Deccan Herald Sunday Herald India's Florida: Jostling for the spoils of tourism [Send your feedback to the writer at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ]
DS Thirty years ago it took three bus changes and a long walk through lush paddy fields to get to Anjuna beach. Thirty years ago it took three bus changes and a long walk through lush paddy fields to get to Anjuna beach. The hub of global tourism in Goa, Anjuna, where heroin and psychedelia mixed with indolence and the sun to give birth to Goa trance and the rave rage, was as isolated as it could get. The fields have today given way to a landscape scarred by construction and a glut of commercialisation that threatens to devour even the small beach that is now used by hordes of hawkers and flea market squatters as an open toilet. Garbage is strewn all over, as in the rest of the tourist coast in Goa that has become the worst casualty of the crass greed of panchayat members. Density of settlement is the highest in Goa around Baga, Calangute, Candolim, and Anjuna. Over 250 coastal regulation zone (CRZ) violations have been identified here alone by the tourism department last month. At the nerve-centre of Goa's tourism, where locals jostle with Lambanis, Kashmiris, Rajasthanis and now foreigners to do business, tempers are beginning to fray as the competition gets more frantic and the coast more tacky. Congress MLA and sarpanch of Candolim village Agnelo Fernandes worries that "no one is doing anything" about the influx of foreigners and outsiders elbowing in into businesses along the coast. "Foreigners are running pubs, guest houses, shacks, restaurants, boat rides, sight-seeing tours and even hiring out motorbikes. They have no RBI clearance and pay no taxes. If they take over all the small businesses, what will locals do?" he asks. Fernandes' panchayat recently turned down a foreigner's application to run a five-room guest house even though the party had RBI sanction for the business. The influx is driving land prices to giddy heights, he says. British resident Dave Gower agrees that foreigners should stay away from businesses where Goans are involved. But Goans, he says, are to a large extent responsible. "They are mourning the changes, but they are the ones who have been selling their houses and land. For other Indians, Goa is India's Florida, and whether you like it or not, it is the foreigners who have made the place valuable." Take the foreigners out of Goa and Goa would lose, he says. Not everyone agrees. Over the last three months, the state government has deported 26 foreigners, most of them Israelis and Russians linked to the drug trade and the Russian land mafia. Some were running discos and beach shacks under falsely registered companies, said deputy inspector general of police Ujjwal Mishra. [Deccan Herald * August 20, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Deccan Herald Sunday Herald � Detailed Story Goa: Realty hotspot DS Right now, there's only one way real estate is headed in Goa: northwards. And as land rates make new highs almost daily, local builders too are beginning to feel the heat of big-time entrants from "outside". Right now, there's only one way real estate is headed in Goa: northwards. And as land rates make new highs almost daily, local builders too are beginning to feel the heat of big-time entrants from "outside". "Prices are spiralling not every month, but every fortnight," says builder Dinar Tarcar who is finding the business "too hot to handle these days." Were he to buy land at these inflated rates, his Rs 40 crore company could collapse in a crash, he fears. One of the biggest land deals made here recently surprised even the government. The land auction by its subsidiary Economic Development Corporation (EDC) fetched Rs 90 crore for 18,120 square metres at Panjim's Patto Plaza. On the Calangute coast, land stands now at Rs 7,000 to Rs 9,000 a sq metre, depending on beach access. One plot was sold recently for Rs 10,000 per sq metre, said MLA and Sarpanch Agnelo Fernandes. At seaside Dona Paula, equated with Mumbai's glitzy Malabar Hill, prices range from Rs 10,000 to Rs 22,000 per sq metre. Actor Shah Rukh Khan recently booked his piece of the Goan real estate pie at a manicured development there. Tarcar who sold seaview apartments here for Rs 12,000 sq metre (built-up) three years ago, says the same flats are being resold for Rs 40,000 per sq metre today. It is the deals made over gracious old Portuguese-style mansions that surprise one almost on a daily basis. One such house at Altinho in Panjim was bought recently by a Goan mineowner for around Rs 7 crore (Rs 70 million), say builders. August 20, 2006 [Deccan Herald] * * * * * * * * * * * Sun, sand and slums As more and more ‘outsiders’ make Goa their second home, locals worry that the beach city’s character will be lost given the pace of realty development. Devika Sequeira on the globalisation of Goa. It took novelist and psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar and his wife Katharina Poggendorf less than 10 minutes to decide that Goa was the only place in India that they could live in. "Goa was the obvious choice," says Kakar whose impressively restored old Goan house in Benaulim has accommodated a swimming pool in the backyard. Intellectually, Goa has little to offer Kakar. But its easy connectivity -- they travel abroad at least six times a year -- quiet and peace have given him and his wife just the kind of setting they need to work on their writing. Their two years here have been a "first-rate