Most of the immensely popular shacks of Goa are turning regulars away including foreign tourists. Even some of the prominent shacks attached to five-star hotels cannot open. Meanwhile the taxi ‘mafia’- and this is a term we are taking with full responsibility- is in full form harassing and heckling tourists including diplomats and visiting dignitaries like a senior official of the Chinese government who arrived to over BRICS preparations and the then the Chief of the organising committee of U-17, World Cup football, a high-ranking FIFA official, who was so badly hackled that a police case of harassment was filed by him at the Verna police station.
Meanwhile, the garbage is getting freely strewn around, the beaches are not getting cleaned and if you happen to hire a two-wheeler and hover around North Goa, chances are that you’ll be accosted by a traffic cop and harassed on some pretext or the other. The only tourists who are getting a red carpet welcome are the casino tourists, with their “full packages”- and those in the know, fully know what this means- with absolutely no restriction on the entry of more casinos under the garb of renewals.
In more news coming in, Goa has slipped from number 19 of all the states on the Ease of Doing Business rankings to number 25. Number 19 was bad enough but we were now near the bottom, in a detailed study conducted by the World Bank and backed by the Union Commerce Ministry.
According to a report in The Hindu “The laggards falling in the “jump start needed” category with an implementation percentage of 0-40 per cent include Kerala, Goa, Tripura, Daman and Diu, Assam, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Puducherry, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh, Meghalaya , Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep”.
So there we are. Look at the company Goa keeps in the list of “laggard states” in the ease of doing business. While this is alarming, one must understand that tourism is big business in Goa and on each given day, the ease of doing “business” in tourism is leading to acute unease and bordering on complete disaster.
Today, November 1, we have a grim reality staring at us in the face when the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) will be forced to move court against the government’s failure to get tourist taxi operators install meters in their taxis.
Almost every possible reason in the book, including that the government does not have spare taxi meters or a service to repair faulty meters, has been tried for not installing taxi meters. At the same time, Radio Taxi majors are actually afraid to move into Goa, for the fear of violence against their drivers and cabs. Is it surprising then why Goa ranks number 25 of all states in “ease of doing business?”
The political establishment is shockingly nonchalant. The Transport Minister is ready to give another extension and bide time till the Assembly elections are over. Clearly not a single MLA has the guts to enforce the taxi lobby to install meters and it is clear that this season will pass without this being implemented. Winning elections is clearly more important that making tourists, supposedly Goa’s prized assets, comfortable in Goa. Instead they are getting fleeced, looted, tortured and manhandled.
International travel companies are seriously rethinking their strategies while international charter companies alarmingly looking at diminishing returns on investments and tour operators are worried that businesses will get diverted.
Beyond the spin and the jargon given by Goa’s authorities about tourism looking up, the trade views just these to make decisions on moving tourists to Goa – return on investment and value for money. Harrowing tourist experiences cannot offset facilities of ropeways, hot air balloons and amphibian vehicles.
Goa Tourism needs a serious re-alignment and it should begin by getting the taxi mafia under immediate control and out of the clutches of politicians with vote bank interest. This is so serious that every other issue plaguing Goa’s tourism can wait till these taxi men are brought in line and in some cases brought to book.
