Random Musings- Rethinking Nationalism

Attaining adulthood within the confines of an institution with a strong and vocal liberal arts community, I learned my lessons well. Nationalism was not a good word but a problematic one. It was problematic because its act of creating a national patriotic community, necessarily required the creation of an alien and enemy. To be Indian, you had to have a Pakistani to validate your existence and give a meaning to your identity. The national project does not limit itself to creating external outsiders though. The national project invariably in the hands of a dominant group within society identifies a definite agenda and then commits the rest of the population, with or without their consent to this project. Opposition to this project, even if it be on valid grounds of the destruction of your bases for leading a basic human existence brands you anti-national. And so we have the dam building and other developmental projects in India and the branding of groups that oppose them. Further the national project also needs to create a national community, and similarly identifies the cultural markers of the national citizen. It does not matter if the identified culture is something you don’t identify with, or following it would destroy your own culture. Comply with it you must, or face the wrath of the angered nation-state. And therefore you have the suffocation of Urdu, of Romi Konkani, the murdering of Muslims and the persecution of tribals.

For those of us committed to a utopian ideal, of fraternity, equity and equality therefore, recourse to any rhetoric that even vaguely invokes nationalist sentiments is a strict no-no. For we know, from such places as India, Pakistan, the Balkans and other parts of Europe, the violence and bloodshed that necessarily accompanies the appeal to nationalistic sentiments.

It is for this reason that I faced a moral dilemma when contemplating the calls of the Goa Bachao Abhiyan. The Save Goa Movement was validly concerned with the destruction of the Goan environment and the livelihoods connected with this environment. This was a worthy and an important cause to support. And yet, all too often the call to ‘Save Goa’ was heavily couched in the resentment of and toward the ‘outsiders’. And this was not a lone phenomena but one that recurs frequently in a variety of places- be it the call to open up the GMC for public use, the protection of khazans, the building over of fields. As valid as the environmental cause may be, how can one support the nationalist project implicit in it? And how does one deal with this unholy twining of liberatory and exclusionary ideologies?

It was in this context that the words of Aijaz Ahmad proved useful. For the population of the “backward zones of capital” he argues “all relationships with imperialism pass through their own nation states, and there is simply no way of breaking out of that imperial dominance without struggling for different kinds of national projects and for a revolutionary restructuring of one’s own nation-state”. Ahmad then suggests to earnest students like me who have learned their lessons well, that nationalism while a deeply problematic ideology is the reality within which we live our lives. But this is not necessarily an argument to remain with the nation-state. On the contrary Ahmad’s formulation shows us a possible way out of the dilemma. The way out requires our recognition of our location as a ‘backward zone of capital’. A zone that by and large is constituted not by the owners of capital, but a zone that is one of speculation for persons not ordinarily resident in this zone or emotionally invested in it - in other words the wielders of imperial power. It may be difficult for now to think of ourselves as ‘beyond the nation’, but this does not preclude us from identifying the problem as one of the operation of capital within a space (the nation-state) that ostensibly portrays itself as for the protector of the people. My problem with politics in Goa, is that while it constantly identifies a host of appropriate issues to battle, there is by and large a failure to locate its existence in the operation of capital. This holds true for the heritage movement, the language(s) movement, the environmental movement or the cultural movement. To understand the operation of capital within the backward zone of capital that is Goa is not difficult and often recognized conversationally. And yet we fail to raise this intuition (most of the time deliberately I suspect) to a central place in our agendas for change allowing for nationalist rhetoric to gain a firm foothold within our state

Given that our immediate goal is to restructure the nation-state in favour of those people who thanks to their control of capital currently maneuver the state outside of the legitimate democratic space, it seems unlikely that our reliance on nationalist rhetoric will miraculously subside. However, the conscious articulation of relations of capital within this state in the public sphere would without doubt reformulate agendas, moving it away from the current Goenkarponn obsessions that in fact serve only to further divide us and separate us from the humanity we are in fact fighting for.

