GLOBAL GOENKARS SPEAK
The writer is a social commentator in the UK, who takes a keen interest in affairs and socio-economic matters in the UK and Goa
So here we go again – another land registration process in Goa that is likely to confuse Goans even more than they already are.
If Goans living in the UK haven’t read about it yet, they may be surprised to learn that the Directorate of Settlement & Land Survey in Goa has decided to launch a fresh survey of people’s homes and properties – not across the whole of Goa, but limited to 20 villages and cities. The start date: January 6, 2026.
Don’t worry if you missed the announcement. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what it’s about. The directorate will, we are assured, write to you and explain everything – once they themselves have figured out what exactly they have announced.
And fear not: if your property is under dispute, the department has stated that a specially appointed person will deal with such cases. Even better, surveyors will simply skip homes whose owners refuse to participate. Which naturally raises the question – why bother at all?
Honestly, one couldn’t make this up.
Surely, all these records should already exist within the Land Survey department, which has been conducting surveys ever since Goa’s liberation. Or have these records mysteriously vanished (aka lost)? Apparently not. According to the directorate, Goa has not carried out such a survey for over 50 years. If that is indeed the case, one wonders what exactly the department has been doing all this time.
There is an alarming lack of detail. Has the department even considered the confusion its messaging is likely to cause? Or the longer-term implications of such a careless land survey exercise?
First and foremost, many Goans living abroad own homes and properties in Goa. They cannot simply drop everything and return at short notice. As a result, surveys in the areas in-scope are likely to be “skipped” when owners refuse to participate thereby rendering the entire exercise ineffective and undermining its stated objective of creating a unified record format. Please forgive those Goans living abroad for thinking that there is some sinister intention behind this initiative.
In carrying out a new survey, how does one guarantee the authenticity of ownership when a property is already under dispute? Will this mean that previous surveys are rendered void? The authorities have identified places to be surveyed but have they considered the impact on properties bordering these jurisdictions that fall outside the scope of the exercise?
The consequences of such poorly thought-out surveys are not hypothetical. They are deeply personal to my own family.
In 1971, a survey of properties in my village of Sancoale was conducted while my father was working in Kenya and therefore unable to attend. In his absence, the land survey authorities, along with our neighbours, conducted a survey that was heavily weighted in favour of the neighbours. When we arrived in Goa in 1972, we were drawn into decades of battles involving lost documents, misplaced surveys, and prolonged court cases.
Those disputes dragged on for more than 20 years, finally coming to an end only when my father passed away in 1996. His dream of building a retirement home in his beloved Goa was never realised. The property was eventually passed on to another, and with that we lost all hope of ever returning to a place we could truly call home.
That is the real cost of careless land surveys – not only confusion, but lives disrupted and futures lost. I do hope that better sense prevails and more thought is given to this ill-fated announcement.
