A few weeks ago Chief Minister Parsekar had, with a puffed chest, announced that he had asked his lady Environment Minister Alina Saldanha to “shut her mouth”, when she had asked him for advice on how to handle the media after her courageous stand opposing a marina project on the Sancoale bay.
It is perhaps time that the Chief Minister asks his Tourism Minister to follow the same advice and for good measure, follow a bit of it himself. While Mr Dilip Parulekar might think that making casual, insensitive and obnoxious remarks like “these kind of things happen in tourist places” to describe and possibly justify rape in Goa, the land he comes from doesn’t find it funny. And nor does the rest of India which too has stopped guffawing at blunders made by Goa’s ministers and is actually disgusted when gender insensitivity reaches its peak.
At the same time, while this remark about tourist destinations and rape going hand in hand is indeed a shocker in a state where shock itself has got numbed, the other part of his remark, endorsed by the Chief Minister is going to have far wider ramifications for the state. Mr Parulekar, in the video clip of his interview to a local channel, which was used by the Times Now channel and went viral on You Tube, added to his earlier remark by saying neither the victim or the accused are Goan and the whole incident (the double rape of two women) could be a stunt since they knew each other.
These half baked so called truths will have a fallout with far reaching implications. Here is a state seeking Rs 25,000 crores of investment in the next five years. It wants companies and that means personnel and their families to come and live here, send their children to schools and colleges, buy property and settle down. Does the Chief Minister expect investors to move to Goa with their families when he indicates that non-Goans are not worth the state’s attention when they are in trouble or are victims and are in need of state help. And if this feeling is extended to business houses who get apprehensive of not getting state protection, can you imagine the hit investor confidence will take?
What is worse is that speaking on the subject of the Calangute rape case, the Chief Minister added insult to injury by echoing his Tourism Minister’s words. While speaking to reporters, he actually paused and said that he wanted to make another point and said, “It is very important to note that no one was a Goan in this case”.
Does the innate sense of Goaness- or whatever it is perceived to be-by leaders who make these kind of remarks, exclude all else from the race of humanity and give to themselves dignity, state protection and resources at the cost of any other being not born here or is not of Goan blood? The irony cannot be more stark. It is this state which is hankering after outside investment for its jobs and growth. And when two women who are not Goans get raped, the Chief Minister and the Tourism Minister remark “Oh but they were not Goans”. Do they make Goans proud when they say this? And to think people actually voted them to power.
