Perhaps the biggest shock about Vijai Sardesai’s comments that some tourists are “the scum of the earth” isn’t that a government minister would say this about visitors to Goa. No, perhaps the main surprise is that so few public figures in Goa have been outraged enough to say anything similar over the years.
Because the simple fact is that Goa has a long and relatively undignified history of encouraging and tolerating undesirables who you wouldn’t trust to look after a coconut, let alone allow them to run amok in the villages and beaches of this wonderful state. And I would have thought you’d all be thoroughly fed up with it by now.
Although the minister’s comments were directed at domestic tourists, it’s easy to see that the roots of Goan tourism’s partial descent into a cheap and nasty populist pit lie with Westerners. Back in the 1970s the trickle of ragged hippies who ‘discovered’ a paradise called Goa and laid claim to the villages and beaches in the North of the state might have seemed harmless enough. Yes, okay, so some of them seemed to be allergic to wearing clothes and there was probably a lot of bad poetry getting written, but people I’ve talked to – ex-hippies and old Goans – who remember those times felt it was fairly small-scale and relatively harmless.
But things change, of course. It’s one of the themes in my novel ‘The Vibe’, set in Anjuna in the late 1990s. One character, an angry, ancient American hippie called the Doc whose brain’s been half-fried by LSD, goes around ranting and raving about how Goa has been ruined by all the tourists wanting their “pretty little boxed-up neat and tidy two week vacations”, who know nothing about the old days, when Goa was pure instead of a “freak show”. He’s challenged by another character, a young traveller, after one of his rants; “This simple, secret paradise you and your friends found all those years ago, the one you wanted to keep just as it was. How many people did you mention it to?”
Because news spreads, of course. The scene grew and grew, the drugs got harder and the drug dealers moved in to cater for the demand. And did the authorities decide then that they didn’t like the way things were going, that it was storing up trouble for the future? Or did they rub their sweaty hands in anticipation of the bigger bribes available from the dealers, the party organisers, the bar owners? Did the villagers decide they didn’t want half-naked addicts overdosing all over the place, and keeping them up all night with loud parties? Or did they rent out rooms and take the cash? Take a wild guess.
From the 80s into the 90s the drug and dance scene grew in the North, and the start of charter flights to from Europe to Dabolim airport saw a boom in cheap package tours. Mini resorts sprang up in Calangute, Candolim and Baga, with the new Western visitors demanding beer, pizza and burgers, and chips with everything. Goan food? Goan culture? Many of them didn’t know anything about it and weren’t interested in finding out. I’ve nothing against package tourists I’ve been one myself many times – but I’ve met some who didn’t even know Goa was in India. And one thought it was an island. Possibly near Africa.
When I first visited Goa more than 25 years ago it was clear that the State was in a period of major transition. To be fair, there did appear to be a desire from the Goan government at the time to attract the ‘right’ kind of tourist, the high-spending and respectable kind rather than “louts and drug-dabblers” as one sign on a wall in Calangute used to put it. The solution – big resorts in compounds in the South, with some limited development in the North may not have been ideal, with questions over how much local communities would benefit, but you could tell the intent was there. Overall, however, the development of tourism in Goa doesn’t seem to have been thought-through. It just seems to have happened.
And it kept happening. The hippies and other sunbathers (often topless, in complete disregard for local sensitivities and customs) became a tourist exhibit themselves. At weekends and holidays buses would arrive from neighbouring states, and crowds of men would roam the beaches to take snaps of the bare (female) flesh on show while slugging back cheap whisky. I’ve seen screaming arguments, fights, and cameras hurled into the surf, with Western tourists taking extreme umbrage at the intrusion from Indian day-trippers, completely missing the fact that it was their odd behaviour that was out of place in India. They had become the “freak show” that the Doc railed against in my novel. But what did anyone do to discourage it from happening? This was the beginning of the problem Minister Sardesai describes now.
I suppose I should make it clear that I am only referring to a minority of visitors to Goa, although a substantial one. Most people – Westerners and Indians are respectful and respectable, are interested in Goan history and culture, and want to experience the ‘real’ Goa away from the increasingly scrubby beaches packed with shacks. There are many wonderful places to stay, Goan hospitality is deservedly famous, and Goa also has one of the great cuisines of the world. There is a great deal to celebrate and love about Goa. My concern is that the balance isn’t right.
When tourism has been allowed to develop in a low-grade way that attracts organised criminals from Nigeria and Russia, as well as being the destination of choice for drug-tourists (I once met a Californian doctor who was in Goa on a two-week ‘heroin holiday’ before going back to the US to remain drug-free until the next Goan trip), it does not point towards a bright and glorious future. The bad will tarnish the good, and Goa could stop being the wonderful land which attracted people in the first place. It’s a problem faced by many a paradise.
So, no, I’m not surprised that Minister Sardesai is angry. And even though I wouldn’t have used the same phrase as him, I sympathise with the sentiment. But that’s where the problem shows up in the starkest form, because how can we really blame domestic tourists for disrespecting Goa and the Goan way of life when Goa has done so little to prevent the state being seen as a cheap place to get drunk, take drugs, gamble and ogle at bare female flesh?
I have a deep affection for Goa, and that feeling will always stay with me. But those you love can also annoy you at times, and I get very annoyed at what’s happening to Goa. I can’t help but look at Kerala, and see how they promote the state in a way that develops sustainable tourism focusing on culture, nature, history, heritage, food and the Keralite way of life. Does Kerala suffer from the same problems that Goa faces now? No it doesn’t. I wonder why.
I am an optimist, though. If Goa wants to sort these problems, I’m sure that it can. It would have helped if some of these issues had been addressed more seriously twenty years ago, but we are where we are.
So, speak out – and take action. Decide what type of Goa you want, and put in the hard work, money and determination that it will take to change the tourist industry in a way which improves Goa rather than ruining it.
In almost all the ‘paradises’ I’ve visited in the world I’ve met someone who’s said “you should have been here twenty years ago, it was much better then.” That happened when I first turned up in Goa in 1993. It would be nice if we could get to 2038 and say “you’re lucky you weren’t in Goa twenty years ago. It’s so much better now”.
(Rae Stewart is the author of ‘The Vibe’, a travel thriller set in Goa in the late 1990s)
