Well said Vivian. And kudos to FN too for his article in the Herald about the exclusionary tactics of Goans.
The reality is that no matter how much and for how long we debate about the migrants, given the shortage of labor in Goa, the democratic nature of India and the vigorous drive towards capitalism and globalization, Goans are destined to become a minority in their own homeland soon. As a result of 1961, they would have been destined anyway, but the process has been much heightened since the last two decades. It took the East Indians of the Bombay suburbs about a hundred years to become a minority in their villages, but India was socialist then and therefore Bombay took a longer time to develop than it would have if India were as stridently capitalist as it is now. Goa has found itself in the middle of the enrichment of the Indian middle class. This is a juggernaut that almost nothing can stop and Goans can be thankful that the rich of India have found a use for Goa only as a holiday home. Consider the unthinkable alternative. What if they had targeted Goa for industrial development? We Goans cannot and should not complain. How ironic that that Rajan Parrikar, Jose Colaco, Arwin Misquitta and Xacuti are in the USA, Bahamas, Dubai and Macao respectively. So this is what we Goans do. We leave Goa for whatever reason (my father left Goa for employment in Bombay in his youth) and then we complain that others have found in Goa what we could not see ourselves. I am not saying that these worthy gentlemen are armchair theorists like me. On the contrary all of them are activists in their own way. But that does not detract from the only reality that is possible on the horizon. That the term Goans in Goa will one day mean not only those who lived there or whose parents lived there pre-1961 but will come to mean anyone who lives in Goa. Therefore if we have energy to expend on the good of Goa, we rather put it in insistence on good governance than in berating the ghantis and the bailes. Goa will become a much better place when pubic servants including the police become accountable to the law of the land and people in Goa learn to respect the law in the same manner that they expect their public servants to respect it. We can't expect to hold them to a higher standard than the citizen for whose welfare they are expected to govern. Every Goan who breaks the law, expecting that no one observes it, will know what I am saying. Roland. On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Vivian A. DSouza <[email protected]> wrote: > Goans who have emigrated should hold on to the memories of the good old days, > which will never return, just as they will never return to Goa except perhaps > to visit. I am sure in each of the countries that Goans have emigrated to, > life has changed, at least for the people who lived there before the > immigrants poured in. I say this in a positive sense, as Immigrants with > their strong work ethic and adaptive abilities tend to enrich the countries > of their adoption. In time with succesive generations the bonds that tie > Goans to their native land will loosen, kept tenaciously alive only in the > Goan Associations all over the world. > > Viva Goa !