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 2nd May 2007)

The Feast of the Three Wise Men: A Frustrated Discourse on Participation

Since the past fortnight three events have occurred that beg us to contemplate the space of participation in our democracy. The first to be honest is almost a joke. Manohar Parrikar has been attempting to rile up the citizenry over the old GMC buildings conversion into a mall, claiming that this decision was reached without people’s participation. Now this is truly the case of the pot calling the kettle black! This entire scheme of turning the building into a mall was first floated in Parrikar’s time. And we know for a fact that neither participation nor consultation was the trademark of that administration. Why his own colleagues would grumble about the how entirely redundant they felt! Mr. Parrikar obviously believes that the Goan public is a bunch of performing monkeys. He has only to pull the right phrase out of his bag, and they’ll start dancing to the appropriate tune.

But this is not a new trick our man pulls out of his hat, the Indian public has been confronted with this duplicity for years now. Only this time round we can dare to hope that years of experience have translated into a certain kind of political maturity. Which is why in previous agitations in the course of the current Government’s term, public activists have firmly maintained that they would not like their movement to be co-opted publicly by any political party. They may have not got it right, but the attempt is on, and it is a worthwhile effort. And yet, it does not guarantee us that we will not be pawns in a political game to get power, in this case howl down the Rane Government to let Parrikar take over.

What would guarantee us our role as independent actors in the political game is when calls such as that of participation in governance and associated decision making turn from calls to established procedures. Procedures enshrined in legislation and those from which there is no getting around.

I doubt this is what he had in mind, but it’d be cute if these were in fact the thoughts in Chief Secretary Singh’s mind when he spake the other day at Annual Day of the Goa chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry. Chief Secretary Singh believes that we in Goa suffer from is- if you’re standing up you need to sit down now - overparticipation! This over-participation, our Chief Jeremiah somberly predicted could prove to be a handicap to Goa’s development. Fact is though there isn’t enough participation in decision-making in Goa. If the constant ruckus in Goa is anything to go by it is an illustration of the consistent failure to consult the people and following this consultation to respect the verdict of the people. Sunita Narain writing in the Down To Earth Magazine on the 10th of April indicates the manner in which despite people’s clear rejection of continued and increased mining, the Union Ministry continues to clear increased mining in Goa. So much for participation.

Mr. Singh would like to see an end to the constant deliberations that occur in Goa, and frankly Mr. Singh, so would we. However, we would like to see these deliberations end when the rules of the game are followed. We would like to see a host of public decision making enshrined in legislation for all levels of governance, and we would like to see it respected. What Goa suffers from is not over-participation, but a people seething in anger from not being invited to participate meaningfully.

And finally we have the third event that got me thinking on the value of participation. This was the editorial response of the Navhind Times to Mr. Singh’s concern. In what smacks strongly of an apologia for authoritarianism, the editorial used Mr. Singh’s address to the Confederation of Indian industry to deride the work being done by a host of NGOs in Goa. The NGO’s are blamed for not charting out a program for sustainable development in Goa, for not walking to airports, for using airports in the first place! The editorial betrays not a reasoned concern for the condition of the NGO sector in India but uses the space created by the Chief Secretary to devalue the very act of opposition. One is not always impressed by conservationists’ arguments, but what we have to recognize is the value in that opposition which allows us to refine public policies and decisions. There seems none of it in this editorial which seems to privilege only charity as a valid form of NGO activity.

It would be fair to say that participation in Goa occurs in opposition to Governmental policy since all too often this participation is prevented and seen as the interference of those who do not know. True there is a need for an end to deliberation in a deliberative democracy, but the million dollar question would then be who puts an end to it? A Government constantly acting in favour of private capital, or a Government acting in favour of public interest?

Reclaiming Public Space and Building a Contemporary Culture

I had presumed that it was like most of the rumours floating in the air; this story that the old Medical College building was going to be converted to a mall. Unfortunately like most of those other bizarre rumours floating around in Goa, this too turned out to be horrifically true. The building is going to be converted into a mall! Horror of horrors!

