Opinion Poll and after
Though Goa, Daman and Diu were retained as a separate union territory after their integration with India in 1961 by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, it was the formation of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party with its twin demands of merger of Goa with Maharashtra and Marathi as the official language that forced the issue of Goa’s political status and ended in the conduct of the Opinion Poll. The MGP was not the moderate party that it emerged to be in later years. The party had roots in the Azad Gomantak Dal formed by V N Lawande in Belgaum in 1954 with the support of rightist elements such as the Hindu Mahasabha and Jan Sangh apart from various other organizations and groups. However the party’s core driving force, the issue of merging Goa with Maharashtra, was triggered by its endemic fear of Saraswats and Catholics who they perceived to have milked the benefits under the Portuguese regime. Their one point agenda was to secure the interest of the Bahujan Samaj—an agglomeration of all non Hindu Saraswat castes.
So 47 years after the historic verdict on January 16, 1967 in favour of a separate union territory, the question that looms large is: who benefitted from retaining Goa as a separate political entity within the Indian Union? Each Goan would have his/her own answer, depending on which side of the political, social, economic or apolitical spectrum one is rooted. The architect of the Opinion Poll, Jack de Sequeira and the United Goans Party who mobilised people and convinced Indira Gandhi to have the first of its kind referendum in India, with lot of favourable pressure from Karnataka, was said to have become very pessimistic himself in retrospect about the historic event, which altered Goa’s history forever. Just before his death, Jack de Sequeira is reported to have told a journalist that the Opinion Poll was a mistake, but he did not wish to make this public. This supposedly emerged from his observation of political and economic events till the end of the 1980s and the way the polity was shaping. Though one would have loved to have discussed in detail with Sequeira the reasons for his altered position and though these discussions would be a matter of conjecture, political possibilities are worth discussing since they have serious repercussions in the wake of the present plight of a large number of Goans.
A separate union territory meant that separate funds came from the Centre for development and Goa developed (without growth) faster than neighbouring Sawantwadi. But the question is who benefitted from this development? In the 60s and 70s, the MGP elite, its supporters and financers—the mine owners, the businessmen, those who got into key government positions did benefit to a great extent. The lower rural classes who formed the vote bank of the MGP were left economically, educationally and socially backward at the end of the MGP rule. Between the 1980s and 1990s, Congress politicians, their families, supporters and businesses affiliated to them flourished. However, by the turn of the 21st century, the year 2000 onwards, the political class across parties has literally sold Goa to the nouveau riche from Mumbai and Delhi. Mega property deals, infrastructural projects and mega festivals all go to non Goans. The BJP has shown that it is no different, with intolerance, favouritism in deals and doublespeak having been honed into an art. Corruption has reached gigantic proportions, crime and goondaism threaten to take Goa further into the morass. This explains the alienation of Goans who either leave the state or the country by acquiring Portuguese nationality, settle for the crumbs like reservations and schemes for SCs, STs and OBCs or suffer silently as political sycophants plunder the state.
So 47 years after the historic verdict on January 16, 1967 in favour of a separate union territory, the question that looms large is: who benefitted from retaining Goa as a separate political entity within the Indian Union?
