Years back, John Abraham the Indian film actor had an issue the way pigs were slaughtered in Goan backyards. Agreed, John is a strong advocate for animal cruelty and kudos to him for escalating the matter to the then Chief Minister of Goa. John, lives and works in the city of Mumbai, wonder if he has said anything on the issue of how humans are being transported in trains throughout that city, worse than pigs actually. Or, has he shot of any letter to the Chief Minister on the sporadic shootouts that occur in the city?
Don’t get us wrong John, you are free to come and criticize whatever you don’t like in Goa, it still believes in free speech and we try to encourage anyone pointing out our flaws, but when you give us the impression that you are being gagged in the place you reside and work, then your comments on Goa seem a bit far-fetched.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
Goa has become a soft target for anyone to come and say whatever they like, so much so that paid social media influencers have recently joined the bandwagon, to make a fast buck at Goa’s cost, credibility in what they say, be damned.
John is not the only person whose voice is muzzled, the entire country minus the opposition political parties seems to have lost their tongue and have chosen to stay silent, as if everything is hunky-dory in the country. So when someone gets the itch to criticize, they try and zero in on soft targets, as there is no fear of any retaliation that might impede their status quo, Goa being one of them.
Just for example, the Mumbai film industry made funny memes and maybe rightly so, criticized the then highly educated and economist Prime Minister for the falling rupee in 2013, but none of that gang seem to have any remarks to make on the weak rupee that is on a free fall and have fallen to an all time low in recent times that even the helpless Reserve Bank of India seems to have given up defending the rupee, yet there is nobody discussing this issue. Only goes to show that words of this industry sound hollow to such an extent that they have become a nuisance to democracy letting things pass off with no accountability and scrutiny. No use having so much influence on the society if you are unable to do or speak the right thing.
Because the influential have chosen to remain voiceless, paid influencers have taken that space, as they have the capability to twist facts and speak any which way their benefactor wants them to. So someone wants to get at Goa’s tourism, very easy to tarnish its image by having a biased one sided argument and all of this is done in perfect synchrony to make it look real. Once they achieve their goal the bandwagon moves to another topic in another place with another issue. It’s just a matter of time the innocent people consuming this crap are going to figure out genuine issues from phony ones.
India coastline is approximately 7500 kms and Goa makes up for only 160 km, basically just a dot on the map and yet the entire country longs to come to Goa on a vacation. This fact only goes to show that Goa inspite of our shortcomings is doing something right because it seems to have the capacity to attract tourists by the plenty. Call it the food, the hospitality, the vibe or the freedom to choose your clothes, for tourists it is a welcome change from the regressive places they come from.
But Goa is in a dilemma, it cannot allow everyone to come and overwhelm the place all at the same time. Controls need to be in place because tourism should never exceed to an extent that they become a hindrance to the local Goans. So when these paid influencers started visiting Goa and tried to publicize that Goa’s tourism days are numbered just because they did not see maddening crowds, it never occurred to them that maybe it was intentional.
Goans for the first time in many years reclaimed some of its lost territory this year. While competition from Asian countries, high transportation costs and accommodation costs were some of the reasons discussed by influencers, nobody spoke of high taxation and inflation which happens to be the main reason for dwindling tourist numbers. A vacation to Goa is definitely going to be postponed if people are going to exhaust their income on food which is the first priority, and people are also becoming tax averse, they are fed-up of paying taxes and are making a beeline to park their hard earned money in tax free countries such as the UAE. How come influencers missed these aspects which have taken a hit on consumption in the country including tourism?
Only goes to show these influencers work as per a given agenda, they have got a chance to manipulate because prominent citizens have gone in mute mode and have slowly passed the baton to these influencers who now have the power to control the narrative. The film industry is just an example this writer used, each and every industry is gone in applause mode for trivial achievements and in mute mode for big blunders the country makes.
You know the country’s narrative is severely compromised when people like Narayan Murthy speaks on how Kareena Kapoor mistreats her fans, or our childhood hero Amitabh Bachchan has switched from an angry young man to basically a pussycat. Maybe he should revisit a song he once sang himself which had the following words, ‘Yeh bhi koi Jina hai Laloo’.
(The author is a business consultant)