“Ofcourse” commented a friend, who would have liked to see the building remain a public space, “our politicians know only malls”. True and yet not true. Our politicians are merely reading the signs of the times, succumbing to a trend that is sweeping all of society, and not only in newly consumerist India. Worldwide we are witness to a change in the nature of public spaces as they get interiorized and privatized. Thus while the earlier era was about the public parks, promenades and buildings open to all, we today see a trend to create ‘public spaces’ within malls and private club-houses, locking out the undesirables and open only to the paying public. In such a situation it is not strange that our politicians seek to create a mall in the building of the Escola Medica, or convert vast open areas into an IT Park rather than a natural park for a growing and choking city. While it is not strange, it is sad however that they have once again created a private asset committed to perpetuating differences, rather than the public assets and wealth they are expected to commit themselves to.

And while this conversion of a public building into a mall may correspond to a negative global trend, there is also at play a local dynamic. We in Goa seem entirely bereft when it comes to knowing what to do with our public buildings. We either convert them to hotels or convert them to museums. On both fronts we think not of ourselves, but of how groups other than ourselves can use these buildings (and our resources and selves consequently). One could argue that the museum serves to educate the local as well as the visitor, but take a look around you at the many museums we have. You visit them once and you can safely never visit it again, since there is going to be no substantial addition to the collection. With culture being identified only with the past, there is no investment in the museum as a space where the local can constantly engage with the cultural world and the creations emanating from it. In that sense then, the State did the most appropriate thing in converting the building of the Escola Medica into a mall. It couldn’t be converted into a hotel, that would be too crude, and if turned into a museum what would we do with the old Secretariat? So we seek the middle ground and convert it into a mall, by leasing it for three years! We haven’t thought of converting it into a public space, since we are never thinking of the local individual and how they and the city could benefit from an innovative use of the building!

What would such an innovative use of the Escola Medica be? One such use will be on display from the 10th of this month onwards for a period of two weeks. A collection of art works by different art works by Goan artists, curated by Ranjit Hoskote, the work seeks to highlight the continued creativity of Goan artists and the evolving nature of local culture. But this is not all it seeks to do, it also seeks to use this montage of art and culture as the backdrop for performances of various kind; theatre, academic reflection, song, which will continue to highlight this fact of continued cultural evolution. In making use of this grand space, what they are effectively doing is to transform it into a Palace of the People. But this momentary use is only one of the many uses it could be put to. Outside of the Kala Academy the city lacks a space where one can host the film clubs of the city and the continuing film festivals that Panjim is currently hosting. There is no reason why one of the halls of the old GMC cannot be outfitted to play this crucial role. A society that nurtures so many musicians offers no public space where they can practice- rooms that can be hired at ridiculously nominal prices for a budding band to practice. If the film festival is to continue in Panjim, whether as the dramatic IFFI or a locally hosted international film festival, it needs a permanent office. All said and done the city, as well as the State, needs space where culture is pushed toward the cutting edge and local talent nurtured and displayed, a Palace where the people hold court. However…

Small is Beautiful: The Garden Path to Development

One of the delights of Bangalore city is the campus of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Occupying a full 440 acres of the city the Institute had the sense to plant a good number of trees on its campus early on so that it is today a research centre set in a garden. Attending a seminar at the Institute a few weeks ago, we were invited to check our email at the office of one of the organizers. “My office is just across the street from this auditorium” our kind host announced. In a flash it occurred to me when using the word street, he was comparing IISc to a city and invoking a certain kind of urban ideal. The idea of a city located in a green garden space. A city where one can walk to work from one’s residence. A genteel and refined space of gardens, singing birds, minimal automobiles and a citizenry committed to the pursuit of their individuals tasks.

This is an urban ideal shared by a good number of people across the globe, given that the beautiful picture that this ideal evokes is in fact an ecologically sustainable model for the most part. Privileging bipedal access to workspaces as well as other facilities of urban life, the model drastically reduces the consumption of petrol in commuting around different parts of the city. With it are reduced the ceaseless traffic and attendant smog that today constitutes a nightmare of most urban dwellers.

