"Making Goans Servants to the Tourism Master Plan" in THE GOAN EVERYDAY (16 October 2016)

Though the Goa Tourism Master Plan commissioned by the government expects to renew the industry, it fails to imagine a role for Goans that extends beyond that of service-providers.

 Buried within the recently released Tourism Master Plan (TMP) that the Goan government commissioned from the multinational corporation KPMG is this vision of how Goans are to be involved in the marketing of their homeland: “Campaigns with state coverage should be undertaken to inform citizens and raise their awareness on the importance of tourism and tourism hospitality. In addition, a civic pride campaign should promote the uniqueness, protection and the importance to conserve the national Natural and Cultural heritages of Goa (either monuments or living culture and nature) while encouraging Goans to travel and visit destinations within their Taluka and others” (p. 83). Well, the last time I checked, Goans do travel quite often “within their Talukas and others”. It’s called going to work.

The TMP not only envisages Goans as potential clients of the tourism industry in their own backyards, but it also wants to position them as servants to that industry rather than as stakeholders. So, even as the section of the TMP that is aimed at Goans is entitled “Building Awareness among Local Stakeholders”, it is additionally given the subheading “A Key Success Factor”, which suggests that the outlined measures are business tactics geared towards making Goans pliable as a source of labour. The delineated strategies include a list of four campaigns.

The first, “Goan Pride”, is meant to “encourage domestic travels … in order to transmit the importance for Goans to know and feel their State”. It is followed by “Tourism Awareness in Schools”, which “seeks to promote the importance of tourism for the State of Goa among young people and highlight … career opportunities” Yes, Goans should be invested in knowing about Goa and should be exposed to in-state career options. But even as the TMP touts education to boost state pride and dangles livelihoods before those of school-going age, its purpose in doing so is less for the betterment of Goans than it is to inculcate what in business-speak is referred to as a ‘buy-in’ into tourism.

 This is troubling for it is directed towards shaping the minds of the impressionably young, but equally so because the suggested pride-building in Goa is of a nationalistic ilk. Or so KPMG would have us believe, for under the ostensibly titled “Sustainable Tourism Awareness” campaign that wants to create “a culture which respects [the] environment”, the plan also recommends that this be done “by strengthening the national identity and pride”. In effect, then, it is not just that Goan youth are being asked to be environmentally and culturally conscious, but that such awareness be harnessed in profiting the nation, for the green and clean nation, here, is the brand that is being sold to tourists.

It should also be noticed that at the same time as the TMP shackles environmentalism to nationalism, it has little to offer in terms of concrete measures regarding how the environment should be protected (one wonders how far the nice-sounding idea of respecting the environment can go in saving it), leave alone the lack of sustainability of tourism in general. The shallowness of the TMP is symptomatic of how KPMG operates. In an article tellingly headlined “Critics see KPMG Report as ‘Smoke and Mirrors’” (22 July, 2011), The Toronto Star informs how a commissioned service review for the Canadian city of Toronto, essentially boiled down to KPMG outlining what services should be axed. When the company’s representatives were questioned by a Councillor about whether they had “considered long-term costs associated with cutting support to business improvement areas? [And] [w]hat about the economic benefits of arts funding, social services and entrepreneurship support?”, they simply responded: “We weren’t asked to quantify the impacts of reducing or eliminating the service”.

 In the case of Goa, the marriage of alleged environmental awareness, national consciousness, and business firmly aligns such corporations as KPMG and the State in ensuring the neoliberal promise of delivering Goa and Goans at the altar of so-called national progress while promoting corporate business interests. While Goans are charged with rendering service to the nation, little is said of what KPMG and the government will do to ensure the protection of Goa’s natural heritage, and even less about what will be done to support the creation and retention of homegrown businesses. As further evidence of the servitude that is expected of Goans in the tourism industry, consider that the last of the four campaigns, which is labelled “Goan Hosts”, sets out how it will “[develop] training programs on customer service”. While all kinds of employment should accord those in service respect and rights, what does it mean when a government-commissioned master plan only foresees the role of the people of its state as “hosts” and not as entrepreneurs or innovators?

