GLOBAL GOENKARS SPEAK
The writer is professor at Columbia University in the USA who hails from Cortalim
There are some cities inherited through documents and maps and others inherited emotionally, through memories, tides, ferry crossings, evening walks, old cafés and rivers that quietly shape everyday life. For many of us who grew up around Panaji, the Mandovi was never merely a river flowing past a capital city. It was part of our emotional landscape.
After long workdays at the National Institute of Oceanography in Dona Paula, many of us drifted instinctively toward the city, not searching for noise or spectacle, but for something simpler and more valuable: familiarity, friendship and calm.
The Mandovi breeze carried the smell of salt and its exposed riverbed, ferry smoke and, as dusk settled gently over the river, aromas from distant home kitchens. On high-tide days, fishermen stood patiently with bamboo rods along the promenade. The river was never simply a waterway cutting through a city. It was memory, identity and companionship. It was the face Goa presented.
OVERSIZED FLOATING EDIFICE
Today, a tall, 112-metre floating edifice waits to enter the Mandovi River. It arrives not as an addition to Goa’s landscape but as a wound upon it, an oversized floating structure of steel, neon and noise that diminishes the beauty of everything around it.
Which is why so many Goans now feel compelled to say, without apology, 'You do not belong here.'
You do not have the right to intrude upon and scar a skyline shaped by temple and gurudwara spires, church towers, old balcaos and riverfront heritage homes. The tragedy is not merely that your arrival will wound the landscape of the Mandovi. The deeper tragedy is the vice you bring with you and the slow erosion of civic and moral clarity already unsettling our city.
CHANGING POLITICAL COLOURS
For decades, leaders across parties have fought elections promising to rid the Mandovi of casinos. Their speeches were fiery; their outrage sounded sincere, as though the river itself were sacred and Panaji’s identity worth defending at any political cost.
The Congress government opened the door to the first casino vessel. Manohar Parrikar, while in opposition, famously protested against casinos on the Mandovi, channelling the anxieties of Goans who feared the riverfront was slipping away from them. More recently, our current Panaji MLA and revenue minister also drew strength from anti-casino sentiment when the political tide demanded it.
But the tragedy of Goa is that political convictions now change faster than tides of the Mandovi. Parties split and reassemble; politicians cross ideological lines with astonishing ease, and with every transition, casinos remain, growing larger, brighter and more deeply entrenched in the river that defines the soul of Panaji.
And now, as this new floating edifice waits cautiously at the edge of public tolerance, uncomfortable questions once again return for Goa’s political class.
Why does conviction disappear so quickly once power arrives? Why do those who speak passionately in opposition suddenly become faithful defenders of the very things they once condemned?
Perhaps because these casinos are no longer viewed merely as floating vessels. They have become symbols of a deeper political surrender, where each incoming government inherits not only the boats themselves but also the compromises and silences attached to them.
Increasingly, those in power seek refuge behind technicalities, regulations and ambiguous court decisions, as though legality absolves them of responsibility. Courts may interpret the law. Leadership, however, demands something higher: moral clarity and political courage.
And what exactly are we normalising for our children? A waterfront once imagined as a civic and cultural space is increasingly overshadowed by floating palaces of gambling, and the quiet corrosion of public morality, all repackaged as tourism and economic progress.
CONFRONTING A DIFFICULT TRUTH
The Panaji many of us remember grows harder to find. The riverfront that once invited reflection now competes with neon lights shimmering across polluted waters carrying sewage, untreated waste and fuel residues.
Goa was never meant to become the “Macao of India". Goa’s strength lay elsewhere, in its rivers, music, food, feni, village life, carnival parades and street dances, Shigmo festivals, and the unhurried dignity that once made this place feel deeply human and deeply personal.
One wonders what Adil Shah, who envisioned Panaji as a riverine settlement and built his palace overlooking the Mandovi five centuries ago, would think if he stood today along these waters. One wonders too what Dayanand Bandodkar, the first chief minister to occupy that palace in Portuguese-free Goa, would make of a river now dominated by floating casinos.
And one cannot help but think of Charles Correa, who designed our more recent cultural icon, Kala Academy, on the banks of the Mandovi, and who loved Panaji deeply enough to imagine restoring its walkability, heritage and intimate relationship with the river. This is surely not the city he hoped future generations would inherit.
The contradiction becomes even harder to ignore when Goa is marketed as a spiritual destination while its most visible waterfront evolves into a permanent theatre of gambling and excess. Spirituality cannot coexist comfortably with the aggressive normalisation of greed.
And this is where those in power today, including the chief minister, must confront a difficult truth. Leadership is measured not by speeches delivered in opposition, but by the willingness to remain faithful to promises when it becomes politically inconvenient to do so.
When politicians are out of power and when they, their children and grandchildren stand beside these same waters one day, what exactly do they want them to inherit? A river overwhelmed by casinos, pollution, noise and political convenience? Or a waterfront that still carries dignity, memory and the soul of Goa itself?
Because legacies are not built through election victories alone. They are built through the things leaders choose to protect when it becomes difficult to do so.
Goa stands with Panaji. We do not need another casino in our waters, and the people of Panaji deserve an honest and credible timeline for removing the others that have already taken over too much of the river that once belonged to everyone.