Unfortunately however this vision of the urban life is overwhelmingly privileged in favour of a more Corbusier-ian approach to the city. Where the city is divided up into single use spaces, either, residential, industrial, work, leisure or otherwise, and access to which is primarily through the petro-powered vehicle. The logic of this eminently disastrous model (take a look at the failure of Corbusier’s baby Chandigarh) can be seen also in the current move to set up IT Parks and SEZ in the State.

The problem with this logic is that in addition to building a civilization on a rapidly depleting and polluting resource like petrol, it leads to an isolation of development away from society. To illustrate this point, let me take you back to statement that inspired this column. If one’s work place were in fact across the street, what we would have in an IT company sitting quietly within a residential locality. The first benefit of this would be to ensure that valuable infrastructure follows this company and feeds into the entire neighbourhood. With the commercial activity happening within the neighbourhood, one has a larger number of people on the streets contributing to greater neighbourhood safety. Finally with similar such commercial and research initiatives sprouting up within neighbourhoods, it provides a direct incentive for local persons to be absorbed by the employment opportunity next door. What this mixed-use neighbourhood is producing therefore is a dynamic economy, producing networks of commerce and knowledge and necessarily in balance with the environment.

Entry into, and exit from, the IT Park or SEZ is restricted. It is powered by an exclusive logic, so that the infrastructure and resources flow toward these islands, rather than toward society at large. Similarly in this controlled environment the enterprise is not relating to society and can hardly be expected to cater to local youth. As such the flight of local youth outside the State will continue apace. Some local youth will no doubt get jobs, but the enterprise is- by its location within the island- not looking at persons from the local context but from a much wider context.

Being young myself, forced into exile from Goa and witness to the frustrations of my peer group similarly exiled for the lack of job opportunities in Goa, I am constantly on the look out for appropriate models of development. Models of development that build on our existing strengths and that cater to the local. Does the IT Park or SEZ model provide this opportunity? Sadly it doesn’t. Enterprise that willfully isolates itself from the community does not cater to the community. What we need is enterprise, of any sort, that by virtue of its location is in communion with the community, shaping and being shaped by its economy. What we require are cottage industrial enterprises, tiny but economically significant entities operating from within the quiet of our villages and towns, providing income to local youth. And these already exist in Goa. There are fashion designers, Info-tech companies, set design enterprises and the like operating outside of the industrial estates and in our villages with global clients. These are economies sensitive to the local economy and capable of negotiating their own terms with both the national and global economy. How are we and the State supporting these ventures? How are we making local and frustrated youth aware of these global possibilities literally in their backyard? If you insist that the Park-SEZ model is important, go ahead by all means, but can we evolve the networks and State support for this eminently desirable alternative?

(Published in the Gomantak Times 21st March 2007)

Dogs point the way to Nirvana

The media and the powers that be are all up in arms regarding the recent cases of children being bitten or mauled, in some cases to death, by the stray dogs that roam the streets of Bangalore city. The solution offered and accepted has been to cull, or kill, the stray dogs that populate the city. This way it is reasoned, we would finally rid ourselves of the nuisance that has continued to- pardon the pun- dog our urban environments for some time now. The decision in Bangalore is crucial since the past few years has seen public policy spread like wild fire across the country, based on similar such one-off incidents and knee-jerk responses. The ban on night life past 11 in the evening is a classic example of this case. It is because of these knee jerk responses becoming policy that we need to question whether killing these dogs addresses the issue at the root, or is merely dealing with the symptoms alone. I would like to forward the argument that it is the symptoms we are dealing with, without resolving the root from which these attacks emerge.

