No Glad seasons in Goa

No glad seasons in Goa
Mid-day Date: 2011-05-31 Place: Mumbai
See

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2011/may/310511-no-glad-seasons-in-goa.htm

Pensioners and overseas visitors who want to make Goa their home are
being stifled by strict visa regulations curtailing long stays. This
May could be the last month in for several of these foreigners

Dave (64) and Penny (58) Sanders (name changed) are a typical English
couple who came to Goa one winter on a two-week charter holiday four
years ago. Charmed by the region, they booked a further two-week stay
and the very next year decided they would like to spend six months of
the year in Goa, and six months in Spain where they run a small
business. The Sanders purchased a leasehold apartment in Siolim, north
Goa and settled into their six-months-a-year life in Goa. Life is good
when they come down. Internet connectivity helps them monitor their
business in Spain while they are here. The exchange rate makes it
extremely easy on the pocket. With their friendly disposition, the
Sanders’ rapidly made friends, they quickly plugged into the vibrant
Goan social circuit, and their Goan friends invited them over to
premiers, concerts and family occasions. Dave’s skill with the guitar
led to him playing gigs with local musicians at the many live music
venues around the touristy coastal area.

Relax: Tourists at Calangute Beach in Goa pic/AFP

Pitfalls
The Sanders took the usual precautions, avoiding the pitfalls of
buying any ownership property in Goa that had earlier got many
purchases who did so while on tourist visas, into deep trouble with
the Enforcement Directorate. “We were quite happy to buy a leasehold
apartment,” they say. “But just when you get used to one rule, they
throw another at you,” Dave complains. He is referring to the new visa
restrictions that the Government of India notified in 2008, but whose
effects are slowly beginning to blow away the carefully laid plans of
the Sanders and hundreds of other mainly British retirees who live in
Goa to avoid the harsh European winter. The new rules have all but
stopped the five-year multiple entry visa for India. Now only
three-month tourist visas are being issued, with visitors expected to
stay out of India for a two-month cooling period before re-entering or
applying for a fresh visa. “We would have liked to settle down here,
but with the two-month cooling off rule, we have to reconsider our
plans,” says Dave. They are now considering a move to Sri Lanka, where
pensioners are allowed to stay on if they can prove a known source of
income.

Bottoms up to Goa: But is the magic fading? British nationals at a
restaurant pics/Arvind Tengse

Discourage
Unknown to the Sanders, internal circulars of the Union Home ministry
and external affairs ministry aim to discourage the practice of
part-time residentship in India. Resultantly, consulates have been
weeding out five-year multiple entry visas and even six-month tourist
visas in favour of the three-month tourist visa. The unofficial policy
change and visa rules have similarly dashed the hopes of Marjorie and
Sondra Myles (names changed) who planned on running a small guesthouse
business in Goa. While the ambiguities and irregular application of
laws have meant that several British run tourism businesses do
flourish in Goa, the Myles count themselves among the unlucky lot who
have run into a series of brick walls in this pursuit, quite possibly
from no fault in their paperwork. They were understandably upset while
relating their story.

Home: Britons enjoy Goa’s good life but things are becoming tougher

Savings
Visiting India and Goa over 15 years before the former university
employee decided that Goa might be a good option for a retirement
base, Marjorie (76) sunk her savings into purchasing freehold
apartments in a complex in South Goa. She planned on converting the
six-bedroom double apartment into a guesthouse, she would run with her
daughter Sondra (50) and 19-year-old granddaughter. The Myles have
been particularly unlucky, hit by a triple whammy. They purchased
their properties in 2004 in the initial euphoric years after the new
FEMA legislation led people to believe the law on immovable property
purchase had opened up, — only to see a complete rollback when the
Enforcement Directorate began investigating 400 foreigner-made
purchases in Goa alone. The Myles now find themselves in a quandary.
“Our dream has become a nightmare,” Marjorie said. “We’ve not been
able to process any permissions to start the business and we are now
staying in a house we apparently do not own, despite consulting a
conveyancing advocate at the time.”

Woes
To add to their woes, their visa durations have shrunk over the years,
making living here untenable. Their applications for a business visa
was rejected, authorities granted them an X visa initially; these were
further reduced to a one year visa and more recently to six month
visas. “It has come as rather a shock to us. The new visa rule has
crippled us financially,” says Sondra. It would be impossible to go
back to the UK every six months, stay two months in a hotel in the UK
and return to Goa, she points out.

Seething
Erstwhile Goan fishermen, toddy tappers and farmers who have been
evicted from beach and farm land to make way for hotels, are
increasingly asking government to protect their new livelihoods in the
small guesthouse and restaurant trade they opted for, even as newer
entrepreneurs from outside the state and abroad ramp up the
competition. All this has rendered the bustling tourism arena into a
seething cauldron of social tension and conflict, despite the overt
bonhomie on show for the visitor. The Myles have had their brush with
intimidation, while aggrieved western long staying tourists often vent
their frustrations at being turfed out, in the letters column of local
dailies. Sources in the bureaucracy say it is for precisely this
reason that the home ministry is hoping to curtail potential cultural
and diplomatic tensions by restricting the numbers of western
“residents” who have homed in on Goa as a preferable region to spend
their retirement years, some setting up small businesses to supplement
their pensions.

Bogmalo
By the time the Indian bureaucracy woke up to this trend and began
taking dissuasive measures, it was already too late for many western
retirees who had invested life savings into homes in Goa. Among the
badly hit are an elderly British couple who constructed a bungalow in
the beach village of Bogmalo. They now have to fly back to the UK
every 180 days, and since they have no home there, spend two months in
the UK in a caravan in their daughter’s driveway. They are currently
holding out, hoping to make a reasonably priced sale on their Goa
home, instead of taking the route of the hundreds of “distress sales”
that were made by foreigners when the clampdown began. Visa rules have
not just hit wintering Europeans, who have had to rethink their
long-term plans in Goa. It has impacted short-term holidayers to Goa
and alongside it, the entire tourist industry.

Single
“At least 30 to 40 per cent of vacationers from Britain take repeat
holidays in a single season, coming back twice and sometimes thrice on
a six-month visa. Many visit neighbouring Thailand, Cambodia or
elsewhere and return. Reduced visa terms and the cooling off period
has meant that many have cancelled holidays and are down to a single
vacation to Goa in a year,” says Guitry Velho who runs the Heritage
Village Club. His business has taken a hit, as the hotel mainly caters
to the UK segment. “Clients of mine who’d come in pre-Christmas, then
go back to celebrate the holiday season with family in the UK and
return in February — are now just coming in February for a single
holiday.”

Downstream
Smaller establishments downstream that survive from tourism are
similarly affected. “It has been a bad season. A lot of tourists who
had returned in January and February after the Christmas rush have
simply not done so, and we’ve lost this business,” says Roy Barreto,
who runs Betty’s Place restaurant and a cruise operation on the River
Sal in South Goa. Western European visitors to his eateries are down
to a trickle, while his overheads on staff have remained the same.
Goa’s tourism trade body the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa
(TTAG) is naturally sore over the visa rules. “Working over 40 years,
hundreds of thousands of Goans at all levels of the tourism industry
have built a unique record of 40 per cent repeat clientele from
western European markets, especially the UK. Until the recent visa
revisions, they returned year after year, because of Goa’s branding as
a long haul winter destination. They are now leaving Goa
permanently,”rues TTAG spokesman hotelier, Ralph de Souza.

Regime
“Since the new visa regime, long stayers and return holidayers from
Nordic, Scandinavian and the UK region has fallen by 30 per cent,” de
Souza says. The TTAG estimates the loss to be in the region of Rs 900
crore. Long-term visitors are estimated to spend in a year Rs 10 lakh
each across a range of services from tourist taxis, two-wheeler
pilots, beach shacks, cafes, restaurants and super markets. It’s a big
economic hit, and the TTAG is currently lobbying with the state and
central governments to consider alternatives, such as granting visa on
arrival at the Goa airport, building data bases on regular visitors
and granting exemptions to traditional long stayers. While discussions
are on, there has been no change yet, and this May might well be their
last month in Goa for many visitors.

Patricia Rozario: Mission to train Indian talent

August 2009, The Asian Age
Panaji, Aug 28: For a soprano and opera singer who has scaled
stratospheric heights, performed on virtually all the better known
stages in Europe, the United Kingdom and around the world, there’s an
endearing down to earth generosity in Patricia Rozario.

Though probably awake half the night to catch a 4.30 am flight from
Mumbai to Goa, with a couple of hours to nap on arrival here, the
Mumbai born British soprano was all warm indulgence and attention as
she listened to thirty children take turns singing at a specially
arranged audition that morning. The songs ranged from a five year old
singing a lullaby to a teenager fumbling through Abba’s Chiquitita
—not quite the material for the over 16 year old talent hunt the
audition was meant to be, one susects. But going by the soprano’s
encouraging applause, none of the young singers would have guessed
they were anything less than spectacular.

“This is really a fact finding mission” says Rozario of her four city
India tour, where she performed concerts and held auditions in Delhi,
Pune, and Mumbai, before concluding here in Goa. ” There’s a lot of
talent here. I’m really here to find talent and then train them over a
period of time, in the study of music and in building technique. The
concerts I did were more to demonstrate the level which one has to
aspire to.”

That level for Patricia has taken her to the top of her field in
Britain. Her recordings of both ancient and avant garde music are
reputed to sell sometimes in “pop-music proportions”. Her voice has
been inspiration for several modern composers, including Simon Holt,
Arvo Part, and Sir John Taverner who has written over 30 works for
her. Rozario’s concert and opera repertoire include a good many of
the baroque masterpieces and contemporary compositions — her
contributions earning her the order of the British Empire in 2001.

Still the learning never ceases — new languages to learn and sing
operas in. She’s planning to tackle Russian and Czech next, she lets
on.

She’d left India at 20 to join the Guildhall school of music and drama
in London, followed by post graudate studies at a National Opera
Sudio. Though slated to return to Mumbai after her studies, Patricia
won the school’s gold medal and stayed on to hone her skills on her
professor’s insistence and belief in her talent. “Making a career as a
musician is probably harder that any business. You need backing and
luck, besides talent. It has’t been easy but certainly very exciting”.

After a rich, varied career, the time seemed right to engage with
India on a professional basis, not counting off course the regular
personal visits.”I was very happy growing up here. I knew I had to
come back”, says she.

Her India connection never waned, performing often in saris to
underscore her identity. She’s adapted Indian folk songs for a 2008
City of London festival. This year she’d doing a fusion programme
with Ashwini Bhide. “I tried learning Indian classical music as a
teenager, but was told I had come too late. You have to start at 4
years and grow up in that tradition to be able to be a master and
improvise. so it was lost to me. But I did do a six month training to
pick up elements to sing a fusion composition a composer who loved
Indian music had written”. The two vocal traditions are developed
differently. “In western music you project your voice, you do not use
an amplifier, whereas Indian classical vocal music is pure beautiful
sound”.

What propelled the current engagement with India, started with young
Indian soprano Joanne D’Mello, whom she mentored, trained and helped
make it to London’s Royal College of Music a couple of years back.
While Joanne’s distinction this year speaks of her own abilities,
Patricia realised the immense potential that could be trawled from
India, though other Asian students were way ahead here.

” India has a great love of singing. Bollywood has contributed
immensely to this, people sing in the streets. Like India, China has
its own traditional music, but still encourages people to learn
western classical. We need not lose our own culture to adopt another.
I feel responsibility to develop this talent” .

For starts Patricia would like to work with music teachers here, and
through them with chosen students. If the project can attract
funding, she plans to return 3-4 times a year for the training
programmes. “The talent is there, it has to be built up. It would take
2-3 years to bring it to a particular level”. There’s promised support
from the principal of the Royal School of Music, to extend
scholarships as has been done in China and Korea.

Her own meteoric rise came from a small annual parent-organised
talent contest in Santacruz, Mumbai. “My mother taught us to sing.
Western music was part of our Goan home tradition. I had no formal
training, before I went to London”. In fact Rozario warns against
formal voice training for those below 15-16 years, aside from gentle
singing practice.

