goa needed a proper or true liberation. These letters were sparked off, as one may remember, by the highly objectionable statements made in the press by some freedom fighters, calling for punitive action against Goans who have registered their births in Portugal.

Calls for liberation coming in the wake of such statements by the freedom-fighters (FFs) can tell us a few things about Goan politics. To begin with, we need to understand that the FFs have an authority and legitimacy in Goan politics that is generally not questioned. Their role in the anti-colonial movement against the Portuguese Estado da Índia (EI) is what gives them this legitimacy, to such an extent that they have come to epitomize freedom from colonialism. Thus, when Ferrao asserted that there were “several un-freedoms” that the FFs refused to acknowledge – and thereby also played on the word ‘freedom’ in FFs – it enabled us to see the regressive role that some of these FFs play in contemporary Goa.

The letters addressed the sorry state of Goan politics and the manner in which the State in Goa had mismanaged governance and public resources. It is in this context that one needs to see the calls for liberation being pitted against the image of the FFs. Contemporary calls for liberation are a challenge, I argue, to a nationalist understanding of Goa and its history.

Liberation in the Goan context is used to describe the departure of the EI after the military annexation of Goa to the Indian Union. Thus, Goa and its people were understood to have been freed from foreign dominance, and also to have arrived at a culmination of history with their integration into the Indian nation-state. The FFs have, or claim to have, actively contributed to this integration. Thus according to the nationalist version of history, liberation as a project, or as a movement in history, is understood to be complete, with no necessity for further work or improvement. The departure of the Portuguese, coupled with the arrival of the Indians, was equated with the liberation of Goans. And yet we see renewed calls for liberation.

What we need to recognize is that anti-colonial movements that led to the formation of many nation-states across the colonized world also came as a promise for progress and modernization, apart from mobilizing to overthrow foreign yoke. The colonial state could not ensure the progress and betterment of the people because it oppressed and enslaved people. The colonial state denied rights to people in their own land. It also obstructed the cultural efflorescence of the people, and imposed Western culture on them. Such a position was articulated by TB Cunha, noted for his contributions to Goa’s anti-colonial movement.

However, progress and betterment is precisely what the nation-state that emerged from anti-colonial movements have failed to give to the masses. Even if the nation-state has been able to bring about modernization it has been at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of the marginalized masses. We have recently seen this in the manner in which land is sought or is grabbed in Tirakol, Mopa, Vanxim, Betul, and elsewhere across Goa, the brutal police action on peaceful protesters, unending scams that deplete the State exchequer or public money by many thousands of crores, and the mammoth mismanagement of public resources and properties.

Thus, to many it does feel like, rather than having the freedom to live and earn a decent livelihood, one is still colonized by the nation-state and its partners in the name of development. In such a contemporary scenario, the presence of FFs who hark back and depend on a legacy that is constantly failing us in the present is rendered meaningless. What is the point of having FFs if we do not have freedom? This is why calls for liberation today make more sense than celebrating some (imagined) national glories.

Which is also why calls for liberation should also be seen along with another more famous (or notorious) movement called ‘Liberation Theology’. In this context, liberation is cast as an emancipatory project. Begun as a movement within the Church in Latin America after Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez published his seminal text A Theology of Liberation (1971), ‘liberation theology’ sought to address the poverty-stricken lives of many in Latin America due to an unjust social system, and rampant capitalist development. The poverty in Latin America made the Church there face a crisis of its own relevance in that society. Fr. Gutiérrez argued that such a moment was precisely the time that the Church had to change by putting the poor and the oppressed first and actively supporting their struggles – the poor after all were at the center of the Christian message.

Listening to calls of liberation coming from various quarters one could argue that the State as well as the Church in Goa needs to put the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed at the center of politics and planning. The State more so as in a secular, liberal democracy the welfare of the citizens is entrusted to the State. With the State opening the doors to rampant development, the common masses and the marginalized will be further pushed in the corner and the calls for liberation will only grow. 

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 6 July, 2016)