The Calangute Police have arrested seven tourists from Pune for outraging the modesty of two local minors. The news comes on the back of three tourists from Madhya Pradesh accused of allegedly gang raping a local girl in the presence of her boyfriend.
If these incidents do not shock you, nothing ever will.
And yet, things have come to this precisely because successive governments have been turning a blind eye to incidents that have been simmering along the coastal belt for a while now.
Clashes between tourists and locals have not been unheard of. However, with the number of tourists increasing by the day, the state’s capacity to handle them is being stretched to a point that the experience for everyone is less than desirable.
For more than a decade now, the media has been highlighting incidents where female foreign tourists are being harassed, forced to pose with gangs of lecherous men, subjected to an invasion of their privacy and this besides the “usual” incidents of catcalls, lewd comments and intemperate staring mainly be domestic tourists.
Rather than recognise the seriousness of the problem, governments have continued to ignore it hoping that it will wish itself away. Tourists have been allowed to get away with their criminal behaviour simply because the state did not have the mechanisms to enforce the law.
All this while simultaneously inviting more and more tourists of all kinds to come to Goa.
Goa may not have the power infrastructure to cater to them, sufficient police mechanisms to control large men in groups or even enforce the rights of locals, but that’s hasn’t stopped the state government from seeking even more growth in the tourism sector and boasting of the high growth it has shown.
This has reached a point where even the TTAG has begun to protest against what they said was Goa becoming an “overrun” tourism destination.
Locals in the tourism belt have complained that their young girls including students and youth cannot venture out of their houses at all -- never mind the late hours -- without facing a barrage of abuse of various kinds.
It’s time the government realizes that Goa’s tourism industry is coming at a huge price and while one could argue that it is already too late, it is better that the government acts now.
The Betalbatim incident is testament to the fact that such incidents are not restricted to the “overrun” beach belt of Calangute-Candolim, but the entire coastal belt and areas frequented by tourists are at risk.
The state government needs to act quickly to nip the “rape culture” that is being brought to Goa by tourists and we can end up doing the whole country a favour.
