The Last Requiem for Goa was sung not with Manohar Parrikar planning to massively “increase tourist footfalls” in the coming years as VM’s article claims, but with Goans adopting the greed and corruption culture of Indian society not too long after 1961.
One can understand (not forgive or tolerate) the likes of an Alemao coming from an education-lacking poor family getting hold of the reins of power and using it to personally profit from loot and plunder, but one can neither understand nor forgive people like the former CM, or as many allege the current Office Holder who come from an educated and wealthy background doing the same thing though they should have known better. While a certain quantum of poor governance would have been inherited from 450 years of Portuguese rule, the massive turn for the worse took place among Goans in less than a generation. Goans who lived in Bombay seeing the slow change from British-inherited values and principles established in that city to Indian-style democracy and chaos, could easily foretell where “liberated” Goa was headed. The only surprise was not only how fast but how severely it did. Roland Francis Toronto.