The soprano and her pianist husband Mark Troop are treading carefully.
“We’d like to work with everybody, in harmony, see what we all can do
together.” says Troop. While Mumbai has few voice teachers, singers in
Delhi find themselves frustrated at being denied performance avenues,
as organisers import troupes from abroad. Patricia is hoping to
contribute to changing that, she says — raising levels and hoping
to convince organisers to source local Indian singers itself.(ends)

Bombay before the British

August 2009/The Asian Age
From 2002, a team of researchers from the University of Lisbon and University of Coimbra have been working on an interesting project —- Bombay before the British. The project’s preliminary findings , presented recently here at a public lecture — are a fascinating glimpse into a long forgotten past of the now pulsing teaming city of Mumbai and its metropolitan area.

Mumbai’s urbanity is a mere 330 years old and is considered a creation of the British colonial empire and the East India Company’s trading needs in the region. But Portugal — once fierce colonial rivals of the British (or is it the other way around?)—- have a script to add to this rendering of history.

“The area of Bombaim was certainly not a desert when the British came in. It was a built territory, there were roads, pathways, bridges, watchtowers and habitation, fortified manor houses, besides convents and churches”, says project researcher Dr Paulo Varela Gomes. The Indo Portuguese layer in this region was often overlooked — partly due to Britain’s colonial rivalry with the Portuguese, and the fact that the Marathas conquered large areas of the Northern province back from Portugal in 1739. But 200 years (1534-1739) was a long enough time for Portugal to stamp its presence on the region.

The project Bombay before the British is all about revealing this layer. “There is a surprising amount of unpublished, forgotten or little known information about this historical reality… ruins, material traces of whole cities, parts of cities, towns (Bassein, Chaul, Tana, Bandra etc) forts and fortified manors, churches and convents, houses and villages, roads and bridges”. There’s also a historians’ treasure trove of cartography prints, engravings, drawings, photographs, manuscripts and documents from Portuguese, British, Indian and Italian archives, that the project eventually plans to collect and put online.

“We’d like eventually to open it so people can add on information to the findings”, says architectural research scholar Sidh Mendiratta.

It’s fairly well known that the isle of Bombay was handed over along with Tangiers to Britain’s Charles II by a 1661 dowry agreement when he took Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza as his bride. Bombay’s seven islands then was part of Portugal’s northern province in India — a territory it wrested by a treaty with the Sultan of Gujarat in the sixteenth century.

With its capital at the prosperous port town of Bassein, the wealth generated in the province— went into financing Portugal
s expansion plans in Japan and elsewhere.

Fewer would know though that Bombay’s transfer, signed in Lisbon, was not taken to too kindly by those running the affairs of the Estado da India, here on India’s west coast. The Portuguese Governor refused to hand over Bombay. Control was grudginly ceded, not before 1665. In some areas of Bombay, an undeclared war raged for some time between Portuguese and British forces.

Bombay castle, now inside Mumbai’s naval base, remains the best preserved remnant of that era. It was a Portuguese manor house, where the transfer of Bombaim took place in 1665.
It wasn’t made easy for the British to take over Bombay. They were told that everything outside the castle walls was privately owned. Only four of the seven islands were eventually handed over. Britain seized Parel and Mahim by force six months later, and had to purchase Colaba island from its Portuguese landowner.

In time the area was completly transformed. The research team’s attempts to find any Indo Portuguese layer in the main Bombay area proved nearly futile. “Outside of Bombay castle, precious little remains of the Portuguese era in the Bombay metropolitan area. Portuguese presence in the seven islands was almost eroded here” says Mendiratta. The fourteenth century Mahim fort still stands, built over by the British and now occupied by shanty dwellers.

Three years of on site and off site research, checking and cross checking local maps, old Portugese records, British maps, 1955 US army maps and GIS satellite imaging , gave the team an estimate of the erstwhile northern province’s 6000 sq km area. Mapping the area became crucial to the project, and came up with a larger area than previously believed to have been under Portuguese control for a while. Mendiratta says it stretched from Valsad, north of Daman down to Chaul and Revdanda in the south, eastwards to include Trombay and Uran, aorund 40 km inland in some places.

Does much remain from that era four and a half centuries later?

Mendiratta’s attempt to trace vestiges of that time came up with as many as 100 defensive structures, including fortified manor houses, convents and watchtowers strewn all over this province, many off course in ruins. Besides there are records in Portugal’s archives for some 480 villages, 85 % of which are still traceable by a process of cross verification. The team also located 90 churches and convents, only half of which are still around, albeit modified several times over, though many still bear their original names.
“In many churches, what remains of the original church are its ancient relics, statues and altars, deep inside the churches”.

Historians have off course in the past looked at the Indo-Portuguese influence in Thane, Vasai, Mount Poinsur, and the Salcette islands of Bandra, Manori, Madh and Erangal, where villages still survive in the former Portuguese pattern.

The last structure the Portuguese built was probably Thane fort, according to Mendiratta. Now a prison, nothing remains of that time, except the ramparts — as it changed hands to the Marathas in 1739 and the British in 1774. The team made a dramatic find in the hill top Asherigad (formerly Asserim) fort, identifying it as a former Portuguese fort 50 km north of Manori, from a slab with a Portuguese coat of arms found on this site now frequented by trekkers.

Some 60 watchtowers are strewn all along the area, including further north, though a few are being destroyed in the current urbanisation. Interesting bits of information have surfaced from the study. The famous Mount Mary church in Bandra was initially built by the Portuguese in the 1620s, and a new structure extended to it later under the British. Bandra itself was the source of conflict between the two colonial powers in 1722, when the British raided Elephanta island. There’s still the accusation that the British located a slaughter house on the site of Bandra’s Santana convent, built during the Portuguese era.

An interesting find are documentation of villagers demanding compensation for the submergence of their village during the creation of Vihar lake. “Its the first documented case of a mission village with a communal system of land ownership as in South America, and the priest was seeking compensation for the villagers who lost their lands” says Mendiratta.

Village histories of Kandivli, Marol and many others emerge from the study. Present day Marol is actually the relocated site, after the village was shifted from an original site, due to an epidemic.

As the layers emerge, the team’s initial conclusion is that Portugal’s sixteenth and seventeenth century presence in the area played a not so insignificant role in the region’s urbanistic expansion during the 19th and 20 th century under the British. (ends)

Konkani Film scores internationally/ Pultadcho Munis

The Asian Age, November 2009
It’s taken awhile before a film in Konkani could make it to the honour
position of Indian Panorama’s opener at next week’s International Film
Festival of India. Paltadcho Munis ( The Man Beyond The Bridge) has
that distinction this year. The small budget film made by young Goan
filmmaker Laxmikant Shetgaonkar, and produced by NFDC, won critical
acclaim and the International Federation of Film Critics ( FIPRESCI)
prize in the Discovery section at the 34th Toronto Film festival this
year.

For the region’s fledgling cinema culture, this is a important
breakthrough. It was the first Konkani film to be selected to a major
international film festival and to win an international award. “Far
from the sensory overload of India’s big cities, the film explores
smaller but enduring dilemmas, drawing together keen environmental
sensitivities with a nuanced view of village dynamics”, said the
citation.

Shetgaonkar, has featured in Panorama before. In 2005, his short film
Seaside Story — a narrative of cross cultural friendship between a
white western woman and a Goan Hindu man — was selected, and picked
up a national award.

Ask Shegaonkar about the Toronto award, his subsequent felicitation
and Rs 25 lakh grant from the Goa government, and he downplays both.
“Awards help you to get a bigger audience and some recognition for a
film. They don’t mean much beyond that. It’s just that mine may be one
of the few from this region to get there, that’s why all the fuss”.
The bustle that followed only embarrasses him, a reminder that in the
relatively fledgling Konkani and Goan film making culture, his
attempts have stood out and assumed a different dimension.

It was the human aspect of writer Mahableshwar Sail’s story that
appealed to Shetgaonkar in the first place. “I liked the heroism of
the central character, who defies village sentiment and societal
mores to connect with and love a mentally challenged woman”. Paltadcho
Munis’ protagonist — a lonely widowed forest guard posted in a
remote jungle, finds himself ostracised for his new found friendship
with the abandoned woman. The suffocating narrow conservatism of a
remote hilly village comes to the fore to judge and condemn two
marginalised people, it never bothered with before.

Intrigued by the story, right from 2004, and interested in translating
to celluloid, Shetgaonkar began his research, living in the western
ghat forest villages to get closer to that reality. Developing the
screenplay took another year, when he approached the NFDC, then
strapped for funds. “I pursued other projects in the interim but never
lost sight of this film”, says he. He took the script to several
workshops, including one set up by the British council. It began
getting noticed then.

Shetgaonkar turned down an offer to make the film in Hindi. “It might
have got a bigger budget and probably a different cast altogether,
definitely more exposure”. He turned it down though. Shetgaonkar has
a different goal, creating a kind of cinema movement in Goa, that may
probably never get to be as ambitious as that in Kerala, but a start
nonetheless.

He’s been taking some of his documentaries and short films to rural
schools and villages, and has similar plans for Paltadcho Munis.
Rather than chase another project just yet, Shetgaonkar plans to spend
the next year, taking the film to international festivals and to
theatres in Goa. “I’m a susegad (laid back) Goan. It’s not my ambition
to chase commercial success. If you ask me what I want to be doing
five years from now, I would not be able to tell you anything, except
that cinema for me is life I don’t think creative people can push
themselves to produce anything unless it comes from within”.

In the past, Shetgaonkar has made films on child sexual abuse, and
another in English called “Let’s talk about it”, on a now demolished
red light area.

Does he see himself as a regional film maker? Will he stay with using
Konkani in his films? Not so, he says. “Seaside Story is in Marathi
and English. Goa is liberated enough, and uses several languages. I’ve
made films in English as well, and it works here with some audiences.”

The language a film is shot in must fit the context and mood of the
film to be authentic, that’s his only criteria. He’s not averse to
using Hindi, when it suits the script, or any other language, for that
matter.

But that’s a bridge he’ll cross when he comes to it, he reckons. (ends)

–

Room with a view

The Asian Age
Panaji, Sep 25, 2009:
When restorer Victor Hugo Gomes was awarded this year’s Verodiana
award no one here was particularly surprised. The artist restorer had
just this year launched an ethnographic museum he called Goa Chitra.
Far from the madding crowd, secluded in a coastal village, Gomes had
been tinkering away for years, putting together a astounding
collection, that when it went on display took many by surprise.
Considering it’s a labour of love, a museum that has been
conceptualised and realised by a single individual, with no
institutional support — the effort is awe inspiring,

Goa Chitra represents the culture of ancient Goa . The artifacts on
display reflecting the life, religion, homes, trades and practices of
this small west coast region, that remained even until the mid 1980s
frozen in time — much of its population engaged in primary
activities of agriculture, horticulture, fishing, and in vast swathes
of its interior. ferrous ore mining.

Its creator seems to have had an innate love for all things antiquated
and began a private collection that steadily grew, during a stint he
spent restoring old Indo-Portuguese houses. “People seemed to have no
use for these old seemingly useless household items, so I began
collecting them. Then I went in search of more, trawling old attics
and storehouses of anyone who would let me” says Gomes.

” Over the years I have been collecting old implements and tools,
initially as a passion but over the last few years with the sudden
awareness that a heritage was being lost without documentation, then
the passion turned into an obsession”.

The result is a collection that grew from 200 to 4000 pieces.

Central to Goa Chitra’s display — privately accumulated and
restored — is a 16 ft high wooden oil grinder or ghanno, that also
figures as the museum’s logo. Palm oil extractors of this kind fell
into misuse with mechanisation, and the museum piece was restored from
its broken parts left with an aging “ghannekar” ( a profession that
has since died out).

A walk through the museum’s small display rooms would be a nostalgic
trip back in time for many from India’s coastal regions as some trade
tools tend be more or less similar. Implements associated with the
multi-use indigenous palm tree take pride of place. Not least because
Goa Chitra is located in the south Goa village of Benaulim —- famed
for its eccentrics ( as Gomes points out) and quite literally its
variety of coconut, the Benaulim coconut, acknowledged as one of
India’s largest species and propagated by agriculture research labs).

