Carnival charade
Something of a minor political flutter has been triggered by the Chief Minister’s decision to not budge on the schedule of the five-day budget session of the state assembly which coincides with the Carnival. The short budget session has been fixed for March 3 to 7. The Carnival which starts here with the street parade in Panjim on the evening of March 1, a Saturday, ends on March 4. The Nationalist Congress Party set off the debate, accusing Mr Manohar Parrikar of harbouring a communal agenda in not being willing to change the dates of the budget session which clash with the Carnival. The NCP also met Governor Bharat Vir Wanchoo asking for his intervention to get the ruling party to readjust the dates of the assembly session. It is one thing to be an alert and proactive opposition, quite another to overplay a minor, if not petty issue, just for the sake of a televised soundbyte or a few column inches of print coverage. The chief minister is totally right in asserting that the Carnival is not a “religious” festival, and does not enjoy the approval of the Church. Though there was opposition all around to it, the only reason it continued to survive in its present avatar is because of tourism, Mr Parrikar implied.
Quite rightly so. What was once a much-celebrated, spontaneous public festival and part of the state calendar under the Portuguese, has degenerated into a tacky commercial affair that shows Goa in a very poor light. But the point is, if the government intends to continue flogging the event for its “touristy” value, then it better do it better than the embarrassment that is being currently peddled as the “Goa Carnaval”. A look at Rio would be in order. Like in Goa, the Carnival came to Brazil with the Portuguese. It arrived in Rio around 1850 and remained largely Eurocentric for almost 200 years with its masquerade parties for the elite. By the turn of the 20th century the Rio Carnival began to acquire an Afro-Brazilian flavour and is today rooted in the samba and the favellas (slums) and the samba schools. Rio and much of Brazil comes to a complete standstill for the five days preceding the Ash Wednesday. But then the Carnaval has become so big in Brazil, why would it not. Carnival 2014 Rio is expected to pull in over a million tourists. Way back in 1980s when things began to get unmanageable with the crowds in Rio, the Brazilian government decided to take the Carnaval off the streets to the Sambódromo (Sambadrome) in Rio.
Designed by the modernist Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer the Sambadrome, recently renovated, will accommodate 90,000 spectators this year. Considered the biggest stage on earth, it has a half mile long runway for the over 30,000-people parade. Tickets to watch this all-night spectacle range from $300 per head to $4000 for a seat in the AC camarotes (cabins) this year. Obviously not even the Caribbean Carnival or the Mardi Gras could aspire to this level of pre-Lenten excess, and least of all Goa. But if we want to continue with the pretence of a “Goa Carnaval”, let’s at least try to get more professional. Keep commercial advertising out of the floats. Encourage participating groups to get professionals to train their dancers. Enhance government funding to improve the quality of participation. The only other alternative to the shoddy show we put up currently is to scrap it all together. The money would be better spent in encouraging the khell tiatr, which, apart from the fact that it is entirely ethnic Goan, has only got better with the vast armoury of subjects for its political satire.
The only other alternative to the shoddy Carnival show we put up currently, is to scrap it all together