One objection to this decision has been to point out that the killing of dogs within the existing metropolis serves no purpose since the places left empty are only filled by the canine populations that are included by the rapidly expanding metropolis. The answer therefore does not lie in the immediate culling of dogs, since such a strategy should eventually require us to cull all dogs from all peri-urban areas as well. This strategy poses not just a logistical challenge, but a definitional one as well. The stray can exist only in the presence of a pet. Rural and peri-urban areas however do not share the distinctly bourgeoise understanding of pet. As such strays, in the sense we understand them do not exist. Dogs in these circumstances are merely domesticated animals that perform valuable functions of companionship, savenging and cleaing and guarding. To extend the distinctly located understanding of pet to these areas would in fact be to kill domesticated animals. That would prove to be a pickle!

But I do not wish to debate this issue around the impacts on animals or their rights. What I wish to draw attention to, is what I perceive to be the real problem, which is not being addressed at all, that of the nature of the urban environment we are creating.

To make flippant use of a popular phrase, ‘it’s a dog eat dog world’ captures exactly what is going on in Bangalore. With some notable exceptions, most of the victims in these cases have been the children of slum dwellers living in low-income (poverty-striken?) areas. The living conditions of these labourers as they build the fantasy worlds that generates Bangalore’s boom time are in fact not much better than the conditions animals live in. For all practical purposes, they are animals. Is it any wonder then that it is their children that are being attacked by dogs? Bangalore’s real estate market is spiralling out of control, even as we fail to provide decent lodgings for the labour force that actually builds and powers the city.

But it is not the law of the jungle in operation in the city. On the contrary, what we have is the generation of viciousness that is the result of the urban environment we have actively created. Even to this day the installation of the mast lights that turn vast areas of the urban night time into day time are heralded as progress. Unfortunately it is to this ‘progress’ that we can pehaps trace the violent behaviour of urban canines. Since the 80’s evidence has been building up of the existence and harmful impacts of a ‘light pollution’. Light pollution refers to the harmful impacts of over-illumination which distrupts natural biological cycles with some chilling side-effects. A range of studies suggest that excess light may induce loss in visual acuity, increased incidence of stress related disorders, the decrease in sexual capacities and greater possibilities of contracting cancers. Sleep deprivation resulting from this over-illumination is another serious impact of light pollution. If these are the impacts from the mere shining of street lights into our homes, imagine its impact on the animals living outside. Animals have often been credited with heralding the onset of natural disasters like earthquakes, even the recent tsunami. It would be wise to read the current viciousness of the dogs in Bangalore as symptoms of stress building up within urban inhabitants. A stress that needs to be addressed urgently.

While there are a number of ways in which one can reduce over-illumination in cities, it does not appear that there will be much movement on this front. Public illumination and the dispelling of natural darkness have unfortunately come to be associated too closely with progress. A progress toward a goal we will never achieve and yet nevertheless serves to beef up our negative national self-impression. But less esoterically, public illumination also provides a very real sense of security. Security from the criminals who lurk in the darkness and can be countered only through these campaigns of public illumination. However once again the question needs to be asked, is not the increase in this fear linked to the perceived increase in crime? Is this crime resultant from the wide gaps in income and expenditure within our society? While some indulge in orgiastic consumption within homes and malls, others starve outside while observing these orgies that democracy promises ought also to be theirs. Crime at one point was very simple, you gave up your goods and you kept your life. Today even that is not assured, as the pettiest of theft is accompanied by unnecessary aggression. Can we link it to the stresses building up within our society, induced by light or by increased deprivation?

Either ways there is something deeply wrong with the urban environment our new found wealth is generating. The ‘vicious’ dogs in Bangalore are only providing a warning we ought to heed. Will we?

(published in the Gomantak Times, 7th March 2007)

The Carnaval of Goa

A friend remarked a few days following her religious marriage ceremony, that the legal registration of the marriage notwithstanding, were it not for the rituals of the ceremony, she would not have felt married. In making that innocent remark about her wedding, she made a profound point on the importance of ceremonies, rites of passage and festivals in our lives. These rituals are not just meaningless remnants from the past. On the contrary by participating in them, they form us into different beings, give us different personas, sometimes temporarily, in the course of a festival- like the Carnaval; at times permanently, like the wedding ceremony of my friend.

