The ongoing debate on migration throws up the question of whether the government has failed, but this issue is just not being addressed. Isn’t migration for a better life a result of failed governance at home? Pause for a moment to consider: If there were job opportunities available in Goa, if preference for contracts for works was given to Goans, if licences for starting business were easier to obtain for locals, in short if Goans were given preference in economic spheres, wouldn’t the number of Goans migrating be considerably less? It is the duty of the government to ensure that jobs, contracts, business licences go first to the people of the State, to those it has been elected to serve.

But that has obviously not been happening here. Goa is a State with a population of 1.5 million and on the unemployment register the figure of youth looking for jobs is a staggering 1.2 lakh, that is eight per cent of the population. If Goa wants to change the migration pattern, if it wants to retain its youth in the State, then it has to look into providing jobs to youth. We are a State today that has a varied number of higher education institutions that are providing a huge educated workforce year after year that the limited industrial growth cannot accommodate. Consequently, the number of youth from the State migrating – not just abroad but to other States as well – has been increasing.

This continuing migration is nothing but a result of the failed policies of successive governments. Do we blame the people for seeking the proverbial greener pastures in foreign lands and moving out, or do we blame the government for failing in its job of keeping them back with gainful employment? It is today, and been so in the past, the lopsided policies and programmes of the government that have led to people giving up and moving out. Not everybody who ventures abroad does so out of choice, there are many who do so because they have no other way to earn their daily bread. It will not be until the government admits – all governments since 1963 – that they failed to protect Goan interests that this debate on migration will be concluded and the cause of the mass departures ascertained.

Where is the strategy, where is the policy to provide employment to Goans? Just recently the Chief Minister had admitted that the State can’t force industry to employ Goans and so is giving industry other benefits to encourage the employment of Goans. But those benefits have not enthused industry, and the Start-Up Policy of the government that hoped to increase the Goan workforce with subsidies for companies employing Goans, was given the thumbs down by the entrepreneurs. The crux is that Goa should invite such industry for which the State already has a trained workforce and so the employer will not have to look beyond the State’s boundaries to find staff. If that is not being done, how can the State hold back its talent?

Goa is feeling the weight of its failed governments, but it has also itself to blame. When the people vote with narrow aims of personal gains, then the government that comes to power will always be bereft of inspiration, plodding along with a bridled vision. Hence, at election time the electorate needs to be more circumspect by rejecting any corrupt practices to entice voters. Politicians, who resort to that, have their personal agendas and aims to further, and have not the welfare of the State as priority. A government’s failure reflects on the electorate that voted it into power.