experience," Kakar says. Briton Dave Gower, an organic farmer, has been residing in Goa much longer. After eight years here, he finds the marketing of organic vegetables still "a struggle". But the quality of life more than makes up for the slow business, he says. With its Christian ambience, Goa was the "natural choice" for Gower and his girlfriend, and he is optimistic that business will pick up as the state's cosmopolitan base expands. The London-born farmer is already scouting around for property of his own, away from the "overcrowding at Baga" where he now lives. The xenophobic sentiment that is on the rise in Goa against foreigners, migrants and other 'outsiders' who have been drawn to settle here or acquire real estate after the liberalised Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999, has touched neither Kakar or Gower personally. "The animosity is being whipped up by the media, and is also largely directed at the migrants from Karnataka and other states. The foreigners are being made the scapegoats," says Gower. British travel agent Jan Bostock, who is "passionate about Goa" and settled here a year ago with his Indian wife Aarti, says the "scaremongering" by the media could have a negative fallout on tourism in Goa. "I know a lot of foreigners who come to Goa, like it and try to buy a home. Many are getting the wrong advice from lawyers on how to go about acquiring property legally. Granted, that some miscreants among foreigners will try and do things illegally. But it is wrong to paint all of us with the same brush," he says. The undercurrent of resentment against the surge in property acquisitions by foreigners in Goa prompted chief minister Pratapsingh Rane to send out a stern warning in his Independence Day speech. Nowhere else in India were foreign tourists being allowed to just walk in and buy property, he said. "We need to convince them that they cannot break the law." The government is now investigating the validity of 482 land deals made by foreign buyers in the past three years. Among the cases under review are 55.5 acres bought by an American in the North Goa village Pilerne, 20 acres bought by a Swiss national in Sucorro and 16 acres bought by a Briton in Sangolda. "We have two Reserve Bank of India officials also on the job and are referring the matter to RBI for action," Goa chief secretary J P Singh told Sunday Herald. He said the Ministry of Home Affairs has clarified that foreigners travelling here merely on holiday were not entitled to acquire property. "Even those intending to do business, settle or retire in Goa require RBI clearance to buy a house or land," Singh said. The government has for now virtually frozen the registration of sale deeds that involve foreign buyers and said all such cases would be whetted by the home department in future. The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) which moved to Goa in 2004 has only added to Goa's aura as a global destination, Singh believes. "There has been a huge fallout from IFFI," he says and worries that Goa’s character will be lost given the pace of realty sellout by the locals. There has been a virtual stampede by Gujarati and Punjabi NRIs as well to pick up holiday and retirement homes in Goa after FEMA 1999 lifted restrictions on NRIs and PIOs (persons of Indian origin). In the case of foreigners, the ambiguity of the law, the deliberate misinterpretation by lawyers of FEMA regulations and the RBI's ostrich-like approach to the matter, has only confused the issue. "Someone should bring the illegalities to our attention," said RBI general manager Doris D'Souza, who points out that the problem is peculiar to Goa which has become a global properties hotspot. "The foreigners like to come and live here," she says. D'Souza has had dozens of tourists approach her directly to clarify the legal position on their acquiring properties. The RBI official is aware that a number of lawyers have been dispensing advice that is far from tenable with FEMA regulations, but "pleading ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating it," she says. Some 2,000 foreigners, a large number of them European pensioners and Russian property hunters, have made Goa their winter home, the police estimate. British media reports which have been warning of "growing intolerance" to westerners settling in Goa suggest that some 5000 Britons may have bought a retirement home here. The food is continental, the ambience is right and the cost of living is far cheaper than Europe, one retiree said. British and German expats are a common site at pubs, singing to Karaoke at Ernesto's bar in Panjim, the movies or any cultural event in Goa these days. Some even run a full-time canine rescue centre. The multi-racial, multi-cultural mix could be good for Goa in many ways, some here argue. But the enormous pressures on land, infrastructure and the high rate of unemployment could also fuel deeper xenophobic sentiment. Last month, the newly formed Goa Bachao Manch (GBM) took tractors to a large piece of land in Canacona, South Goa, and set about ploughing agricultural land it said had been illegally sold to Russian buyers. "Foreigners are prohibited from buying agricultural land and we intend to till any such land sold to them," said Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) youth wing president Rajan Ghate who is the convenor of the GBM. Most foreigners buying immovable properties here are flouting provisions of FEMA’s Section 2(v)(i)B, he said. (ENDS) _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