Tools of the toddy tappers, those of coconut pluckers, the vessels and
implements used to make derivatives like jaggery, vinegar, palm feni
and rope. aside from making an interesting display, also lend a sense
of the elaborate rituals and economic importance these once held in
the region’s plantation and agrarian economy. The museum’s researched
information, contextualises displays for the viewer, enriching the
experience. Collections of masonry tools, carpentry equipment, items
of once daily use by village barbers, cobblers, herders, weavers,
smithys and potters give browsers a sense of professions central to
erstwhile self-sustaining village life.

It’s a surprise to find quaint liquid and grain measures of various
forms used by grocers of yore, traditional implements to churn milk, a
rare wooden rice noodle maker, exquisite oil lamps of pre-electricity
times, palanquins and carriages, a variety of ploughs, household
storage containers, once ubiquitous earthern ware cooking pots with
their varied uses and nomenclature that old timers recall; stone
grinders, antiquated toys, traditional games, customary altars and
religious accessories.

The museum has its sights set on exhibiting much more from the
cultural cornucopia. Plans for a second phase visualises putting
antique jewellery, costumes, medical equipment, crockery and cutlery,
photographs , manuscripts and other art and artifacts on display.

Space is a constraint. Completely self financed by its creator, Goa
Chitra is housed in the middle of a 12,000 sq m organic farm owned by
Gomes’ family. The building itself, in keeping with its celebration of
a “waste-free” culture — is a new construction built using
architectural castaways from 300 traditional houses — giving it a
curious amalgamated look. Wood doors, windows, pillars, rafters and
other material have been consciously resurrected in the museum.

Gomes is unabashed about his admiration for the past — for the
accumulated wisdom of agrarian practices, the beauty of traditional
arts and crafts and the entire harmonious village system that was
sensitive to the environment.

“Goa Chitra believes in reviving age old traditions through the
museum and in outreach programes so that the younger generation can
share the wisdom of the past which would otherwise be irretrievably
lost”.(ends)

Tourist Traffic to Goa

The Asian Age
Panaji, Feb 6, 2010: Tourist traffic to Goa is down 15 % , but visitors from
Russia have registered an upward graph, according to tourism
officials. Holiday makers from Russia heading to Goa are rising this
season, with numbers overtaking the British charter tourist market,
until recently, the largest number from any one country to holiday
here.

Despite the much hyped strained relations over crime in Goa, a total
of 142 flights from three Russian cities have touched down at Dabolim
since October 2009 until January end, bringing over 35,000 Russians.
This year flights from former Soviet republics Estonia and Kazakhstan
also began carrying planeloads to Goa.

“The Russian tourist base has far overtaken those from the UK, which
is hit hard by the recession.” says tourism director Swapnil Naik.
Less than a hundred flights from the UK arrived in Goa this year.

In a recessionary year though, the price of fortnightly packages from
Russia were pre-negotiated at depressed prices, with hotels selling
star category rooms for as low as Rs 200 a day, and tour operators
offering cheap deals to Russian agencies.

The only silver lining tor the region’s tourist industry this year, is
the slow shift over from package charter flights to scheduled flight
arrivals into Goa. “Until recently 80 % of foreign visitors came in
via chartered flights for fixed stay packages. Now this has evened out
to 50 % arrivals via regular flights like the newly opened Qatar
Airways, Air Arabia, Sri Lankan Airways and just launched Swiss Air
flights”, says Naik. This is seen as a good sign for the region’s
tourism, reducing dependency on mass markets to more committed and
discerning travellers.(ends)

Goa to refurbish tourism image

The Asian Age
Panaji, Mar 15,2010: Goa is slowly but surely shedding its “anything goes”
image, as tourism officials and police tighten law enforcement in
tourist related areas.

A series of crackdowns over the past week have heralded an end to the
state’s “live and let live” image, agrees Lyndon Monteiro officer on
special duty for tourism.

“It’s true Goa had this image of an anything goes place, but times
have changed and this image in its negative sense has to stop. We
cannot let it continue”, says Monteiro. He said high power meetings of
tourism stakeholders, police officials and government over the past
weeks following the spate of negative media coverage last month, had
arrived at a consensus of sorts on this.

The result is a crackdown from the police department. In the past
days, several night clubs have been served warnings for blaring loud
music. Officials are contemplating increased patrols in a once
off-limit area of Baga street, known for its night life and party
culture that often spills onto the streets.

Arrests have also been effected in the coastal belt with anti-narcotic
cell picking up three biggies in the drug trade in the past fortnight.
The clean-up has included the police department itself, with five of
its personnel suspended for links with the drug mafia.

As part of pulling up its socks the administration and Goa’s tourism
department has published new advisories to tourists listing dos and
dont’s including asking visitors to avoid going topless on two
wheelers, and cover up while visiting religious shrines. The booklet
published in English and Russian, will likely see a German edition and
other translations in the future, said tourism director Swapnil Naik.

Naik stresses the booklet additionally lists helplines and contact
numbers for visitors in distress.

But there is no denying that the holiday industry is taking a hard
look at its tourism profile. Ralph de Souza, hotelier and head of the
tourism association here has stressed the state has taken a long time
to build its image as a safe holiday destination for families.

Since then the proliferation of night clubs and more recently permits
to casinos has affected that profile, he admits. While seven offshore
casinos are licensed to ply, just two ships are currently operational,
given the stiff competition and high taxes imposed by government.

“I’m sure now they have been permitted, they can be strictly monitored
to ensure they run legally and within the confines of the law”, says
Monteiro. (ends)

–

Grassroots Journalism/Video Volunteers

Grassroots Journalism/Video Volunteers
Feb 2011/The WeekendLeader.com

Far from the hullabaloo of the Raadia tapes, the debate over paid news
and all the upwelling of issues — there’s a quiet revolution on in
the Indian media, and chances are you have not heard of it. But you
will. It’s called India Unheard, India’s first community based news
service, run by NGO Video Volunteers, that has empowered community
residents to tell their own stories. They are in the quest of ensuring
unheard voices, get heard. Visit its website and you can see
a series of stories that look professionally produced, and are
professionally produced but with this one huge difference. Your
unlikely to see a celebrity anchor or hear the same tortured
done-to-death sensational news stories that come out of television
media floors today. Instead you can click on stories that sound and
feel different—- “Onion-producing village cries for onions by Rohini
Pawar, Water so close, so far, by Thanglinlen Daniel Mate, Malta
Farmer Seeks Market Access by Luxmi Nautiyal, Modern Democracy,
Feudal Minds by Ajeet Bahadur.

Powering this concept is Video Volunteers’ husband-wife team of
filmmaker Stalin K and Jessica Mayberry. And the wide network of
people they have banded together to make this a reality. Launched on
World Press Freedom day May 3 in 2010, the ambitious community news
service project, with its 30 correspondents across 24 states have
already produced 200 video stories so far — from far flung Manipur to
Bangalore in Karnataka. This weekend, Video Volunteers, is holding a
refresher course for their correspondents , and a training course for
25 more correspondents it’s adding to its pool, now expanded to over
50.

So is Video Volunteers running a huge news agency, that could rival
NDTV or CNN- IBN? Yes and no. No, because the group has no intention
of following either the agenda or format of corporate driven
mainstream media. “The way mainstream media is structured is to get
mainstream journalists to tell stories, from their perspective. We
stand this premise on its head. We get the poor, dalits, minorities,
women, tribals and other marginalised people, to tell their own
stories from their perspective” says Stalin. Correspondents are
identified with the help of local NGOs, and have to necessarily be
from the poor and marginalised. But that does not mean the programme
is badly filmed or produced. “We may be talking about human rights
issues, but producing sub standard work is not our ethos. We may not
be able to compete with mainstream media on breaking news, but we can
tell stories they cannot”, Stalin asserts.

Go to India Unheard’s website and it’s a series of the most
interesting and intriguing videos that are coming out of India. “We
train them deliberately not to be objective, and to find a personal
connection to tell their story, because we believe that those from the
community are better able to tell their story than anyone else”.
Today’s India Unheard video feed has Zaffar Khan from Kolkata tell the
story of an district in Kolkata where prejudices against the
neighbourhood Muslim community run deep and disturbing. Young men,
even sportsmen on the Indian rugby team are denied passports, their
identity questioned.

Inside the red-tiled roofed office of Video Volunteers in Goa, a
backup production team liaison constantly with correspondents, guiding
them and sorting out queries, while a production team edits the ten minute
raw footage down to a 3 minute capsule, and write out associate
articles to go with each piece. “It’s a virtual production house,
almost a news agency”, says Stalin. The ideal would be to have a
correspondent in every one of India’s 625 districts, to make it truly
representative, he says, and someday they might get there. In the
meanwhile, Video Volunteers is leveraging every alternate avenue it
can, to get eyeballs to its website, and viewers to watch the content
generated. A recent agreement with NewsX will see India Unheard videos
aired on an half hour show called Speak out India. Correspondents and
content is linked on facebook, twitter, and all the other social media
opening up.

In a way India Unheard is Stalin’s logical trajectory since his
acclaimed film India Untouched. The scathing documentary on the
continuing practice of untouchability in India, has won Stalin many
awards, but for the moment this film maker is hell bent on putting a
camera into the hands of as many poor and marginalised people as he
can, hoping they will tell their own story to the rest of India and to
the world. “If the media will not report on the issues of the poor,
one solution is for the poor to make their own media”, says Video
Volunteers’ founder Jessica Mayberry.

Video volunteers began initially as a project where film makers,
largely from the west, volunteered to make free films for Indian NGOs.
That programme then shifted to training NGO staff to make their own
films on the NGO’s work. Finding however, that NGO staff often let their
film-making skills go rusty under the burden of their regular mandate,
Stalin and Jessica hit on the idea of partnering with NGO’s to create
community video units(cvu) — a paid production team of 7 producers
from the local area — who are trained to handle cameras and then
ideate, shoot, edit and screen their community videos to the
community. “Each is a video
magazine on the community, a series of things, a vox populi, an
inspirational story, a case study, a corruption expose with a final call
to action” explains Stalin. Six years after the project began, Video
Volunteers has 15 units across nine states in India. They found that
while it can take years to teach someone to read and write, you could
teach a person to make a film in a matter of weeks. With that Stalin
and Jessica’s team are attempting to unleash the full power of
community video and citizen journalism, and translate democracy in
the media into more than just a cliche.(ends)

Iron Ore Mining/ Up in Arms

See

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2011/may/240511-goa-protests-iron-ore-mining-cavern.htm

Up in Arms
May 2011/Mid-day/Mumbai
From a distance, they seem like an innocuous bunch of women waiting by
the hillside shade for a bus. Across the narrow road, a group of men
cluster. Only the laden iron ore orange tipper truck parked on the
road is any indication that this village in Cavrem, Quepem in South
Goa is the site of a small uprising, that has shaken Goa’s iron ore
mining industry. It is day 27 of the villagers’ blockade of the road,
that has brought all movement of iron ore from five mines in the area
to a grinding halt.

While sporadic protests have broken out countless times across Goa’s
mining heartland, it is the first time villagers have pledged an
indefinite blockade.

On April 13, 2011 over a hundred villagers from this adivasi village
converged on the main road and blocked all ore transportation. A week
later police whisked off the protesters in two vans.That was the only
day that ore moved on the road, under police protection. Since then,
ore exporters and the state government are biding their time, even as
villagers take turns to keep a 24 hour vigil on the road.

“Trucks hurtled down this very road at the rate of two a minute. Both
sides of the road are usually choc-a-block full. Now look at the
quiet. We’ve got our peace back and it feels good, just like before”
says Parvati Velip (40). Shailavati Phonu(42), Visranti Velip, Swatni
Velip (40), Laxavati Velip (55), Anandi Velip, Kamal Velip, Manda
Velip and Naulavati Velip (32), are seated around her, taking their
turn this morning. Up in Velip wada, another group of women chop
vegetables in preparation for a wedding feast that day. Nevertheless
they are still tuned in to the struggle on the road below.
The lone truck driver attempts to negotiate with villagers, pleading
he had stolen this particular consignment and could not possibly
“return” it. The women are firm, the truck reverses and heads back
like hundreds of others who were sent back to the mines to offload,
ever since villagers swore before their temple gods and began their
agitation.

