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Two new showrooms/office spaces, double height (135 sq m each with bath) for lease in upscale Campal/Miramar beach area, Panaji, Goa. Contact: [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gambling Away Our Future Goans are being forced to accept a problematic industry that has been rejected elsewhere in India, says VIVEK MENEZES It was a curious set of demonstrators who clogged the open space of Azad Maidan this Wednesday, September 9. They were almost all young men, under the age of 35. They were almost all Hindi speakers, with a rare Goan sprinkled in between. And instead of gathering together in one large group and listening to speakers -- as most demonstrations in Azad Maidan play out -- these young people stuck to their individual groups, milling around one or two people of authority, laughing and giggling among themselves like it was a company picnic. Closer examination proved that this is exactly what it was -- all these young "demonstrators" were actually the employees of the state's many casinos, who had been instructed to show up at this demonstration rather than for work. It was an attempt by the gambling industry to lobby for a reduction in the fee increase that recently made an entry ticket to casinos rise in price from Rs 200 to Rs 2000. Before this mass of young casino employees poured into Azad Maidan, they took a quick round of central Panjim, waving placards and signs. "We Goans do not want to go back to work overseas," was one particularly emotional appeal, which continued with a plea about having to leave aged parents behind. But when I went up to the men who were holding the sign, not a single one responded when I spoke in Konkani, asking whom the sign referred to. I pointed to the relevant lines again, and asked again in Hindi to meet these Goans who "did not want to go back to work overseas". A small commotion ensued. Finally, a supervisor was pushed forward to buy more time until a suitable Goan could be produced. In Azad Maidan, I continued to search for a Goan employee of the casinos who would be able to speak to me. I finally found one young woman who spoke Konkani, but she refused to speak on the record. "You go talk to my director who is standing there," she said, " we are not supposed to talk to anyone. We were just told to come to Panjim today instead of to work, and that we would be given instructions when we got here to Azad Maidan." Though I couldn't find her director, in the end I did find myself talking to a British employee of one of the casinos, and he pointed me to another British man, who finally produced a slightly nervous Goan employee who began to speak to me about his job and about the day's demonstration. But not a minute had gone by before the foreign supervisor showed up again at our elbows, listening closely, and interrupting his employee's train of thought. By then it was quite clear that this demonstration was a pure public relations exercise. And when all these young demonstrators were finally instructed to leave the city a short time later, they left mounds of garbage and all those ready-printed signs strewn all over Azad Maidan for the poor ragpickers to clear up after them. There could be no better metaphor for what these casino operators think of Goa -- our state and our people are only there to be lied to, taken advantage of, abused and dumped on. Make no mistake, the lies are manifold. For example, we are told that casinos are a major tourism draw that the state needs. But according to the figures reported by the gambling industry itself (to the Commercial Taxes Department) only a little over 2,00,000 entry tickets were purchased in the entire financial year 2008-2009. If you average that number across the state's casinos, that means each gambling den got less than 30 visitors per day. That's not enough to justify a beach shack license, let alone a problematic industry like gambling. Thus, we're left with inescapable conclusions -- either the gambling industry is lying about the number of visitors they get, and thus cannot be trusted in the first place; or we, as a people, are being lied to about it being a major tourism draw. More than two million visitors come to Goa each year, if only 1 per cent is interested in gambling, then the state's policy needs to be re-thought immediately. More brazen still is the illegal assault on the historic and once-beautiful Mandovi waterway, which now sports several permanently anchored rusting hulks, like so many smaller River Princesses. Every day that they remain -- in contravention of myriad laws, as well as simple public decency -- we are reminded that Goa is a democracy only in name, that the powers that be can and will ram what they will down the throats of the citizenry. We are reminded that then chief minister in 1992 amended the Anti-Gambling Act to allow slot machines in five-star hotels despite serious public objections. That then-CM Pratapsingh Rane further amended the act to allow casinos on ships despite serious objections. And then, crucially, precisely because of serious public objections, Mr Rane promised to incorporate a minimum distance from the shore, but failed to keep that promise. The entry and consolidation of the gambling industry in Goa has been a long, consistent trampling of democracy from the start. At this point, a certain amount of introspection is required. Why is it that every other part of India has managed to keep the gambling industry out? Kerala's coastline is much longer than ours, and the state needs (and pursues) the tourist trade just as much as Goa, but the gambling industry is nowhere to be seen. Pondicherry is a lot like Goa, and also seeks to increase its share of the tourism marketplace -- but its administrators would never turn to gambling to do it. Up and down the subcontinent, the gambling industry has found no foothold but Goa, and we have not one but an astonishing 19 casinos hidden away and anchored in plain sight, and this despite the fact that the gambling industry has no supporters at all in the populace at large, and has even come under constant criticism from the majority of the state's legislators. It is no more than a fact that Goans are famously tolerant. We are wonderfully tolerant of each other, and of visitors and migrants who all know -- and constantly extol the message -- that we are a hospitable people like no other. It is a tradition that goes back thousands of years. Researchers like Anant Sinai Dhume have pointed out Goa was tolerant and accepting even in 2000 BC, assimilating significant Sumerian influences. Wave after wave of migration, invasion and assimilation has taken place, before the Portuguese colonial episode, and after. We have seen the coming of the flower power brigade, and hundreds of thousands of migrants from the rest of India, to the point where we can all see the day when Goans are reduced to a minority in their own land. Openness and tolerance of diversity can be a great strength, and it has often proved so for the Goan people. But there must be limits, or else we become a pushover for the unscrupulous, and eventually a laughing stock and victim. Mahatma Gandhi once wrote, "I do not want my house to be walled in on sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any." But with this casino episode, we are now actually being forced to lie on our backs and accept a deeply troubling and problematic industry that has been rejected everywhere else in the country, even as the operators continue to flout every rule and guideline. It is a profoundly disturbing development, and a warning sign that we might be approaching the end of Goa's working democracy. http://oheraldo.in/pagedetails.asp?nid=27144&cid=14 First published in Herald.
