(link not available...) This weekend, the first charter flight of the tourism season arrives at Dabolim from Russia’s capital city of Moscow. But instead of cheer or celebration for this official starting point of the high-demand months that will last until next summer, there is plenty of reason for trepidation and anxiety. Each of the past five years has seen a dramatic rise in the number of visitors packing into India’s smallest state, but there has been no accompanying rise in income or positive benefits of any kind. Instead, a drastic shift downwards in the tourist demographic now skews heavily domestic, male, and lowest-budget. The only growth trends appear to be in crime, garbage, destruction of the environment, and widespread social and cultural degradation.
Like most crises that beset once-pristine Goa, successive administrations have done nothing to ameliorate, and a lot to compound the problems. When it comes to tourism, the political cadre demonstrates especially dismal incompetence and mismanagement. Instead of recognizing the obvious crisis, these so-called “leaders” stubbornly persist on making matters worse, and pursuing the most castastrophic policies. There are only empty promises, or – much worse – abysmally wrong-headed policy decisions that are forced through to cause huge damage. Thus it strikes real fear to hear chief minister Manohar Parrikar say he’s intent on doubling “tourism footfalls in the state from the present 60 lakh to 1.2 crore in the next five years.” Should that disastrous goal come close to fruition, it will mean the end of Goa once and for all. There are innumerable errors and absurdities in Goa’s makeshift, contradictory tourism policy, but the most fatal is blinkered emphasis on mindlessly ramping up “tourism footfalls”, instead of responsibly nurturing the original attributes that created the industry’s success. Geoff Bolan of Sustainable Travel International (a USA-based NGO) puts it succinctly, “A destination’s capacity for tourism functions much like a concert venue’s capacity for concertgoers.” Surpass that “carrying capacity” and you are on a slippery slope to suicide. “You know when you see and feel overcrowding? When locals have a lot of tension in relation to tourism?” Says Bolan, by then it is already game over. “Let’s just be honest with it. You’re just too late.” Much of Goa has probably already crossed that depressing tipping point, with most of the coastline now in terminal decline. Everyone knows it except the politicians, who will surely remain in denial even after the final nails in the coffin. The eternal tragedy of India’s best educated and wealthiest state continues to be the extraordinarily poor decision-making of its political and economic elites. Meanwhile, other parts of the country are making remarkable strides to achieve better results. Several states require special entry permits to enter, which controls numbers well. Sikkim has done a spectacular job of controlling most of the adverse impact of increasing numbers of travellers. Meanwhile, Kerala is a global star in this area, having already won the United Nations award for sustainable tourism. One valuable international example for Goa is Iceland, the tiny island transformed into a global tourism magnet, partly because it provides iconic locations to the ‘Game of Thrones’ blockbuster television series. Very much like Goa, it has seen 25-30% growth in arrivals each of the past five years (albeit from a far wealthier demographic). But unlike India’s “sunshine state”, both the people and their leaders are mostly united in believing the huge influx is not worth the attendant environmental, social and cultural costs. Even though tourism is by far the largest segment of the economy (again like Goa) the government will most likely soon place non-negotiable annual caps on the amount of travellers allowed in several environmentally sensitive areas, and will also levy a special tourist tax that will be spent on sustainable infrastructure and preservation efforts. In Barcelona, the wildly popular capital of Catalonia in Spain, locals are (once more just like Goans) regularly outnumbered by tourists, but (unlike Goa) are doing something about it. Even the deputy mayor, Janet Sanz says, “We understand that other people love our city. But we're becoming a tourist theme park. People live and work here. It's not just a fun weekend place.” So, her administration regulates the numbers of visitors entering locations like the city market. Many neighborhoods have formed “anti-tourism” groups to prevent disruption of their daily lives. And earlier this year, several thousand residents marched down the famous La Rambla to protest against the volume of tourists, and the anti-local gentrification of their neighborhoods. Viva Espana, for another important example that is relevant to Goa.