So why have the villagers of Cavrem decided to indefinitely blockade
the road and bring on this fight? “This time we’ve decided that enough
is enough. If we sit on this road and die or die in our houses from
eating all the iron ore dust thrown up by the passing trucks, it’s one
and the same”, says Parvati Velip in Konkani, pointing to the
coating of red dust on every tree in sight. Since five mines opened up
in the village three years back, life has never been the same.

Cavrem went through the same process that other mining villages did.
Adopting its time tested footwork, mine operators used the usual
incorporation and bribe methodology. Some fifteen influential people
in the village were given initial loans to buy tipper trucks, to buy
their silence. Sarpanchas and panchas were paid off. Twenty men were
employed in the companies. The village temple was given a Rs one crore
donation and mine companies began construction of a spanking new
temple just above the old one. “The new temple will never get complete
I’m telling you. In the meantime they will have finished our village”
says Surendra Velip (34) who joins in the conversation.

It wasn’t long before all the enticements became meaningless as
reality set in. Fifteen truckers from the village make money, but so
do 750 more from outside the village, he says.”We don’t have wells in
the village, just five springs, which were more than enough for us
before. Now they are down to a trickle, we’ve got to stand in lines”
Visranti Velip pipes in. People hardly ever fell sick, now deaths
have increased. Children can’t cross the village road, without risking
their lives from the 800 trucks that thunder past 24 X 7 carrying ore,
speeding recklessly to maximise trips and earnings. The last straw
came this year, when production of the village’s prized and famed
chilly crop, came down by more than half, the fields affected by iron
dust. Cashew plantations fared worse.

“The big landlords, the Dessai’s here, have sold their land to mine
operators and have settled in flats in the towns. But we don’t want
the money, just our land and our village. If we sell and spend all our
money, what will our children be left with?” asks Laxavati Velip.

One thing is certain. They don’t want to end up like Usgao and
Dharbandora — small towns at the centre of ore movement — that have
cratered roads, miles and miles of banked up trucks, stretching three
lanes on a two lane road, diesel fumes and mining dust swirling in the
toxic air. Life is hell for inhabitants that have not yet fled.
Entire villages are under siege, their roads unmotorable, getting to
work ,school, hospital, or anywhere, a nightmare. Many protests and
dharnas later, people managed to wrest a concession, ensuring that at
least on a Sunday, mining movement would cease. It’s
the only day of the week, one can access the state’s zoo, or the wild
life sanctuaries further down the route. Accidents are routine and the
district collector has cautioned the government that public patience
had worn thin. An olive branch of a dedicated 40 km mining bypass
corridor road has been proffered by the Goa cabinet, but until this is
built, an estimated 12,000 often overloaded trucks use village roads
to get to riverside barge loading points that ply ore to the Panaji
and Mormugao ports for shipment.

Eighty percent of Goa’s iron ore is dispatched to China, mainly by the
top five ore exporters — Sesa Goa, Sociedade de Fomento, V M
Salgaocar & Bro, Chowgule & Co and Salgaocar Mining Ltd. In 2009, the
industry made Rs 8700 cr.

Four decades of mining have devastated the interior taluks of Bicholim
and Sanguem, leaving irreversible damage in the form of mammoth
craters and abandoned mine pits. Strangely it was the needs of the
Beijing Olympics and China’s insatiable demand for steel that is
morphing the face of Goa.

Up until 2005, India’s only privately owned and 100 per cent export
oriented industry, sent out what now seems like modest amounts of 15
million tonnes annually to Japan’s steel mills, that demanded ore of
56 % ferrous content. Lower grade “rejected” ore was piled up in
stacks the size of hills on every mining site, along with the
overburden soil. For decades stacks of “rejects” presented a major
environmental hazard, slipping into adjoining fertile fields and
rivers, resulting in silting and flooding, while the government paid
crores in compensation, says environmentalist Claude Alvares.
Alvares’ Goa Foundation has filed the maximum number of cases against
the industry.

“In the past seven years there’s been a huge jump” says S Sridhar,
executive director of trade body, the Goa Mineral Ore Exporters’
Association.

China’s willingness to import even low grade ore (even 48 % Fe
content) at prices ranging upto US $ 60 a tonne, came as a windfall.
Overnight earlier rejects were shipped out,and production stepped up,
taking exports from 15 million tonnes annually to the region of 55
million tonnes annually, a three fold increase. On the ground this has
translated into a frenzied madness to mine, strip bare hills,
dig,transport and export. There’s no time or need to
process anything, the earth is simply dug up, all of it is loaded onto
trucks and exported, Sridhar admits.

The Portuguese granted some 700 mining concessions in the last decades
of colonial rule. In 1987, these were cancelled and 336 leases
(covering over 30,000 ha or 8 % of Goa’s land mass) were
renegotiated, and require renewal under Indian law. Of these an
estimated 105 leases are being currently operated. With the China
boom, hitherto closed or unused leases are being re exploited, often
by operators/contractors who don’t actually own the original leases.

The industry is now turning to newer, greener, even forested areas to
mine, in the process turning Cavrem’s blood red chilly fields to dust.
Quepem taluka is the mining industry’s newest target. its emerald
hills on the mining map, One of Goa’s more scenic and fertile regions,
fed by the Khushavati
river and an ancient Portuguese water canal, one passes terraced
fields swaying with the green and gold of paddy crops even in May.
But the landscape of rolling green hills is broken by jagged red
mining sites, and serrated pits where excavators have gnawed deep.
and intend going further still, sucking out all the water from
aquifers in the hill.

But Quepem is resistant. In the heyday of the Goa Bachao Andolan, the
villagers of Colamb in Quepem had a major rasta roko in 2007, the
first in a long series of battles to keep mining out of Colamb. Farmer
Rama Velip, cannot even begin to recall the number of times he’s been
harassed by police for organising his village against mining. Goa’s
original tribals — Gawdas, Kunbis, Velips and Dhangars — are
slowly waking up to the fact that their land and villages are now
being exploited for mining, and have set up a GAKUVED coalition to
counter the trend.

In the village of Maina, neighbouring Cavrem, Cheryl D’Souza is
unwilling to sell her farm to miners, though she’s been offered a
king’s ransom. “We’ve been brought up to fight. If the farm is sold
and mined, what happens to the water in the area? How does one look at
one’s face in the mirror if one does that?” asks theatre director and
teacher Hartman D’Souza (60), who has joined his sister’s campaign to
save the farm. Cheryl, her elderly mother Dora and daughter Aki, ran
several campaigns, chaining themselves to the road at one point, to
draw attention to mining in Maina. But while the administration found
it easy to arrest and dismiss Cheryl, it’s less easy to dismiss
hundreds of blockading villagers in Cavrem.

Mining companies and government went into a huddle last week, in a
meeting called by chief secretary Sanjay Srivastava to “resolve” the
Cavrem impasse. The meet decided to finally implement a hitherto
ignored High Court order to regulate ore transport to day hours until
4.30 and keep trucks at 600 a day — a “solution” Cavrem has outright
rejected. Meanwhile with the monsoon off season approaching, miners
in the area are showing signs of desperation. A journalist was roughed
up at the Fomento mine site in Cavrem. Nilesh Gaonkar one of the
leaders of the Cavrem Adivasi Bachao Samiti was assaulted with iron
rods last week just outside his workplace.

Gaonkar’s assault has got the administration and industry worried it
could turn into a rallying point. GMOEA president Shivanand Salgaocar
quickly condemned the attack. Executive director Sridhar says the
GMOEA is worried by fly-by-night operators that have entered the
arena looking for quick riches and a quicker bailout, consequently
giving the industry a bad name.”There are illegal operators,
transporters and traders who have turned exporters overnight”, he
says.

While ire has been directed at “illegal mining”, sans permissions and
escaping royalty due to the public exchequer — villagers facing the
onslaught dismiss the difference. “Mining is destroying our lives and
fields and health. To us, whether we perish by legal mines or illegal
mining, it makes no difference”, says Cavrem farmer Tulsidas Velip.

The opposition BJP however has been systematically pointing to
transgressions by its political rivals in the Congress and NCP, who
have entered the mining fray. Last week, the BJP insisted crime
branch register a case of cheating against NCP leader Jitendra
Deshprabhu. for illegal mining at his property in Pernem.

Claude Alvares however points out that both the Congress and BJP were
shown as official recipients of Rs 25 lakhs each in the annual report
of Sesa Goa, under a previous management. “No government have ever
shown any will whatsoever to bring the mining industry to check. They
are a rogue industry, a law unto themselves. Every politician, either
directly or through their network of supporters is benefiting”, says
Alvares.

He’s pressing for a complete shutdown of the industry, arguing it has
defied all attempts to be regulated and monitored, corrupting every
government agency in charge of its regulation. “There is no chance
that Goa can survive mining”, he says, pointing to the further 480
applications the government has received for prospecting and the fifty
million tonnes annual target that leading exporter, the Vedanta
subsidiary, Sesa Goa has set for itself in Goa.

Alvares can be dismissed as the impassioned plea of the
environmentalist. But in the Goa assembly’s budget session in March
this year, Speaker Pratapsing Rane expressed his shock at what he
called the “rape” of Goa by mining interests. “Flying over Goa, one
can see huge red gashes in the western ghat tree cover”, he told the
house. It’s hardly surprising. There are 63 leases granted in the
Netravali wildlife sanctuary itself, which though illegal, does not
prevent leaseholders from attempting to push permissions through
forest officials. The takings would be enough to corrupt a saint.

Forest minister Felipe Neri Rodrigues told the house 58,940 trees had
been cut for mining purposes in the last four years, while 1314 ha of
forest land had been diverted since 2008 to non-forest purposes,
mainly mining.

These numbers in itself lend some credence to the pleas of Alvares and
the people of Cavrem.(ends)
–

Jazzing it up

Jazz warriors in Goa/
Soundbox/August 2011
==========================================
Tucked away on the first floor of a nondescript apartment block,
surrounded by lush green paddy fields is the unlikely venue for Jazz
Goa’s recording studio. Nothing much to look at, until —
musician/producer Colin D’Cruz plays recordings of some of the new
talent he has discovered and your mood gets thoughtful. Coming out of
the speakers are songs and voices and instrumentation that could match
any of the new talent emerging out of the unknown worldwide.

There’s twenties something Neil Gomes, a multi instrument player, who
plays saxophone and guitar with equal ease, and a good voice to go
with it. “Neil’s song Perhaps, uploaded onto Soundclick, one of the
internet sites for new talent, climbed to number one on the site among
hundreds of songs uploaded there”, says D’Cruz. Now based in Mumbai,
the young musician is active in the live and recorded music industry
of that city.

Nor is Gomes the only young artiste to find his place in Jazz Goa’s
talent search. Twenty seven other singers and musicians have recorded
original jazz tracts on the Jazz Goa CD. There’s professional singer
Danielle Rebello, whose voice uploaded on the internet got her an
offer to record in Spain. Colin sees promise in many of his young
protegees.

For nine months in 2010 Colin put his love for jazz and building
talent by producing and running the Jazz Goa, slot on FM Rainbow in
Goa. “I showcased purely local talent on the show which ran from
10-10.30 pm every Monday, just to prove to station managers that local
talent can produce good music if encouraged”. Most station managers
blindly plug for Bollywood and international artistes, is his
complaint.

Colin’s song Smoking Chutney was nominated for the 2010 IMA awards in
the world fusion category, with the song picked out for the guitar
solo performance by guitarist Elvis Lobo.

While new talent is slowly finding its space via the internet, it is
Goa’s small but vibrant live jazz music scene that has been creating a
buzz for several years now.

The Saturday Nite Market in Arpora, North Goa, has emerged as one of
the prime venues for jazz and experimental music. While the bazaar —
originally designed by a German settler Ingo Grill — runs as a well
organised sprawling market of stalls, offering wares from shell
earrings to leather boots, to Indian handicrafts — the heart of the
market is its live stage, just off a buzzing food court.

