MAPUSA
Since Goa is one of the major tourist destinations a large number of domestic and foreign tourists make a beeline to the State.
Last year, 63.30 lakh tourists, both domestic and foreign, arrived in Goa. The tourism industry is also a major revenue grosser for the State government.
But beneath all the gloss lies a murky trail of commercial sexual exploitation where women are trafficked to cater to a large segment of male tourists who come only for "fun" in Goa.
"The demand is mostly in the coastal belt and mainly created by the tourists. The tourists who are mainly domestic are young come in groups and without families. Many young boys and middle-aged men coming from neighbouring metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore... are looking for sexual gratification," said Arunendra Pandey, Director of Arz, a social work organization working towards combating trafficking of persons subject to commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) in Goa since 1997.
Pandey, who was leading a discussion on human trafficking in Goa at the Friday Balcao in Mapusa, earlier spoke exclusively to The Goan.
The Arz director feared that once Goa gets stigmatized, tourism will lose its sheen and the state may just turn into one huge sex hole. "Nobody will like to come to Goa with their family, when they know that a man next door is taking a girl. Goa will no longer be a family destination. It may become a large brothel where men are coming only looking for girls like Bangkok and Cambodia," Pandey said.
The CSE activity which previously took place offline has now gone online posing a huge challenge for the authorities to take preemptive action.
"Whether it is recruitment, soliciting or selection of a girl, everything is now online. Even payments are done online. So anonymity and the reach have increased," he said.
The state has also hardly done much to control the menace and bring the real perpetrators to book.
In most cases when police conduct raids the girls are rescued and insignificant persons are put behind bars. Real kingpins are never caught in the police net.
"The state has no policy how to address this problem. Since Goa is a major tourist destination there will be certain ills. As a state you need to have certain policy, laws, systems and authorities in place to control the CSE activity," Pandey said.
The state's laxity notwithstanding, what appeared even more disturbing was the lack of pressure from local citizens. "In other places in India there is a lot of intervention where the communities and local bodies like panchayats take initiatives," the Arz director observed.
The massage parlours which are hubs of CSE activities are located in panchayat areas but nobody in Goa raises such issues in gram sabhas or force the panchayats to withdraw
the NOCs to the parlours,
he rued.
