Why do Goan politicians suck up to politicians from Delhi? By the time you finish reading this piece, you will know. Meantime, our neighbouring country and beautiful Sri Lanka is going through financial turmoil. They have recently defaulted on a multi-million dollar foreign debt payment and their new prime minister has appealed for foreign help to bail out the government. India as a good neighbour has helped and is in the process of helping even further, but there is always going to be a limit to what India can do. Sri Lanka will have to resolve the debt crisis on their own and negotiations with the International Monetary Fund are not going to be easy. Funds will come but Sri Lanka and its citizens will also lose a lot in the bargain.
Sri Lanka’s problems got amplified because they import almost 3 billion USD more than they export. The figure bloated because the pandemic almost wiped out the foreign currency income Sri Lanka would have received from foreign tourists. Adding to the mess, is debt taken from China, for infrastructure projects that according to some, was not at all required. So when the balance of payment issue started showing up in 2021, Sri Lanka made another mistake of forcibly banning import of fertilisers which resulted in their local crop failure. So now they not only have to import fuel but also food, resulting in massive inflation ensuing angry protests and demand for change in the government.
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Although Sri Lanka does export tea, rice, apparels and textiles it depends heavily on tourism to generate foreign currency, so a temporary pandemic hit on tourism resulted in the entire country coming on its knees. Does this look familiar to Goans and the way Goa is being managed? Sri Lanka although a sovereign country and not so far away from us, is one case Goa must look and learn, so as to avoid the mistakes they have made. Understood, Goa is a State of India, but it does not hurt to reduce our dependence on import of food from other States. Let’s take only food as an example, because that is something Goa can produce and feed at least the permanent population. Yes excess tourism does mess up the demand supply equation but that is another topic.
Food security is the clear and present danger; fluctuations of vegetable price in the range of 10x in just a matter of months should be able to tell us that everything is not hunky dory in the food supply chain and the more Goa focuses on self sufficiency the more we will be able to absorb the food supply shocks we have to face time and again in the present and near future.
How is Goa preparing itself for food shortages? Many might wonder, why should Goa bother about food shortages in Africa or USA? Well, Goa depends on other States for their food, everything will work fine as long as the supplier States have stocks aplenty, the problem arises when stock positions start dwindling, like it or not the first thing these States will do is to cut off supplies to States like Goa. Recently India banned wheat export to other nations even at the risk of getting criticised by the world, but no country is going to allow sending their food stocks at the risk of keeping their own citizens hungry. Same is going to be the case in Goa, where we might have to beg to Delhi to intervene so as to release some food quantities in case of shortages.
Import and Export of goods and services cannot be wished away; Goa does not have petroleum products so we have no choice but import, the opposite is the case of Gulf countries, they have the oil but most of the food has to be imported. What is difficult to fathom is that Goa’s land being cultivable we depend on food imports from the outside. This scenario only goes to show that our politicians have taken it easy that they never considered it as an important responsibility. Little do they realise that hungry stomachs can force drastic changes in the government in double quick time, as witnessed in Sri Lanka.
How can Goans insulate themselves from possible food shortages? Most Goans live in homes that have access to land; it’s advisable they focus on growing vegetables and fruits that can take care of at least their own personal needs. Same goes with water, better we clean our wells and start using them so as to minimise our dependence on government to provide that service. You never know when water runs out with government sole focus only is on mad real estate development.
Goa also has to deal with massive debt burden accumulated over the years with no definite plans to become debt free. This is exactly what Sri Lanka did, they took foreign currency loans from China on unimportant infrastructure projects and the country default occurred because they could not pay the interest on the loan, the rest of the inflation chaos just followed. Many including this writer has consistently red flagged Goa government debt burden, we might think it is government problem, but it directly affects our standard of living. We have a triple whammy to deal with of paying taxes on our personal income, our personal expenditure in the form of GST and also government unnecessary expenditure in the form of new taxes.
Sri Lanka situation deteriorated quickly because they did not enough foreign currency to pay the interest on the loan taken from China, they also had no money to buy petroleum products to run the economic engine, hence the food shortages. Goa can face the same situation, but the argument remains that Goa is a State within India and Delhi is going to bail us out, never allowing Goa to have a payment crisis. Does this mean Goa is secretly hoping politicians from Delhi will feel sorry for Goa and forgive our debt depending on their mood and our hospitality? That explains why Goan politicians perpetually suck up to politicians arriving from Delhi.
(The author is a business consultant)
