“Renewal of licenses cannot be held back without any reason unless they fail to comply with any rules laid down… There is law for everything. It cannot be stopped suddenly. We cannot give wrong signals to our potential new investors. My party has ensured since the beginning that no new casinos will be permitted in Goan waters.”
The above is Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar’s latest confusing mumbo jumbo on his government’s warped casino policy, which for all practical purposes is a 360 degree spin from the party’s clear cut pre-election promise that Casinos would move out of the river Mandovi.
The revenue impact not-withstanding, either the BJP has to now say that they were incorrect in their pre-election bravado of declaring that they would move casinos out of the Mandovi, or tell the people of Goa why can’t they make good their promise.
The casino operators have always spoken pure business and it doesn’t suit them to move vessels out of the jurisdiction of the Captain of Ports into the high seas. It will be logistical long haul to transport players and others to vessels away from the Mandovi waters.
But the issue at hand is how Mr Parrikar and Mr Parsekar have, in their desperate need to keep the revenue from casinos coming, have discarded their pre-election promises and even their charge-sheet against the Congress, for being alleged stooges of the casino lobby. Just before the 2012 assembly elections, the BJP released a booklet called ‘Congress tainted Government”. It’s laundry list of scams allegedly indulged in by the Congress, included, “Casino Licenses”. This particular act, was listed alongside ‘Drug mafia’, ‘illegal mining’, ‘PWD kickbacks’ and ‘temple and church thefts’.
Now on one hand CM Parsekar says that he cannot give wrong signals to potential new investors and on the other says his government is looking for a place to send the casino vessels. Goa needed to know who these new investors are. Are they new casino owners?
Anyway, for a start casinos are going nowhere. The Chief Minister has neither the will nor the inclination of moving them even an inch from where they are right now. There is a clear reason for this. In hindi there is a saying which roughly translates to “Don’t discard wealth coming into your house”. These casinos are arguably the biggest single source revenue generator for the government and if there is anything that talks, it is money.
Goa clearly is in a hue casino trap. This grip is so vice like, that even if Goa has to emerge from its massive debt trap with loans mounting and payment erratic, it has to open its arms and literally beg the casino industry. Over time the industry, by virtue of this position has developed undue arrogance, in the belief that it can control not just the government but every voice which rises against them. It is exactly the same arrogance that the mining sector once had. It was the power of knowing that government could sink or swim, policies could be made or rejected, only on the individual or collective will of the mining elite. The Casino elite has developed the same arrogance.
Herald wishes to go beyond the plain demand, supply economics and the hard maths of how much the industry is paying to the government. The larger issue is whether this government is willing to break out of this equation and deal with this casino industry from the benchmark of whether this is for the long term good of Goa or not.
As long as the government looks to the Casino industry for basic revenue on the basis of which the day to day functioning of the government happens, the equation will always be that of a master and a slave. And in this equation with casinos the government is not the master.
Herald demands that the BJP government fulfils promises it has made in its manifesto, and create a far more level playing economic field so that the biggest funders of the government do not become dictators. It is not healthy in any democratic society.