Here, in high season, when the open air market attracts an eclectic
crowd of foreign and discerning Indian tourists, western settlers and
leftover hippies — the ground level stage becomes the setting for a
series of live acts each Saturday. So while fire eaters and African
dancers do their spot acts under starry night skies, there’s a real
cooler vibe when the musicians get on stage. “I’ve heard some of the
best music play at the Saturday nite market. Musicians from all over
the world, passing through, will just land up, contact the organisers,
and offer to play just for the joy of playing to an appreciative
chilled out global audience and that strangely produces some of the
most inspired music, out of the mainstream, and totally mind blowing”,
says hotelier Francis de Braganca.

Local jazz musicians love playing at the market, because the audience
that gathers around the stage is genuinely appreciative and the
ambiance is every musicians’ dream. “It’s a scene that I doubt happens
anywhere else in the world” adds Braganca.Two kilometres away,
Mackey’s nite market, also on Saturdays in the tourist season, runs
similar gigs that offers a stage for jazz and other musicians.

Another favourite jazz concert venue that’s heating up the scene is
Goa Chitra’s small amphitheatre in coastal Benaulim in south Goa.
Every week from October to March, the organic farm cum ethnographic
museum, hosts a jazz/fusion/experimental group for a small intimate
audience of around 200. “We keep it small, but musicians especially
love the intimacy of the place” says Victor Hugo Gomes, proprietor and
curator.

Last year, Goa Chitra had John Law’s Art of Sound Trio play in Goa,
just after their return from the North Sea Jazz Festival, in
Rotterdam. In November this year, Blues’ diva Danna Gillespie is
signed on for a fund-raiser concert. This year on, artistes will be
encouraged to give small workshops as well.

There’s a limited following for jazz, and the workshops are meant to
raise the bar on appreciation and allow young musicians to benefit
from the exposure.

As an event organiser, Gomes has always been more keen on the serious
experimental side of jazz and disdains turning jazz music into family
and tourist entertainment. Gomes still rues the fact that the Jazz
Yatra wound down completely. “Jazz is serious creative music, its a
group of musicians communicating with each other through their music
to create innovative sounds. You can’t do that if people are chatting
and children running around”, says Gomes. What annoys him more, and a
lot of jazz musicians will concur, is that hotels and restaurants pay
musicians a pittance. Jazz bands require a minimum of four musicians
on stage, and with hotels paying less and less for a night’s
performance, sometimes as low as Rs 500, jazz bands have had to
disband, emerge as soloists or duos, killing the magic of the jazz
band.

That is largely the story of Mumbai’s once thriving jazz band scene
that played in hotels like the Oberoi and the Taj. While many of the
greats of the swinging sixties have passed on, some of their younger
followers have relocated to Goa, some returning to ancestral homes, as
jazz warriors effecting a resurgence in Goa’s global tourist village.
Steve Sequeira, Mac Dourado, George Fernandes, Carlos Monteiro, Carlos
Gonsalves, Lester Godinho and Angelie Alvares, have done their bit,
playing jazz gigs in hotels and restaurants.

Victor Gomes can take credit for organising the first Great Music
Revival in the nineties, that brought on stage, the region’s best
known jazz musicians from the late Chris Perry, to Anibal Castro and
Braz Gonsalves. The latter proved that India’s jazz virtuosos could
still fill an outdoor venue, when he gave a memorable performance at a
2011 concert with Louis Banks in Panjim’s Kala Academy, drawing
flawlessly clear notes from his saxophone.

Gonsalves’s wife Yvonne still entrances audiences as she sings with
Jazz Junction each Friday night at the Goa Marriott and at Poco Loco
restaurant in Baga. “I could never give up Jazz music. I’d love to go
on and on and its great to sing in Goa”, says the soft spoken Yvonne,
who definitely picked up a love for jazz music from her late father,
the legendary Chic Chocolate.

Jazz as entertainment in Goa’s many restaurants may not quite be at
the creative cutting edge of music, but it still gives off great
vibes, creates a commercial opening for musicians, and when a
dedicated audience follows, the jazz club scene that emerges is no
less stimulating or creative. Jazz nights with Colin D’Cruz’s Jazz
Junction at Poco Loco is one of the most happening venues for jazz
during tourist season. Diners, mainly middle aged western tourists,
who return year after year, enjoy the drink and food and imbibe
equally of the music. “For the Poco Loco gigs, my good friend Bob
Tinker, plays a mean trumpet, joining us every year for a couple of
months, leaving his own jazz club in France to enjoy the jazz scene in
Goa” says Colin.

Colin swears that Goa is emerging as the new hub for live jazz music
in India. At Stone House in Candolim, one could almost believe that.
Thrice a week, Pascoal Fernandes, strums his guitar
playing jazz, soft rock and retro melodies for an audience of British
long stay visitors who are regulars at the garden restaurant set in an
old Indo-Portuguese villa with an old world charm about it. Pascoal
is a veteran with three decades of playing in jazz bands that graced
Mumbai’s five star hotels, and his virtuosity with the guitar are
proof. Owner Chris Fernandes is proud that Stone House’s reputation
for its music is as acclaimed as for its food and atmosphere.
“Musicians from among the guests, will often get on stage and jam up.
There are regulars like David Peterson, Elvis Rumiao and Tom Lee who
perform here, besides some of the guests themselves” says Chris. No
dance music, no rock-n-roll at this restaurant. Stone House is
oriented strictly towards jazz and the Blues and soft rock.

Jazz Inn in Cavelosim, south Goa is another restaurant run by a lover
of the music. Owner Chris Pereira, a former saxophone player, says
some of the best shows at his eatery are given by tourists, who simply
jam together on the instruments kept on stage. “Some of our magical
nights are when George Hamilton, a tourist and musician, plays his
trumpet and jams with local musicians to create a great atmosphere
united by music and camaraderie that is pretty special and quite
essential to any jazz club”, says Pereira. Wednesdays and Saturday
nights are reserved for blues and jazz, often so full that Chris has
to turn down table bookings.

It is this sort of not so insignificant audience for jazz music, that
some club and restaurant owners are chasing, when they set up special
jazz nights. Pianist Xavier Pires with his small jazz group plays
Thursdays at the Casino Carnaval. The Pentagon restaurant in Majorda,
south Goa chases a small audience, but has an unlikely group of jazz
musicians who jam up to play once a week. The group of jazz musicians
include a priest, a cardiologist, a bank clerk and a farmer!

As with all businesses, they wax and wane, some shut down, some
stagger along, some struggle to build a “scene”. Baga’s Take 5 club
has a tepid on-off scene, while Jazz Corner in Candolim, under a new
management has had a change of character, switching to Rajasthani folk
dances! Restaurants that once featured jazz nights move over to other
genres in search of a paying clientele. And musicians do realise that
jazz has to compete with DJ dance music, techno, rock, reggae, retro,
Latino and standard pop for space. Despite this, jazz has its niche
and lovers of the genre are keen to hold that space and even expand
it.

Heritage Jazz — a concept that married jazz music and heritage
architecture in a colonial mansion in Panjim’s Campal quarter —- has
seen dozens of successful concerts over the past decade.
Non-professional pianist and owner Armando Gonsalves, drove the
concept of holding balcony and courtyard performances by foreign jazz
groups that became hugely popular. Gonsalves is now attempting to
marry Konkani lyrics and jazz to recreate Konkani jazz. Nobody has
forgotten that regional Konkani music got its greatest all time hits
when jazz composer Chris Perry teamed up with singer Lorna Cordeiro in
the sixties. “It’s really the way forward. Someday a Konkani song
could win a Grammy award. That is why I have convinced the five
Monserrate brothers of Mumbai to regroup as a band” says Gonsalves.

Traditional Goan homes under threat from commercial interests

Traditional Goan houses — specially sprawling mansions scattered across the state — are facing a “great threat” from commercial interests and the changing social structure, achitectural experts have warned. “Goan houses are truely splended and display a character and style of their own,” says architect Gerard da Cunha, who leads a team that has put together a unique exhibition on the subject.

Goa’s larger homes have long been the envy of visitors and others, and are unique because of the influence of the long Portuguese colonial influence here. Not all own such homes though. Funded by earnings of foreign-settled expatriates and local landlords, these homes show Italian classical features in their facades.

Such homes often have local azure-white-yellow colours, and pillars and piers that are a mixed bag of architectural styles. “Even Hindus’ homes are very shaped by colonial influences,” says da Cunha. His study looks at the elements that went into the making of large Goan houses, including typical flooring, windows and doors, false ceilings, gateposts and compound walls.

Over many months, he and a team of architects and others, have put together an extensive study of 150 prominent houses in the state. After concluding an exhibition at the Portuguese-run Orient Foundation, he plans to publish his findings in a book.

Da Cunha’s photo documentation seeks to focus on what Goa’s houses were before the advent of the Portuguese in early 1510, and whether current-day homes are “truely” a product of a marriage between eastern and western styles. Goan early migrants to different parts of the globe, including Africa, brought back influences from far and wide.

Some houses show murals of zebras from Kenya and plants from other areas of the dark continent. Goa’s larger homes are also known for their elaborate gate-posts. Some have soldiers and lions in stone guarding the gates. Other homes show Moorish (Arabic) influences.

“Goan houses work in a very common language. But they all do different things,” explains da Cunha. Goa had access to laterite, which allowed very good moulding. Homes had high plinths and were built on a height — both to protect from humidity and as a status symbol. Glass came into Goa only in 1890, and then too, it was very costly. So windows used panels made of natural sea-shells, and glass was used to the minimum.

Broken china was used for making floors. Ironically this china could have come in the shape of ballast for ships. Such ballast was dumped here, after ships loaded goods in Goa, a former prominent centre for international trade. Some of the elite homes still display the coat of arms granted to the families by the former colonial Portuguese government.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: homes, goa, architecture

Homes for elderly and aged proliferate in Goa, reflecting changing times

Goa’s homes for the aged have proliferated in recent years, giving hint of rapid urbanisation and the loss of the old ethos of this region. “(In the past) the old were respected, loved and cared for, and made to feel they were an integral part of the family,” says Dr Ena M. Abreu, who has recently studied aged homes in Goa.

Five decades ago, a visit to a Goan home would mean meeting a large extended family — grandparents, old bachelor uncles and spinster aunts, and an occasional cousin all living under one ancestral roof, she notes. At that time, there was just one home for the destitute aged at Chimbel, a village-suburb of Panaji, which was then run by the colonial Portuguese government. But, the scene has changed vastly.

There are now around thirty homes for the aged, run mostly by non-government agencies. This signals rapid change in the region in recent years. Rapid urbanisation has also gone along with a skyrocketing in the cost of living. Goa is one of the most expensive states to live in, as most consumables are brought in from elsewhere, comments Dr Abreu.

It has also become costly to maintain old village houses. Labour and material costs have gone up sharply. Families also find it better to sell their ancestral homes to developers and move into two or three room flats. “In such a set up, there is just no place for the old,” says she.

Explaining the phenomenon of growing homes for the aged, Dr Abreu says it is also brought on by a “greed for property”. Portuguese law allows for equality in inheritance, but the costs and time spent over litigation makes it “virtually impossible” for the old to fight for their rights. In addition, many Goan middle class families have been impoverished by the Land to the Mundkar (Tiller) law, which Dr Abreu says was brought in to “cultivate a vote bank”.

Colonial Goa lacked banks, and savings were invested in rice fields or coconut groves. These assets were swept from under their often middle-class owners feet, making it tough to support large extended families. Unemployment is also high in Goa, while the young have left for green pastures in the West, leaving the old to fend for themselves.

Dr Abreu adds that Goan society is “unwilling” to cope with the disabiled to alcoholism, which is still considered a “stigma” in rural Goa. Families don’t want to support in rehabilitation, she adds. She adds that while nuns are doing a “very commendable job” in looking after the old, “no amount of care can really make up for the psychological shock by loss of home, family and community.”

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: aging, goa

No politics please, we’re priests

Don’t misuse the pulpit as a political platform, or get caught in the “hustle and bustle” of political activity, That’s the advice to priests of Goa’s fairly influential Catholic Church, from its head archbishop Raul N Gonsalves. In a four-page circular with potential consequences, the archbishop has urged that the “pulpit should never be used as a political platform to propagate or support any particular political philosophy or ideology”.

