Encountering Mario

A tribute to the work of the famed cartoonist from Goa, Mario de Miranda.

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Tags: goa, india, cartoonist, mario miranda, digital story

So Often…

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.

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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.”

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Tags: news, land issues