Just do it!
The keynote speaker at the maiden India Travel Mart, Goa (ITM-Goa) Pradip Madhavji, a former Chairman of Thomas Cook India and a spokesman-at-large for India’s travel and tourism industry, feels that in tourism, just like in sex, one must talk less and do more. Addressing the ITM, which opened at the Campal football ground on Thursday evening, Mr Madhavji said: “In sex, people don’t talk and just do it. But in tourism, people only talk and do nothing.”
It is an amusing analogy, but there is more than a grain of truth to it. It reflects on more than tourism. For, on the same evening when Goa’s pre-eminence in tourism was being flaunted in the elegant pavilions set up on the banks of the picturesque Mandovi River, several hundred activists were shouting themselves hoarse in Panjim city to demand that Chief Minister Digambar Kamat translate his assurances on the Regional Plan (RP) 2021 into action.
Mr Madhavji had kind words for Goa. He said that the predominant image of India abroad was: congested and dirty, but with hospitable people. But in the case of Goa, he said, one repeatedly hears the words ‘tranquil’, ‘peace’ and ‘green’, apart from delight at its delicious cuisine and hospitable people. He is correct. Goa’s greenery, tranquillity, relative cleanliness and peace are a big part of its tourism USP.
It is just these qualities that Thursday’s noisy protest, by activists from village committees all over Goa, sought to protect. The Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA), which as its very name suggests, wants to save Goa from mindless development and destruction of its wonderful villages and greenery, is fed up with talk. It says the people have waited patiently for fulfilment of promises and assurances made personally by the CM, even on the floor of the Legislative Assembly. But the government has failed time and again to finalise the Regional Plan, and is allowing big builders to construct concrete jungles.
Chief Minister Digambar Kamat must be aware that his deeds have failed to match his words. For, he failed to turn up at the opening of ITM-Goa. Had he been there, he could not have refused to face the activists. Mr Kamat is well aware that even though Thursday’s protest drew only hundreds, the issue is volatile enough to agitate the public at large, and it will not be too long before the crowds number in the thousands.
Mr Madhavji pointed out good things and bad things about Goa. Some of them show this government in a good light. He praised the roads. “Travelling from the airport to the hotel, I have driven on one of the best-maintained surfaces of roads. It was like a carpet,” he said, urging that Goa needs to send its road technicians and maintenance personnel to Mumbai, to teach India’s urbs prima how to keep its roads in good shape.
Take a bow, Mr Kamat. But remember that there are many really bad things as well, and at present, these are far more dominant in the public perception. When Mr Kamat took office in 2007, one of his first actions was to announce the complete scrapping of the notorious Regional Plan 2011, and to set up a representative task force to formulate a brand new Regional Plan 2021. It raised so much expectation and enthusiasm. But cynical never-ending delay tactics have slowly transformed this hope into disillusionment, anger and frustration.
Now, there are fewer days for the next poll to come than the one gone by. Electioneering has started in full swing in at least one constituency in South Goa. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has started taking its role as an opposition party very seriously. If Mr Kamat continues to side with the big builders and illegal miners against the aam admi – in whose name he came to power – he could be looking straight into the face of disaster.