In a significant stand where politicians have often demanded their ounce of flesh from the Church, the advise urges priests not to offer “special concessions or considerations” to individuals at church services “merely because they hold particular political or public office”.

“Inside the church, all worshippers are to be treated equally,” says the statement signed by the archbishop.

This is perhaps the first wide-reaching statement of its kind issued by a church, which has shown an increasing interest in taking up this-worldly issues and concerns, but has also drawn flak for allowing its pulpit to be misused — at times — to support the interests of certain politicians.

In the past, certain priests have been seen as taking stands which favour certain politicians, particularly in coastal central Goa and areas like Salcete, where the Catholic vote plays a determining result in the elections.

“Prudence demands that priests and religious are not seen to support or promote any particular political party or ideology or candidates through their public pronouncements or conduct,” says the statement.

It says that common platform could be offered to candidates contesting elections, but church premises “should not be made available for the exclusive use of any one political party or candidate”.

Priests should criticise “unjust social structures, or policies and actions” but not target individuals. It calls on priests to avoid taking a stand on technical issues — like industrial projects — unless they understand the issues.

In the past, the church has taken a stand on environmental issues.

But as the statement points out that the “visible presence” of priests or religious at protest rallies against injustice “even though this is their prerogative as citizens in a democractic society” could provide detractors “with an excuse to communalise the issue”.

It adds that priests have a role as “full-fledged citizens in a democratic polity” but need to be prudent while enlightening the faithful “about the social dimension of the Gospel”.

“As good shepherds, priests and religious are required to be involved in issues of social concern as an integral part of their pastoral ministry (and) have an obligation to conscientize the faithful about their responsibility to work for the establishment of a just social order,” says the guidelines.

It also reminds priests that they “have a duty to denounce publicly unjust socio-economic structures which dehumanize and impoverish men, women and children”.

Besides, it says, priests “need to encourage” Catholics to participate in “honest political activity, including party politics” to “fulfil their prophetic role in transforming society”.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: religion, politics, goa

Bad News from Goa: It’s almost official now. The famous open air raves off

It’s almost official now. The famous open air raves of Anjuna have all but fallen silent, giving way to a newer money spinning club culture that rides on the ghost of that reputation. X’Mas night — which two years ago would have seen at least three raves in the undulating ocean front landscape of Anjuna — was silent night in the queen of rave destinations. “Armed police force were posted at all of the four main rave haunts in Anjuna”, says Dr Jawaharlal Hendriques, a one time party organiser. Police headquarters in the capital back up the story. “We allowed no raves this year,” says deputy inspector general of police Ujjwal Mishra, delivering on the official tourism policy of no-raves.

For the Anjuna-Chapora beach hamlets that’s a major turn of the clock.

In the early ‘ninetees, Anjuna was the birth place of Goa Trance, a whole new subculture of techno music put together by a legendary Anjuna hippie-musician resident, Goa Gill.

Blending electronic trance rythm music to the older full moon hippie beach parties — Anjuna and therabouts became the Mecca for Goa trance ravers world over, drawing backpackers and party ravers in their thousands for the all night-all morning raves with its attendant excesses and problems.

Raves divided the bustling tourist villages like nothing before.

Those who dreaded the noise bombarded the press with complaint letters and the police with night phone calls to implement late night sound bans, that had got tighter as sound systems got louder and raves unmanageably more frequent.

Local chai vendors, snack sellers, bar owners, organisers and other stakeholders however gave raves the thumbs-up.

Unrelenting media focus and an official tourism policy that wanted to turn Goa into an upmarket high-spending holiday spot, frowned on the bohemian backpackers and the rave culture.

The free walk-in open air raves are almost extinct, party bonhomie under the stars is over. In its place are a proliferation of clubs that still play trance music, but mix the repertoire to cater to varied taste — sometimes hip hop, evissa house, fusion, even bale bale and “Bollywood nights” for the largely urban Indian club hopper, who wanted a bit of Goa’s rave action but are now stuck with its monetised version.<br />
Since it’s trendy, no one’s complaining. Page 3 celebs, Bollywood, professionals from New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad make one long beeline for Goa’s clubs.

Almost all of the western budget backpackers that favoured the small one-room guesthouses, or hung around street ‘chai’ shops in neighbouring Chapora and Vagator beach have moved further north and south to quieter areas, and most give Goa’s New Year party scene a complete skip.

“Anjuna got 80% backpackers earlier. But they came with their limitations, they hardly spent” says Nandan Kudchadkar who runs Paradiso, a nightclub poised on a wind-blown Anjuna cliff top.

Paradiso still brings in international DJs to dish out Goa Trance in its birthplace — some of them playing unreleased soundtracks to its largely western customers.

The club’s New Year marketing pitch harks back to a “new moon party” — a hint of nostalgia for the full-moon parties of the ‘seventies hippie flower children that first made Goa internationally famous. “Only now the crowd is more upmarket”, says Kudchadkar, in a candid interview.

Paradiso now competes with 20 other clubs in the north Goa belt — at least six of them opened in the past six months, one as recently as a month and half back.

Goa’s oldest club — Tito’s — still has a formidable reputation but it has had to share market space and like other clubs give “add-on attractions” in expensive acrobats, special fireworks, fire eaters et al.

Still at Rs 600 to Rs 5000 cover price that club hoppers cough up during New Year’s week long party, clubowners reckon their costs even out.

If clubbers are 40% of the tourist inflow during New Year’s week — as one estimate surmises — that’s a lot of clubbers and serious business.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: tourism, goa, raves

Grapes could turn sour, as Goa looks to the humble bind’na for wine

It’s not a case of sour grapes, but the Konkan’s favoured kokum fruit is being seriously explored as a potential wine that could impress sommeliers. Sitting in the Goa University’s botany department, is a glass garafao with 50 litres of wine made of the fruit locally known as kokum (bindam, or Garcina indica). It is waiting out a further three months to maturity. “People have apple cider, so why not kokum wine? Style seekers with lifestyle ailments can sip kokum wine and do their bodies some good as well,” says Miguel Dr Braganca of the Kokum Foundation that’s backing the university project.

The red fleshy kokum rind juice, consumed fresh, dried or bottled is the region’s household coolant, and follows every meal in the form of a digestive known locally as ‘solkadi’.

Agriculturists and scientists believe the fruit — with its wonder chemical hydroxy citric acid or garcinia acid — has medicinal properties to resist fat accumulation, with benefits for obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure problems.

Although fermented to produce wine in some households in the state, botanists Kumud Phadte and Dr Nandkumar Kamat set out to standardise and perfect what traditionally has been an essentially cottage production.

While traditional home wine-makers use bakers’ yeast as a poor substitute for the specialised and costly imported wine yeast, Phadte wanted to first isolate a natural yeast from the fruit itself, coming up with eleven strains.

With the natural fruit yeast, preliminary smaller trial quantities produced a clearer wine with improved bouquet, says Phadte.

Dr Kamat is hopeful the current trial will pave the way for commercial production of kokum wine, though some who have tasted it say further improvements on bouquet and taste would necessarily have to precede mass production.

Home and cottage wine-making in the state have used an array of tropical fruits from jambul (the java plum), karondas to beetroot and other juicy fruit and vegetables. Agriculturists like Braganca insist that the jambul wine with medical benefits for diabetics, among others have unexplored commercial potential, if traditional methods are perfected to improve taste, clarity and bouquet.

Homemade cashew wine already sells for Rs 150 a bottle locally, for those who prefer it to more fiery cashew alcohols — uraq and feni — the better known Goan brews.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: goa, beverages, wine, traditional fruit

In Goa, the red carpet comes in the form of land

Goa is rolling out the red carpet offering land and utilities for a host of hi-tech service industries, from information technology and allied sectors to pharma and biotech SEZs. Adding allure to its panoramic sea view IT Habitat site in the premium Dona Paula area outside Panaji, the government recently earmarked additional 80,000 sq metres for a residential city, club house and mall adjoining the sprawling 184,000 sq m habitat inaugurated earlier this year.

Promoters — the Goa Infotech Corporation are currently upbeat that it managed to net IT major Wipro, who negotiated for an additional exclusive 100,000 sq m near the Habitat. An initial lukewarm response from the IT sector has now given way to some thirty applicants, said IT minister Dayanand Narvekar

His ministry is making its most serious pitch to hitch the state onto the IT bandwagon, after a series of false starts in earlier years. Plans to develop an IT park are also underway, with the government acquiring 600,000 sq m in Mr Narvekar’s constitutency.

A further two IT parks have been identified for SEZs at the state’s premier Verna industrial estate. Site developers Paradism Logistics Pvt Ltd and Macgrow Company Pvt Ltd have signed lease deeds with the Goa Industrial Development Corporation for 265,000 sq m and 200,000 sq m sites, managing director A V Palekar told this newspaper.

IDC has similarly leased 500,000 sq m to Inox Mercantile Company Pvt Ltd to develop a biotech park/SEZ at Verna, 750,000 sq m to K Raheja Company Pvt Ltd for a services park and 132,000 sq m to Planet View Mercantile Comany Pvt LTd for a gems and jewellery park.

Though initially leased as sites for specialised parks, the developers are expected to put in applications to set up SEZs at each of the locations, Mr Palekar said.

Cipla subsidiary Meditab Speciality Pvt Ltd, alloted 200,000 sq m in interior Goa for a pharma park is the first to formally apply for a pharma SEZ. IDC has also firmed up a ninety year lease to Peninsular Pharma Research Centre Ltd for a biotech park at Sancoale in central Goa.

Over the past five years, the state had witnessed a capital flight as industries migrated to states who offered better subsidies under union budget proposals.

Shifting away from manufacturing, Goa plans to now plug into the service, IT, ITES (IT-enabled services) and KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) sectors — seen as a pathway to white collar jobs, identified as its biggest employment sector.

Riding on the sidelines is a Rs 70 crore (Rs 700 million) path-breaking Goa Broadband project to lay fibre optic cables upto each village with corollary broadband connectivity, cable, and high speed telphony.

While the IDC has offered land at Rs 600 per sq m, the Infotech Coporation this week raised its prices to Rs 4800 per sq m for its habitat plots.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: land, industry, goa

Shakeout in Paradise: Things get tough for long staying tourists in Goa

It was peak season at the modest English and continental cuisine eatery Welma Hicks operated in Calangute. Not the best time for a summons to police headquarters. “A letter from a home office undersecretary simply said I’d been refused an extension on my business visa, since I was running a petty business of no value. I had 15 days to leave, though my visa had three months to run,” says Ms. Hicks.

Hicks took a hurried flight back to Birmingham; returned with a one year business visa, but was dismayed she had to exit every six months. “How do I run a business if I have to leave the country every six months?” she asks. In 2004, things had been a lot easier. Then, a two year business visa had seemed effortless; a one year extension granted at the Panjim Foreigners Registration Office in February 2006 without demur.

Hicks (name changed) is among scores of others being asked to leave for overstaying, or running businesses without proper permissions and visas. Authorities are no longer willing to overlook irregularities — a sea change from an ultra-liberal approach that marked the region’s long association with its Western visitors.

Something had changed over the past year, the hitherto welcoming atmosphere in Goa had frosted over. Ask around and foreigners say coveted five year X-visas that grant residency — once liberally handed over — have all but dried up; long term residency is actively discouraged, even tourist visas are being shortened, and those seeking extensions or renewals have to return to their country of origin to re-apply.

Goa has had a long tryst with visitors from the West — hippy peaceniks, counter-culture backpackers, adventure travellers, nirvana seekers, ravers, package holidayers, middle-class pensioners — quite a few opting to settle down or return repeatedly to sample its many charms. Some 2.5 million tourists, a third of them foreigners, have made Goa a tourism hot-spot. Picking up a holiday or winter home is quite often the next agenda of the more ambitious or the more smitten.