In designating the place of Goans as those who are to be employed or are to be educated in providing service, the government and KPMG have fixed the future of many Goans within a narrow gamut of opportunities that do not encourage creativity, leadership, or innovation. This is extremely myopic, since the TMP is meant to envision Goa’s future as a tourism destination over the next 25 years. Between KPMG and the State, it has been decided that Goa must serve simultaneously as a pleasure periphery for India’s fun-seekers, but also as a hub for business providers from elsewhere who will profit off the land and its people while little investment is made for any purposes beyond the promotion and retention of corporate tourism.   

From The Goan Everyday.

"Brexit and the Perils of Comparison" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (26 June 2016)

No strangers to referenda, even as Brexit is reminiscent of the 1967 Opinion Poll to Goans, the two are far from being alike. 

Indeed, it was just a generation ago that Goans saw their fate decided by a referendum. The January 1967 Opinion Poll, which followed the 1961 annexation of Goa by India, allowed Goans to elect whether their homeland would be merged with the adjoining state of Maharashtra. My parents’ generation decided that Goa and Goans deserved to preserve their own cultural identity as reflected by the vote for the region’s geographic insularity. Nearly a half-century later, the fate of many Goans once again hangs in the balance as the results of another referendum on another continent are announced. The Brexit poll has concluded and, by a very slim majority, the people of the United Kingdom have chosen to leave the European Union. 

On the surface, the polls may seem similar even though five decades separate them. Both the Opinion Poll and Brexit were about a decision to be part of a union, even if the former was to initiate a merger while the latter was to leave one. Nonetheless, the Opinion Poll sought to further undermine the autonomy of Goan people by seeking to obliterate the geopolitical boundary that, if nothing else, gave Goans a distinct cartographic location within the Indian union. 

It should not be remiss that caste politics played out in the mobilisation efforts to galvanise Goan participation in the Opinion Poll. What could easily be mistaken for a show of Goan solidarity is but a veneer for the truth that if Goa were to become a part of Maharashtra, those of the upper castes would lose their mini fiefdom. This is not to suggest that a merger with that other state would have improved the situation. Rather, the results of the 1967 poll might also be analysed as the outcome of a decision by Goan bahujans whose solidarity lay with their own land and community, regardless of upper caste political designs. The interests of the elite would have remained the same regardless of whether Maharashtra were to take over or were Goa to remain separate. 

However, even as these caste fractures within Goa are obfuscated, what the Opinion Poll further sought to occlude was that though it was a democratic exercise, it was one within a limited gamut. Goans were being given a choice in 1967 – a belated one that should have been theirs in 1961: not whether they should or should not merge with Maharashtra, but whether they should be part of the now-independent, formerly British India or not. If anything, the Opinion Poll was a means for India to further establish its hold over Goa through the charade of democracy. 

That Brexit impacts Goans is precisely because our tiny part of the world was once under the Portuguese Empire and only later under the Indian one. In contradistinction to those Goans who made their way to the United Kingdom via British East Africa in the last century, the more recent waves of Goan immigrants who have journeyed to England directly from Goa have done so as Portuguese citizens; their European nationality allows them to work anywhere within the Union. The later immigrants have largely been working class people who have sought to better their lives abroad while also adding to the labour pool and tax revenues of Britain.

To say that Brexit is this Goan generation’s Opinion Poll would not be euphemistic. Yet, even as this vote affects Goans and so many others, the two referenda are not alike. The Opinion Poll was a decision by a colonised people to retain their identity, while Brexit is the expression of a very old and powerful empire flexing its clout in the modern era. The United Kingdom may be a kingdom only nominally, but as the birthplace of neoliberalism alongside the United States, it continues to function imperially, extending its colonial legacy of yore. Where the Opinion Poll drew the line around a minority, Brexit draws one against immigrants and refugees. Some hope is to be had in that only a little more than half of Britain voted for the exit, but it also shows a nation split and one that too conveniently forgets its history.

What is to become of those Goans who continue to be Portuguese citizens in the United Kingdom? What of the many Goans whose dreams of reacquiring Portuguese citizenship so that they could better their opportunities may now come to a standstill? Time will tell, but it will be a worrying wait as Europe and the rest of the world grows more xenophobic and the labours of the once and still colonised continue to underwrite the progress of the powerful. 

From The Goan.