GLOBAL GOENKARS SPEAK
The writer is professor at Columbia University in the USA who hails from Cortalim
There are places in the world that feel discovered, and there are places that feel inherited. Goa, for me, is the latter.
I was born in Kenya but grew up in Goa when our State still felt like a place the modern world had not fully claimed. Our visitors were not investors scouting waterfront parcels, or luxury mega-project realtors surveying coastlines and landscapes. They were backpackers and wanderers, affectionately called hippies, who arrived with little money, but with loads of curiosity and time. They came because of something special about Goa: beaches without concrete walls, rolling green hills uninterrupted by cranes, paddy fields shimmering in the late afternoon light, air that felt impossibly clean. They came for a people whose warmth was unforced and whose culture did not need to advertise itself.
When my parents returned to Goa, my first impression was simple: this was paradise. Not curated. Not commercial. A living landscape where my siblings and I would visit the nearby lake with little boats crafted from newspapers. We walked to school with friends, swam in rivers, played football, hockey and cricket in open fields, rolled in hay after the rice was harvested, and celebrated each other’s festivals. Doors were rarely locked. What felt ordinary then feels extraordinary now.
WEIGHT OF LOSS
That memory is no longer nostalgic, but now carries the weight of loss, that all of a sudden today seems so very heavy.
The Goa of open horizons and quiet dignity is gradually giving way to something faster and more transactional. Railway lines are being bulldozed through villages against the wishes of neighbourhood communities. Hills are being carved and terraced. Paddy fields deliberately fallowed, are being hollowed out for concrete. Source waters are being diverted. Aquifers are punctured. Rivers that once sustained life now host floating casinos, and bigger and broader are on the way. Beaches pulse with clubs and spas, none operated by Goans. Slowly, in ways not immediately noticeable, the character of Goa is shifting, and with it, the balance that once defined us.
There have even been attempts to distort and degrade symbols of our culture, that reflect the assault on everything Goans are known for.
Take for instance the debate that raged about coconut tree. Botanically, ‘Cocos nucifera’ is a monocotyledon to which grass belongs. Reclassifying one of Goa’s most sacred and defining trees as ‘grass’ in 2016 may have appeared technical, yet it foreshadowed practical consequences. When protections were in the process of being eased, chainsaws were quietly being sharpened to fell large coconut orchard tracts, all in the name of development. Thankfully, following public outcry, the government reversed its decision within a year.
The coconut tree is not merely a plant within a scientific hierarchy. It is a structural pillar of our landscape, framing our coastline, rivers, village roads, sustaining livelihoods, anchoring ritual, shaping our skyline. Decisions about such symbols carry meaning beyond paperwork, they mark the beginnings of an assault on communities, their culture and values.
Time and time again, reclassification and rezoning of land are presented as development. Yet development must always be measured not only by revenue, but by long-term consequence. Each project is repeatedly defended as progress. But responsible governance requires us to ask: momentum and speed toward what? Development for whom?
Young Goans are told that these ventures bring employment and prosperity. Some surely do. But it many of these rely on low wage workers lured from out of state into a land where prejudice is low and freedom is abundant. When tragedy struck at the Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub in Arpora, not one of the staff who lost their lives was Goan. This incident was heartbreaking, but it begs us to question whether these development ventures actually provide local employment.
We are also witnessing social strain: a nightlife economy that stretches law enforcement, rising accidents on our roads, concerns about public safety, and proposals to position Goa as a coal-handling hub, coal jetties along our waterways, without fully confronting the long-term health implications. Goa is not a vast industrial state. It is a small coastal region vulnerable to climate change, sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion into aquifers, and water stress. When hills are levelled and waterways burdened with waste and coal transport and source waters to the rivers diverted for political mileage, the consequences and at times can never be reversed
WEIGHT OF INHERITANCE
My narrative is not an argument against development. Goa cannot remain static. Change is inevitable, and economic opportunity matters. But development without balance risks our culture, values and way of life going extinct. Growth without stewardship risks destroying what makes Goa distinct and special.
And so the question must now be placed squarely before the youth, especially the educated youth of Goa, whose absence in civic discourse, is becoming painfully evident, more so at Panchayat meetings, and at the very rallies that seek to defend their future. What kind of Goa do they wish to inherit ten years from now?
To the youth of Goa, this is not about party loyalty, religion, or social standing. It is about stewardship. Standing up does not require outrage. It requires attention. Participating in consultations. Asking informed questions. Demanding transparency. Holding those in power accountable, consistently and fairly.
The Goa you inherit will not be shaped by memory alone. It will be shaped by the seriousness with which your generation engages today. Years from now, the contours of this land will reflect the decisions of your time in its rivers, its hills, its air. You will look back and measure not only what was built, but what was protected. Inheritance is not merely the privilege of receiving a place; it is the responsibility of safeguarding it. History will not remember who applauded the loudest. It will remember who paid attention. And whether, when it mattered, they chose stewardship over silence.
The Goa they inherit will not be shaped by memory alone. It will be shaped by the seriousness with which their generation engages today.