The exchange rate takes foreign pensions a longer way in Goa — affording a lifestyle not possible back home. Add a semi-Westernised mileau, a global meeting place six months of the year, an array of restaurants or pubs and karaoke bars and the upside of a semi-permanent life here outweigh the negatives.

The rush to buy real estate that could be got as easily in Spain, Turkey, Bulgaria or Greece seems to have monetised a once-easy relationship. Properties in Goa are on every international global investment listing. All the signs say local inhabitants are no longer sure if they should be flattered, tolerant or cautious. “There’s been an anti-foreigner campaign in the local media for the past two years.

There’s a tendency to blame us for all of Goa’s problems,” rues Briton Jan Bostock, owner of a tourism multi-service company he operates in Goa with his Indian wife Arti. Most Westerners, he says, stay on and blend with the culture, often restoring heritage houses.

“We want to be a part of Goa, to enjoy its food and culture. We are not trying to change Goa into anything else, we are here because we love it here. But foreigners are being scapegoated, because Goans who resent the invasion of Mumbai and Delhi speculators cannot really complain about them, and they are the ones investing more heavily in land,” says Bostock.

“Everyone wants a piece of the Goan pie.” Only the other day a Delhi party bought a property for Rs 55 lakhs (Rs 5.5 million), held it for a few days and sold it to a foreign buyer for Rs 1.50 crore”, says tourism watcher and campaigner Roland Martins. With land prices appreciating at 15-20% annually, speculation is a viable option. Local politicians and neighbourhood land Mafias are very much in on the deals. As an easily identifiable and unrepresented group, foreigners feel they are taking the fall, acting as a red herring.

Cases are piling up — authorities doing a check on 482 cases of foreigner property purchases for FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act 2000) violations, are simultaneously checking visa categories for overstays and occupation. Some 26 were asked to leave in 2006, 16 in 2007. Some 311 of the 482 property registrations are British, 26 Italian and 2 Russian. The lid blew off the purchases when they went from innocuous apartment or villa and home purchases to larger swathes of land.

Several Britons, Americans, Germans and Italians have registered plots above 25,000 sq m , a couple of Russian buyers using local partners to pick up out-of-bounds agriculture and plantation plots. Land and built-up prices have shot up seven fold — apartments and homes out of the reach of middle class locals at Rs 16 lakhs for modest two bedroom apartments, contributing to growing xenophobia.

Legislator Agnel Fernandes, representing the coastal Calangute constituency, has repeatedly brought to the Goa Assembly notice that foreigners were taking over even micro tourism services, from care-taking, rentals, water sports, running restaurants and pubs — and thus “marginalising locals”. “What seems to be going on is a process of regulation and streamlining, to set new procedures,” says Roland Martins, a contrast to the anything-goes approach.

Goa police DIG Ujjwal Mishra concurs, and told The Asian Age: “The earlier laid-back attitude has gone. We can no longer be lenient to over-stayers. We’ve had to tighten things”. Security concerns and media focus on tourism’s negatives, though often exaggerated, he claims, have forced their hand.

“The tightened visa regime is quite clearly to restrict foreign nationals from meeting residency criteria (182 days) under the Foreign Exchange Management Act that permits business, professional or employment categories of foreigners to purchase and hold immoveable property in India,” says a local lawyer. FEMA’s provisions have been stretched to their maximum — to their outer limits in Goa, with legal interpretations violating the spirit of the legislation.

For the moment though, the Goa government is sending out clear signals. “I’m afraid we can’t let people retire here. India’s visa regime at the moment has no “right to abode” or “right to settle permanently” in India without acquiring Indian citizenship. There is no such category, and all visas go upto maximum five years,” says Goa chief secretary J P Singh.

Central Home Ministry directions he received in 2006 have specifically asked states to stop registrars from registering property sale deeds by all non-Indians, unless routed through the Reserve Bank of India and the state home department “Instructions are that only foreigners on a business visa can buy and register property in India, and business visas are not freely given out,” says Singh.

FEMA’s ambiguous wording have left the act open to legal interpretation, under which thousands of foreigners on tourist and entry visas continue to pay for land, old houses, villas and apartments in Goa, several burning their fingers in the process.

Meanwhile, despite the uncertainties of an Enforcement Directorate investigation that’s delving deeper upto 1999 cases and threats of confiscations, Goa’s robust if overheated property market hasn’t skipped a beat. Buyers are being offered an array of options from five year rolling leases (on freehold payment) with promissory notes or shares in the project; an agreement to sell or buy deeds with ownership rights and final registration on qualification. Others, including a couple of British-owned estate sellers operating in Goa, are registering fake companies for tourists to enable property purchase.

With many, these pass muster. “I don’t actually care about freehold ownership. I just want to live there a few months of the year,” says a 48 year old Welshman, on an expat discussion forum focussed on staying overseas. With homes in Britain coming at over 300,000 pound sterling, the 35,000 to 65,000 pounds that fetch premium one storey villa at current prices in Goa, are still a steal. But there could be a sting in the tail of this unusual story. “Much of these are illegal and a circumvention of the law,” says chief secretary Singh.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: tourism, goa

Goa’s planned second offshore casino runs into trawler protests

Goa’s second offshore casino owned by Hotel Leela Venture has, for the moment, run into protests from local fishing trawler owners, prior to its launch. The Leela’s luxury catamaran, refurbished to operate a floating casino, has been targeted by fishing boat owners, who want the vessel towed out of a narrow crowded estuary in Mobor, South Goa. “The river is ours, we just don’t want the boat here”, says sarpanch Edwin Barreto.

This week, protestors have raised the pitch of their confrontation, delivering deadlines to the administration. They blocked the River Sal with canoes and boats from the jetty, forcing the administration to deploy a strong police force and call for a negotiated settlement to diffuse tension.

The jetty association is particularly against plans to desilt the river to accommodate the casino and its special jetty.

Dredging would disturb marine ecology, fishing and open up the river to other tourism related crafts and activity, fears the association.

Refuting this as a “misinformation campaign” in a signed advert, the Leela hotel management said the portion sought to be desilted was a small stretch fronting the hotel property that had legal permissions.

“The desilting work is nowhere near the movement area of the trawlers and hence any apprehension to the contrary is baseless”, it said.

Once operational, the Leela offshore casino will officially be India’s second live gaming outlet — its only competition the 215 foot long Casino de Goa, aboard the M V Caravela that plies short cruises in North Goa’s wider Mandovi river.

The state government has alloted ten offshore licenses on a first come first serve basis, but current market estimates the industry could not sustain more than three casinos. Hotel Leela Ventures’ Singapore built catamaran was first in the new list of license holders to operationalise.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: issues, goa

A race to set up five shipboard casinos heats up in Goa

A race to set up Goa’s five shipboard casinos has heated up here, with investors rushing to ready boats, procure permissions and find scarce jetty space. State authorities initially planned to license ten offshore live gaming casinos, but scaled down to five in December 2006. “We’ve granted licenses to two boats, the M V Caravela and Hotel Leela Palace. Three more licenses will be granted on a first come first serve basis”, says Goa chief secretary J P Singh.

Twenty-two companies have put in applications, including Goa Coastal Resorts and Recreation Pvt Ltd — reported to be tying in with Nepal casino king Richard Tuttle. Tuttle has announced plans to operationalise a three storey casino luxury ship in Goa by the year end.

On Tuesday, Hotel Leela’s Casino Rio aboard a Singapore-built catamaran ran into further trouble with local protestors. Dredging work to accommodate the boat on a narrow river, crowded with fishing trawlers, was halted for the second time in a year.

The yet-to-be-launched Casino Rio is believed to be partnered with Tuttle’s rival Rakesh Wadhwa. Wadhwa also has interests in three of the seven electronic casinos running from five star hotels in Goa, according to sources.

A third Mississippi river-type paddle wheel boat, bought from the US, is meanwhile being refurbished by owners V M Salgaocar & Sons at a local shipyard.

The company is still processing its papers to operationalise the casino, on north Goa’s Mandovi river, where the Advani Pleasure Cruises-Casino Austria joint venture Casino Goa on board M V Caravela currently enjoys a monopoly.

The local government has upped annual licensing fees from Rs 1 crore to Rs 5 crore (Rs 10 to 50 million). In addition it picks Rs 320,000 lakhs a week on an entry tax from 1600 passengers estimated to visit the Caravela.

Electronic casinos using slot machines were legalized in Goa in 1993, while high limit offshore casinos were permitted since 2000. Among the license applicants are construction conglomerate DLF Ltd and Creative Gaming Solutions, Mumbai.

Casino operations are not quite popular with a vocal segment of the local population, who see the indsutry as a corrupting influence. Church and other citizen’s bodies have backed protests against the Leela’s Venture in South Goa.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: issues, goa

Unpublished work, dashed off as a .doc file, draws wows for an Indian bureaucrat

Being long-listed for the 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize for his first unpublished novel “The Sound of Water”, has naturally drawn in fresh interest from publishers and literary agents in Indian Revenue Service officer Sanjay Bahadur’s fictional work. Bahadur is however now biding his time, after the July announcement of the long list, which saw his novel figure among 23 Asian works listed for the prize.

Sponsored by the Man Booker international award backers Man Group plc, the inaugural new literary award for Asian unpublished works in English is aimed at bringing the continent’s best literature to world attention.

“Nobody believes I sent the raw unedited manuscript by email in a word document, not even the PDF format, to the award website. I was just shooting from the hip, the procedure was easy and am not even mentally thinking I’ll get any further,” says the unassuming bureaucrat.

But as an outsider to the literary and publishing game — Bahadur’s recent success is inspirational.

“The Sound of Water” — a literary fictional work which tracks the thoughts of a trapped coal miner, a family member and a company manager during a nine hour rescue effort — was penned during Bahadur’s years (2002-2004) as director at the Ministry of Coal.

But with no literary agents in India, the novel went through three publishing houses, and lay dormant.

“Of course you begin to doubt yourself then, but writing was a hobby. My friends thought I was good though,” says the 1989 batch IRS officer, whose literary flair sprouted initially in Mumbai’s Elphinstone College wallpaper magazine.

A shortlist for the Man Asian Literary prize will be announced in October, for the final award ceremony in November 2007. Indian authors dominate the long list with 12 of the 23, chosen by a panel that looked at 243 submissions.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: writing, goa

Goa, caught between rival protests and lobbying, might re-study what “offshore” casinos really mean

An on-going controversy over permissions to casinos in the state has taken an unexpected twist, with one group coming out in favour of the gambling activity allowed only in this part of the country. Locals owing allegiance to Goa PWD minister Churchill Alemao’s Save Goa Front have held meetings supporting a casino boat sought to be operated by Hotel Leela Palace in South Goa.

A large meeting backed the dredging in the River Sal where Leela’s shipboard Casino Rio is currently anchored.

Over the past weeks, another sections of locals, backed by Goa’s Catholic Church and a citizen’s movement called the Goa Bachao Andolan had opposed river dredging and wanted the boat out of traditional fishing waters.

Following pressure from agitators, the state government had asked the hotel to tow away its vessel. However the management has stuck to its stand, arguing it had all the licenses and permissions to operate the casino.

Since then the hotel has indicated it would pursue legal strategies in the matter. “The state government is also assessing the legal definition of the term ‘offshore’,” chief secretary J P Singh told this newspaper.

Singh’s statement indicated that both were preparing for a legal tussle over the issue. Under the law in Goa, amended in the early 1990s, casinos are only allowed in “offshore” areas. Goa’s first casino has been plying a few meters away from the state-capital of Panaji, in the Mandovi river, and this has so far been considered as “offshore”.

With protests building up, the administration wants to take a safe position, and may ask the two licensed casinos to stick to actually anchoring offshore.

Though licensed as offshore casinos, the lone Casino de Goa anchors at a government jetty in Panaji, taking short cruises in the Mandovi river. Leela’s Casino Rio sought to do the same, while another operator has put in requests for jetty space.

Mr Alemao’s SGF — ranged in support of the Leela’s venture — has sought equal implementation of offshore for both the licensed vessels, if Casino Rio is to be dragged out into open seas.

Chief Minister Digamber Kamat has distanced himself from the casino licensing imbroglio saying the decision to permit four more offshore casinos had been taken by an earlier government, under former chief minister Pratapsing Rane.

