When called upon to mention one of the most bizarre encounters you had in your life, my mind runs back to the initial days of Goa. It’s certainly a very easy-going State and you would never fathom that it can put you to an embarrassing situation where your conscience pushes you to mortgage your family to a beach shack and arrange for cash to pay off the bill. They don’t accept card! It struck me hard. It was 2016.
Cut to 2018 — the scene hasn’t changed a bit. To their aghast, this is still a standing warning to friends, family and social connects whenever they ring me for scratchy guidance before their visit, to save them from the scare.
In 2016, urban India had gone far deep digital. Major share of the society was suffused with the phenomena of online payment on-the-go, when Centre coined it as a break through idea and was following through on its pledge to make Digital India. We, by then, were already driven by sleek cards, even pass up places without card payment facilities.
Goa is run by the same government as it was in 2016. Then it was an elected government, now politically traded to majority — the mandate remains the same. Just wonder, if the State is aligned with the Union Government, shouldn’t it be steadfast to adjust and comply with the Centre’s plan of action when the Digital India idea was so religiously endorsed by opposition State like West Bengal and you find even a make-shift tea stall at the edge of a footpath at central Kolkata has option to pay bill through paytm.
Beach shacks are a primary attraction for the tourists. But all through my stay in Goa, beach shacks have secured scores of news, all for repellent reasons. By large, they were mostly for illegal installations, excavations, nefarious activities, police raids, and around the political upheaval it ensues. I haven’t seen activists or government have ever been myopic to the seething severity of the problem under the surface discipline.
The subplot is equally scandalous. There is no regularity in the price menu either. The pricing of the food items, with same quantity and taste, are spiked close to double on tourist season to the price paid during the dry season. And all are paid in cash. The arbitrary governance is apparent as when NDA government is supposedly set on to diminish corruption of the country from zero to nil, they have no check on black money generating spread along the beaches in their governed State, let alone the plight of its tourists.
The relation between the Centre and people has turned testy for many reasons. Goa could save its grace.
