AMITA KANEKAR
One more residential society in Panjim is discussing “redevelop ment”. Everyone knows what this means: breaking the ex isting apartment buildings to build new apartment build ings. Does that sound sensible? If you already have buildings which serve the same purpose as the new ones you want, why don’t you repair and renovate the old ones, as per your need? Please note: these par ticular buildings are barely half-a-century old. There are plenty of buildings in Goa and the world that work fine at double or triple that age. Yes, they need maintenance work and repairs, and maybe improvements too, but then everything does. Plus, these buildings are built in rein forced cement concrete (RCC), arguably one of the strongest building materials known to man. How can anyone who has even minimal awareness of the environmental crisis before us today, seriously consider destroying stand ing buildings and going in for new construction, given the havoc that is caused – through all-around pollution and de struction of resources – by building construction? It is a fact that building construction can never be environmen tally-friendly. As Kimberley Dowdell, national president of the America Institute of Ar chitects in 2024, is quoted as saying, the only sustainable building is the building that already exists. And yet, all over Goa, we are destroying them. You might imagine that, if the people are so foolish that they would lightly destroy entire buildings just for the lure of a ‘free flat’ or ‘extra parking’, the govern ment could step in to dissuade them? One jokes, of course. The Goa government is much worse than any citizen: they actually suggest rebuilding for any building over a paltry thir ty years of age. And why wouldn’t they? It makes total sense given their priorities, which can be summed up in one word: land-grab. All that they want is to sell Goa to profit-ob sessed corporates who will produce villas with swimming pools (when most Goan vil lages receive water for barely an hour/day), or apartment towers containing flats priced at 3 or 4 or 5 crores.
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It is for these developers and their bil lionaire metropolitan Indian buyers, that the government is not only taking over virgin lands – including plateau (al ways described as ‘barren’), hillsides (however steep the slope), coasts (right up to the water line), and forests (with wildlife increasingly labelled as ‘vermin’) – but also prime real estate in the cities. And Panjim is obviously the num ber one target. Because, thanks to the casinos infesting the river for twenty years now, this once-beautiful and careful ly-designed capital of Goa is already well on its way to complete destruction. Just this ongoing Goa Assembly session saw a discussion of the ‘mul ti-crore sex racket’ now flour ishing in Goa, with the opposi tion pointing to 18 spas on just one road – Panjim’s 18th June Road – with ‘spa’ being a well known trade euphemism for sex businesses. According to the Chairperson of Goa’s State Commission for Women, Indi an men are increasingly visit ing Goa to purchase sex, with rates reaching one lakh rupees a night. Groups of such drunk and misbehaving all-male Indian tourists can be seen any day in the Bardez beach belt, and now in Panjim too, near the casinos. A few years ago, a Goa University student from Calangute described how it had become common for women in her village to be accosted on the road by male tourists asking for their “rate”. How long before this happens in Panjim? After all, that’s the kind of crowd that casinos naturally attract. All over the world, ca sinos are known for their con nection to drug and trafficking rackets, to mafia control, and to a general criminalisation of the environment. And now, not satisfied with what has al ready been achieved, the Goa government plans to increase – yes, increase – the number of casinos in Panjim and the whole of Goa.
A recent Goa-wide protest against the plan to bring in a huge new casino – for 2000-pa trons, purportedly to ‘replace’ the smallest (70-patron) of the six casinos already crowd ing the Mandovi – resulted in the Chief Minister declaring that no such boat would be allowed. But the BJP is famous for hypocritical U-turns on ca sinos (and other things) right from the time of Parrikar; so, no – one was surprised when, just a few days later, a proposal for the “redevelopment” of the iconic Junta House building in Panjim circulated through the city, showing on the top floor of the proposed building – not Panjim’s Friends of Astronomy Society which occupies the top floor of Junta House – but a ca sino. So that, instead of foster ing an interest in science and the cosmos in young Goans, you can – courtesy Goa’s Gov ernment – introduce them to gambling. News reports reveal that many more government properties in Panjim are up for “redevelopment”, to be replaced by residential, com mercial, and entertainment spaces. For what is entertain ment for the authorities, if not casinos? And let’s not forget Section 39A, which allows individ ual non-settlement plots to be converted into settlement ones at will. Thanks to this ne farious Section, individual ur ban plots with low Floor Area Ratio (FAR) can also be con verted, to much higher FAR. Thus, with builders and the government wanting to max imise profits, “redevelopment” is replacing the modest scale of most Panjim buildings with towers. This conversion does not come cheap of course. One more reason for the authori ties to encourage such “rede velopment”! Thus, Panjim’s old build ings, with their human scale, sensitive designs, charming aesthetics, and greenery, are on their way to being replaced by massive 12- or 14-storeyed towers of flats unaffordable to almost every Goan.
The former residents of the plot are likely to be the only Goans there, surrounded by either sold-but-empty flats (the best option), or flats housing em ployees of casinos or hotels, or – most likely of all – Airb nb flats for tourists, which in today’s Panjim means casino tourists or worse. And so, after seeing them increasingly taking over the roads, those drunk all-male tourist gangs arrive also at one’s door. An ugly image but, sadly, not unrealistic. (Amita Kanekar is an architectural historian and novelist)
