All casinos should be a floating business on salty, very salty water, and if on land then away from residential areas. Far away! Goan neighborhoods should remain neighborhoods, away from gambling, drugs and prostitution.
Compare Vasco to the situation in Calangute where commercial sex workers are everywhere in the village, in disguise or otherwise. With call girl services available on the Internet and the pervasive use of mobiles, controlling this menace is going to take a lot more skill and talent than even that of Sherlock Holmes and Perry Mason working together. Do Goan villagers really want prostitutes in their villages all over Goa? If not, we need to control this problem before it is too late. It is too late for Calangute to turn the tide, and no matter how much money prostitution brings into the local coastal village economy, the erosion of the quality of life of the villagers is nothing less than a Goan tragedy. A beautiful village at one time, but now gone forever.
Some countries have made gambling legal as our State has, others smoking marijuana and still others prostitution although they have outlawed pimping! By not legalizing the three vices they will not disappear however much we may wish. They will go underground destroying the integrity of our police and politicians. And youth too.
All three activities involve big money. Drugs, the control of which is going to be the greatest challenge for us Goans who live mostly in the villages. Villagers who live along coastal villages of Goa appear to be able to control if they so desire prostitution and gambling more easily than drugs because they are easier to hide.
Matka which is similar to cockroaches as it is everywhere in Goa should be legalized as small time gambling does not do much harm. Casinos and matka are gambling activities on opposite ends of the social and economic scale. If the government sees a gold mine in casinos then it is obvious there is a diamond mine in matka.
Matka can be a good way to support poor children who want English as the medium of instruction, making for a level learning field so the children of the poor can compete equally with the children of rich parents who can afford to send their siblings to private schools where the medium of instruction is English. We need to open the gates of government schools much wider along with our minds and hearts. Former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wanted taxes from the casinos to go towards cancer research or some other noble cause. Is giving the poor children a fair chance to compete against children of the rich an act of evil?
Gambling, prostitution, drugs are three major evils for Goans living today, and for future generations too. And so, as we love to say in Indian English: What to do?
