The one place that definitely seems worse than what it was is Mapusa. Someone online initiative should perhaps hold a competition for the 'dirtiest' and most unkempt building there... with photos included too!
In other places, there is a bit of a visible tradeoff at least. Even the coastal belt (specially in the ABC-Anjuna-Baga-Calangute/Candolim areas, in varying degrees, though more at the C-end) has lost its serenity, water purity, scenic skyline and open spaces but has gained in terms of becoming a more 'happening' if concretised place. Social change in the area has also meant that the old, hierarchical obviously unjust and bhadkar-dominated order has taken a beating, and the former subalterns have got a bigger stake in the system. Such issues will obviously not be discussed in cyberspace too often, because the debates tend to be one-sided. A lot more money has entered the area, though not without a price. In Mapusa's case, I can't see too many redeeming features. The market (a gift from the departing colonial Portuguese circa 1950) is in a mess. The whole city is more shabbier than it was 20 years ago. The bus-stand's repeated shifting is a good indicator of the total lack of foresight in planning. Couldn't the projected growth estimates be calculated more effectively to start with? Shops are built one on top of the other at the ring alongside the market; this makes for terrible crowds, and lousy aesthetics, but perhaps yields good money for those taking such decisions. (If not mistaken, the role of the Narvekar brothers has come in for scrutiny on this score.) Politicians like Ramakant Khalap have warned about the attempts to convert the fields around Mapusa into real-estate zones, and make a killing. You can already see that happening. The city-fathers have done well for themselves (and their real estate dealings), the place has paid the price. Comunidade politics are apparently manipulated by bringing in 'guest' gaonkars all the way from beyond Goa's borders, to be wined and dined and made to vote in directions that support the status quo and lobbies in control. Look at the ugly buildings threatening to fall over your heads even as you enter Mapusa. While former CM and Panjim MLA Manohar Parrikar has come in for praise in this thread, I have long felt that such praise for selected politicians is just an overactive propaganda machine, willing to seize any opportunity to build up undue reputations. What happens to Panjim seems more like a policy of just seizing the resources of one area of Goa and boosting the fortunes of another (Panjim, in this case). One wonders: if Parrikar was all that he was made out to be, why did he not contest elections from Mapusa itself (his hometown, incidentally) and make a miracle of that place? Or does he too depend on the much-derided "votebanks"? FN 2009/10/26 Sandeep Heble <sandeephe...@gmail.com>: > Selma Carvalho wrote: > "I agree that a lot of things have improved in Goa during the last 20 > years. Unfortunately, I cannot include the three main townships of > Margao, Vasco and Panjim being in that list. That of course is my