Of the 22 applications received, three are ahead in the race, readying boats for the first come first serve licenses. These include the Nepal linked Richard Tuttle tie-up with Goa Coastal Resorts, mining firm V M Salgaocars, and Subhash Chandra’s Zee group through its Creative Gaming Solutions.

Meanwhile, not all in Goa’s bustling tourism sector are happy with the casino flotilla.

Leading hotelier Ralph de Souza said here additional shipboard casinos, over the five being permitted, would affect the state’s positioning as a family tourism destination.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: issues, goa

Goa shows some signs of getting serious about conservation

[Below, Aguada, Tivim, Corjuem and Cabo-de-Rama forts.]

 

 

Goa is showing signs of getting serious about maintaining and conserving its trove of forts, old churches, temples and heritage structures, inking an MOU with national heritage INTACH trust for a five year partnership. Though Goa’s state’s achives and archeology department has a listing of 51 monuments to protect and preserve, besides several hundred in colonial era mansions not listed — the department lacks manpower and knowhow.

The base of the tie-up is a Rs 20 crore (two hundred million rupees) grant the state has been alloted by the twelth finance commission for spends on heritage maintainance.

Private initiatives over the past decade have demonstrated the multiplier effect of heritage conservation as a magnet for upmarket cultural tourism segments.

Vistors throng to World Heritage Momuments maintained by the Archeological Survey of India, but dozens of other sites are in neglect.

Foreign trusts restored a few sites, while private investors have restored and opened up several old mansions, as cultural tourism creates a lucrative niche and tourism entreprenuers are positioning to leverage these.

Spurred on by a growing and vocal heritage conservation movement, the administration has kickstarted a major drive.

In the first phase, four major forts have been indentified for restorative work under INTACH supervision.

These include a rugged riverside Reis Magos fort across capital Panaji, an ocean-facing windswept mountain top Cabo de Rama fort in south Goa, the St Anna church (one of Asia’s older and larger churches) and a St Estevam island fortress.

In addition, department heads have a plan ready for the maintainence of 51 listed monuments in its care.

The MOU with INTACH will see departments and the cultural body work out modules for conservation , besides enlarge the listing. The MOU spelt out areas for reosurce and knowlegde sharing and a speedier process for tendering out works.

Two of the four projects have seen progress, with INTACH bringing in UK billionaire Lady Helen Hamlyn Trust to fund the Reis Magos fort restoration, while the World Monument Fund is part financing the St Anna church restoration, INTACH local rep and dogged conservationist Mario Miranda told this newspaper.

“It’s taken nearly two decades, if not more, to get to this. Let’s keep our fingers crossed”, the celebrity cartoonist said.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: conservation, goa

Goa’s food, travelling the globe, fighting for space at home

There’s probably a Goan restaurant on every continent. For sure Sydney has one, so does Toronto, and other major world cities probably do as well, going by the vast far flung Goan Diaspora and the many who have taken to the culinary arts as a profession. Tourism has introduced Goan cuisine to every intrepid traveler that touched these shores, sparking a whole new lip smacking interest in pork vindalho, bebinca, mackerel reichado, and crab xec xec. But here in the diminutive region with its larger-than-life brand image, authentic traditional Goan cuisine (a blend of Goan, Portuguese and coastal Hindu and Saraswat cooking) is fighting a real battle to stay on the menu, and even on dining tables at home.

While other Indian traditional cuisines have suffered from the onslaught of modernity, working multi-tasking moms or wives, nuclear families, easy sachet meals, spices and fast foods — a few think traditional Goan cooking would find it harder to survive, except for its almost addictive hold on its consumers.

Reason: it is complicated enough to start with. A typical family fish meal takes all morning, from the purchase of fish, its cleaning, scraping of the ubiquitous coconut (extracting its juice for more refined tastes) preparation of the curries, rice and all essential fried fish.

Add expensive, since sea food and coconuts are costlier and scarce. Besides labour intensive since no machine can yet descale and devein fish and prawns and the market is not yet differentiated or large enough to support assembly line pre-cleant seafood, even if price and flavour meet acceptable standards.

For precisely these reasons, among the thousands of restaurants doing business in Goa, only 8 to 12 serve up an authentic Goan-only gastronomic experience, says whiz chef Fernando da Costa, speaking at an international cuisine conference.

“You have to be mad like me to run a Goan specialty restaurant these days”, he says as he relates his struggle to maintain Nostalgia, the famed rustic Goan gourmet restaurant he runs in Raia, South Goa, from a colonial Indo-Portuguese mansion. Here, this retired executive chef, pursues his passion, and promises a nostalgic culinary experience to “revive memories of the days your grandpa fancied grandma”.

But bringing back the authentic flavour of spices hand pounded and ground on stone grinders, cooked on slow wood fires in earthen pots to lend an unmistakable and unique smoked aroma, is really the time consuming benchmark of a Goan gourmet experience, where until the past two decades, time stood still.

Speciality Goan restaurants run into high food costs.

According to the chef: “It’s a known fact that Chinese food costs are around 16-18%, north Indian cuisine around 22-24%, continental cuisine around 26-28 %, food costs in Goan cuisine works out to about 32-34 %”

Another challenge is to place it on an a la carte menu, says artist Subodh Kerkar who experimented with setting up the first niche Goan Saraswat cuisine restaurant Waves, but since modified it to a fusion and multicuisine outlet. “Many of the dishes like sprouted lentils require advance preparation, not possible for an al la carte menu”, says Kerkar.

The entire repertoire of Saraswat cooking, is however getting its commercial break, coming out of its thriving temple or marriage and home based status.

The Mandovi’s Rio Rico, Café Tato, Café Bhonsule and Ritz Classic in capital Panaji serve Goan Hindu vegetarian cooking — a distinctive cuisine that’s also on the menus of the famed Goa Portuguesa in Mumbai. Recent cookbooks have documented and made accessible hundreds of preparations.

A host of other eateries that initially offered mainly Goan dishes, have had to adapt the fiery red chilly and pepper based food to tamer versions to suit continental touristic tastes, besides expand menus to include Indian, Chinese and continental to survive.

Culinary purists though tend to be more passionate about “the real thing”, besides showcasing variety, instead of just a few favorites. Nostalgia boasts of 300 Goan dishes in soups, starters, main courses and deserts on its long term menu and 120 available daily.

At the conference he joined fellow restaurateurs in making a plea for government recognition and support, in promoting and subsidizing Goan culinary art as a cultural heritage, as it does other art forms.

“We showcase everything possible under the sky, except the one thing nobody can do without, and that would go towards creating a total Goan experience”, he laments.

At the budget end though, tea stalls with limited but popular breakfast and snack favorites of “patto bhajis”(lentils in spicy coconut) and xacuti (distinctive fried coconut , onion and spice preparations of chicken, mutton, mushroom) and thali-serving khanawols that dish out almost home-cooking for working people — do roaring business, aided by lower running and taxation overheads.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: food, goa, cuisine

Muslims in Goa find it difficult to set up prayer houses, burial grounds and madrassas

Muslims in the state of Goa are finding it difficult to set up prayer houses, burial grounds and madrasas. They’re running into a series of objections, amounting to denial of the freedom of religion rights, a citizens’ group has alleged in an official release. Citing a series of recent cases, the Citizens’ Initiative for Communal Harmony (CICH) said it was concerned about “the pattern which has been emerging in Goa of preventing Muslims in Goa from practising their faith under one pretext or another”.

CICH has pointed to two cases in South Goa, where objections ironically have come from sections of the Christian dominated villages. A village panchayat in Chinchinim, South Goa has recently issued a show cause demolition notice to a structure being used as a prayer house by the Al-Gulshan-e-Sunni Muslim association.

Christian villagers in an action committee raised several objections to the prayer house, citing noise, its closeness to a residential quarter and other concerns, that the CICH says amounts to propagating prejudice.

A complaint against the prayer house also raises specious and unsubstantiated claims of the structure possibly being used as a “haven for terrorism”.

“It’s sad that all the post 9/11 propaganda equating islam and terrorism seem to be rearing its head here, leading to even Christians (another minority in Goa) objecting to Muslim prayer houses,” says CICH convenor and lawyer Albertina Almeida.

Objections against the prayer house, are only the latest in a series of cases that have seen Muslims in the state on the back foot.

“Objections are raised based on alleged illegalities, but at the first step itself, the trusts are not allowed to transfer land purchases to their name with objections to the construction of prayer houses and madrasas,” says Almeida.

Though prayers were being said at the venue from 2002, objections escalated here recently when the trust sought to register the transfer with the local panchayat.

In another Christian dominated village, Save Goa Front legislator Reginaldo Lorenco took a group of fifty people to object to prayers being said at a garage in Curtorim village.

They backed off only when they were assured there were no plans to convert the garage into a mosque and that only the owners workers would say prayers there.

On Saturday, the Sunni Jamaat ul Muslameen general secretary Noor Mohamed Shah issued a press note saying it had “decided to drop the idea of government to acquire a burial place adjacent to an existing burial ground since we Muslims want to live in harmony as the other community has raised objections”.

The age old kabrastan in a crowded quarter of Goa’s commercial Margao town had long become inadequate. The communities attempts to get permissions for a new kabrastan ran into repeated objections from villagers, even in several areas where they had purchased the land.

The issue has been hanging fire for several years, with state chief minister and Margao legislator Digamber Kamat promising to sought out the issue. Though the government acquired an adjacent plot local Christians and Hindus raised objections, taking out two morchas in protest.

The administration is believed to be currently working out a solution by identifying another area.

The CICH meanwhile has met with state chief secretary voicing concern over the recent trends. In March 2006, objections to a prayer house in interior Curchorem led to a night time demolition and planned targetting of Muslim homes in Goa’s first communal trouble in recent times.

Since then saffron groups have stepped up a hate campaign against Muslims, cleverly equating them with “outsiders” to enjoin the support of Christian minorities, charged CICH activist Vidyadhar Gadgil.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: religion, minorities, goa

Goa’s port in turf war over coastal land claims

Goa’s state administration and Mormugao Port Trust which runs its lone port have got into a turf war over territory — both in the sea along this littoral state and over land the MPT claims control over. The immediate provocation for the wrangle came when MPT in a series of local media adverts, claimed it had jurisdiction over waters around the port and a considerable ocean water area far south of the port in Betul. This goes abutting a coastline lined by a series of luxury resorts. Claiming that a notification in the year 2000 had given it further jurisdiction, the port advert notified that all jetties, and developments in the area required MPT’s go ahead.

Coming as it did after the state administration was examining its legal position for locating off shore casinos, the MPT advert was the proverbial red flag to an administration already reeling under citizens’ objections to casino boats on rivers.

Escalating disenchantment to the casinos running along river side quays had thrown up the option of putting them offshore, while ferrying punters by speed boat. The administration was set to pick Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) in annual fees from the five boats, in addition to other taxes.<br

MPT’s claims — made public at this juncture and seen as a move to elbow in — has only angered the state goverment. A cabinet meeting last week took up the matter and set up a special committee to examine MPT’s claims. “Under no circumstances should the port trust impinge on our state rights”, said chief minister Digamber Kamat.

The state has powers over its territorial waters and would assert its rights, Mr Kamat said. To add its own measure of pressure on MPT, the committee would also reexamine MPT’s leasehold lands in the state.

Going on the offensive, Mr Kamat said “all the land in possession of MPT is government land. We will examine the terms of the lease and check if payments are being made”.

Stepping up the pressure on MPT, Goa finance minister Dayanand Narvekar told this correspondent that the committee would look at all the land holdings the MPT is claiming jurisdiction over.

The hundred year old Mormugao port was developed further in 1963 and came under the major port trust act, when iron ore exports picked up in the state. As a single commodity port, handling iron ore, the port has since marginally diversified. The current row marks its firstmajor run-in with the state government in recent years.

MPT officials were unavailable for comment. Its claim to ocean jurisdiction over the Betul area could however be contested, knowledgebale sources said.

This area was once included because of erstwhile ore movement that has since stopped. State authorities could technically petition central ministry for reconsideration of this area, sources said.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: news, land issues