GLOBAL GOENKARS SPEAK
The writer is professor at Columbia University in the USA who hails from Cortalim
Goa is not an empty canvas for speculative real estate. It is one of India’s most fragile ecological zones, a narrow coastal state of laterite hills, low-lying rice fields, orchard lands, mangroves, aquifers, and estuaries. It is a living civilisational landscape shaped for centuries by the Gaokari system, a community-based land stewardship model that balanced cultivation, commons, water, and social responsibility long before modern planning laws existed.
Goa’s environmental limits are real, and the threats from mega-projects are not small. Our green sloping hills regulate drainage. Our khazans protect against flooding; paddy fields recharge. groundwater. Our orchard lands are part of a living agro-ecological system. When these are bulldozed for clusters of 100 to 1,200 apartments, many complete with multiple swimming pools, the damage is not cosmetic but permanent damage to a system that breathes through its aquifers, absorbs monsoon rains through its fields, and sustains livelihoods, humans, and animals through its soil and waters.
It is now becoming increasingly clear that approvals granted will transgress traditional tribal cultivation lands and encroach upon sites of worship, some close to crematoriums and burial grounds. These are not neutral “plots” on a planner’s map. They are sacred and ancestral spaces, landscapes full of memories, prayer, mourning, and lives lived for centuries. To treat them as commodities for conversion shows profound disregard for community dignity.
Those in power fail to recognise that Goan villages are living ecosystems of culture and economy, sustained by traditional cultivation, fishing, toddy tapping, faith practices, and intergenerational bonds. When large-scale projects intrude upon these spaces without meaningful consent or cumulative impact assessment, they do more than alter skylines. They fracture the social fabric and erode trust.
Projects bring revenue, employment?
Section 39A has made it easier to convert and consolidate land at scales never seen before. Most of these projects mushrooming all over Goa are far beyond the purchasing capacity of middle-class Goans who are already being burdened by skyrocketing prices. Who, then, is this development for?
We are told these projects will bring revenue and employment. But we have seen that no amount of revenue can offset Goa’s water scarcity, electricity shortages, collapsing garbage collection systems, and untreated sewage entering aquifers. Many villages struggle to receive water for even two hours a day. It is not uncommon to see garbage overflowing onto the streets and vacant lands. Yet, authorities are quick to approve projects with hundreds of units and multiple pools under lax local requirements.
For most of these projects, there has been no transparent, publicly debated carrying-capacity study, especially for rural areas and villages. No serious accounting of impacts on aquifers, drainage systems, small internal roads, or solid-waste management. No comprehensive assessment of how 500-1,000 additional vehicles will navigate narrow village roads, designed for bullock carts, bicycles, scooters and small cars.
At village Gram Sabhas, when residents raise concerns, panchayat members, backed by party bosses, dismiss these as anti-development. Panch members and the government argue that mega-projects generate employment and revenue. But what jobs are we talking about? Temporary construction labour. Low-paid domestic work. Drivers. Security guards. Cooks. These are not transformative employment pathways for Goa’s youth.
If revenue is the justification, where is the continued investment in water augmentation and water harvesting, in sewage treatment, reliable electric power generation, decentralised waste recycling, renewable energy systems, and resilient road infrastructure? Goans have seen no evidence that infrastructure capacity is expanding in proportion to approvals. Our roads barely survive a single monsoon before they are dug up again, re-tendered, and relaid with fanfare, coconut breaking and garland ceremonies in a cyclical manner every year, which benefits mainly elected officials and contractors.
The common Goan has to run from pillar to post for licences, modest repairs, a room extension, a compound wall, and a small renovation. Files sit. Objections multiply. Technicalities stall approvals. While mega-projects appear to move with remarkable velocity. Clearances happen overnight, conversions are fast-tracked and construction licences are granted without the need for public consultation.
Fires of protest across Goa
In recent years, Goans have repeatedly witnessed instances where segments of new entrants display little regard for local laws, traditions, or ecological norms. These fires of protest spreading across Goa are not about hostility toward outsiders. Goa has always welcomed visitors and settlers. The issue is the scale and speed at which they are happening. When projects of 100–1,200 units with luxury amenities rise in villages with erratic water supply and fragile waste systems, priorities are inverted. When sacred sites sit in the shadow of high-density towers, something fundamental shifts. When aquifers are treated as inexhaustible and when hills are carved as if they were decorative mounds, we gamble with irreversible loss. Section 39A has facilitated a form of development that does not benefit anyone in Goa, except those in power.
Goans need to be united in this fight irrespective of party loyalty. This is about the future of Goa. Dividing ourselves over trivial issues like who called whom what and filing FIRs only weakens collective resolve. The larger question is whether we allow our fragile hills, rice fields, orchard lands, villages, our culture and way of life to be permanently altered. If we remain silent now, no new government or amount of revenue will restore what is lost.