The Carnaval is a great example of the power of the symbolic to transform us. The Carnaval having both pagan and Christian roots performed a vital societal function year after year. It allowed for a period when the normal was suspended and inverted. For five whole days the rules of the everyday were (and are suspended) to allow a general free-for-all normally unthinkable. In allowing for this possibility, not only does it allow for society to blow off steam, but at the same time underlines a single fact. These five days of Carnaval are the exception, not the norm, and it is because of the exception, that the norm is possible. In other words, the justices and injustices of every day life are made possible, primarily because of the existence of Carnaval when the normal is abandoned. It is the exception that proves the rule.

What happens then when the exception is transformed into the norm? Goa offers an excellent example, where the Carnaval that operated as an exception has been made the norm. Year after blessed year the theme of a Carnaval Goa was repeated at the Republic Day parade to the extent that when the definitely serious Film festival was brought to Goa, a second Carnaval was produced to lend an ‘authentic’ ‘Goan’ flavour to the event. The result? Goa is now seen as the land of the eternal Carnaval, where every day of the 365 is a holiday. This may have a certain immediate economic impact in terms of creating Goa as an instant holiday destination, but contemplate the more serious long term economic implications.

Almost a year ago, when I began this column I suggested that the Goa would never be able to develop a serious IT or other industry because of the seriously cultivated image for Goa as a holiday paradise. Imagine my horror when I lived through the following episode. A friend recently retired as CEO of a substantial financial company was offered by one of the larger American animation companies, the option of taking charge of the 20 odd acres of land they held in Goa to set up their Indian base of operations. Their logic was that they would be able to use the Goan environment and lifestyle to attract persons from across India and the globe in setting up their India base of operations. This idea was quickly shot down by this former CEO who pointed out that people go to Goa to relax and unwind. They did not and would not come to work. Two, the Goan is an entirely unreliable individual, given to merrymaking, s/he did not work either. Thus was shot down a very real chance of Goa hosting a serious technology industry thanks to its party image. An image that I am trying to indicate was mistakenly pulled out from being an exception to being the norm. He made another point though that those supporting the IT Parks in Goa should bear in mind. “You could” he told the company “have a centre where you have refresher courses for your employees”. In other words use Goa for what it is best used for, a chill out zone.

Carnaval played another crucial role it created the space and environment for the mob. A mob given to merry-making and not random acts of violence no doubt, but a mob nevertheless. In doing so, it also created the space for civil society, the opposite of the mob, the space for the conscious citizen where matters are discussed and debated.

Contemplate once more the environment created by the Film Festival as crowds and mobs are created through the street fair that is timed with the Film festival. What is the reason for a street carnaval timed at the exact moment of a serious film festival? First it befuddles the mind of the individual into thinking that they are participating in the film festival, when in fact they are doing nothing of the sort. What is being done to them is to dumb them down. The street party offered during the time of the Film festival is better suited to Carnaval time, which is the appropriate moment for the mob. Extending this Carnaval atmosphere to a time that should be devoted to the refinement of one’s aesthetics only serves to disprivilege this entire pursuit through which one broadens ones imagination to participate in public life more effectively.

But perhaps this is the intention of the State. A State that is more inclined to cultivate a mob that it can then unleash when it so requires. An electorate that has been conditioned to see State action as the effective and continuous provision of Carnaval. This could explain the sorry state of Goan politics. Finally the creation of a mob justifies greater State control and intrusion in our lives. With every passing year as the street fair outside grows louder and larger, the security within the Festival goes stricter and stricter. This is not a coincidence. The two exist only because of each other.

There is a time and place for everything we were advised when we were children. One is never too old to reflect on the wisdom of that idiom and perhaps it is not as yet too late to put Carnaval back into its true space and context and in doing so set things right again. Viva Carnaval!

(published in the Gomantak Times, 21 Feb 2007)

The Intellectual and the Foundation of the New Goan Century

A few weeks ago while making a case for the now scrapped Regional Plan, the Chairperson of the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry remarked how there was a need for such schemes as the increasingly discredited IT Park since there was a flight of the “intelligent class” away from Goa. In observing this flight from Goa Kunkolienkar does have a point. There is a massive flight of young and intelligent individuals from Goa primarily because they do not have the appropriate environment to flourish.

And yet, I am not going to turn this into an argument against the Government or indeed for the Regional Plan or such destructive plans like that of the supposed IT Park. We very often get the Government we deserve and my argument is that it is our society that does not value the intellectual enough. This lack of respect and value for the intellectual is what is creating the politically and socially state of affairs that Goa has been wallowing in for decades now.

The marginal position for the intellectual is clearly visible in the fate of that most glorious of Goan institutions, the Central Library. From its current location within the centre of Panjim, there are plans to shift the building to Patto. From a central location accessible with ease to all within and outside of the city, we are going to shift the library to a building that can be reached currently only with a good amount of difficulty. In this shoddy treatment to an institution that has moulded generations of Goans, we can gauge our society’s respect and recognition of the intellectual.

The library building will reportedly be from the first floor upwards, since the ground floor will be devoted to shops. Selling coconuts, rice and a variety of vernacular smut no doubt! The ease with which the powers that be decided to locate shops at the base of a fine intellectual institution is once again indicative of what exactly our society considers the fundamental basis for success in the world. Money, money, money. If Goa has been able to move, rather successfully, from being some sort of a feudal society to a modern society then due credit has to be given to its large middle class. Ignoring the problems with considering persons settled abroad as Goan, I will for the moment include them to count on the middle class (and even super-rich) Goan, as being spread throughout the globe. Goa made one leap with some ease. The next step, of inculcating a value for education for the sheer sake of producing knowledge and being able to examine an issue from a variety of perspectives has been by and large ignored.

It has become the flavour of the moment to call persons now settled comfortably in other parts of the world members of a Diaspora; Goa is no exception. And yet compare the Goan diaspora to the mother of all, indeed the original diaspora, the Jewish diaspora. The number of Jewish foundations flush with money and spending on intellectual and cultural innovation within (and outside of) the community is mind-boggling. Where, I would like to inquire do we find a similar investment by and for the Goan community? There are ofcourse a variety of Trusts set up by the ‘prominent’ families in Goa but any activity that would even mildly threaten to disturb the status quo receives no support. In addition, it appears that one is expected to be eternally grateful and beholden to the persons who created the endowment from which one is benefiting. Hardly the kind of environment for critical intellectual and cultural activity to take off.

There has been much enthusiasm in the wake of the apparent victory of the Save Goa Campaign over the Regional Plan. There have been well-intentioned cyber-Goenkars who have suggested, quite appropriately that they ought not to just sit around but support the activity taking place in Goa. And yet, this may not be quite the answer in the current environment when the campaign is the product of multiple and strange bed-fellows. Not all of whose credentials are either impeccable, nor their intentions bona fide. But rather than let a good idea go waste we need to figure out ways in which we can pour in diasporic money and encourage a flourishing of critical and questioning intellectual and cultural renaissance. We need foundations that will fund scholars young and old to locate themselves in Goa and add new insight into an already vibrant civil society. Funds that will assure Goan youth that Goa is a destination that encourages local talent to engage in intellectual exploration, giving them the financial and institutional strength to pursue intellectual trajectories and yet be rooted in Goa. We need funds that will award those who build new buildings respectful of its environs and our environment. We need foundations that will support young and upcoming artists and musicians. All of these will challenge the uneasy and delicate peace presided over by political bosses and business houses. And yet this will, like the churning of the Ocean of Milk, bring forth vibrance that can only come where the intellectual is valued and respected, not for the money s/he brings home, but the learning s/he generates. Now when are those dollars going to start pouring in?

(published in the Gomantak Times, 7th Feb 2007)