Two years back crowds gathered at two different palaces and purposes. The first one was to submit recruitment employment forms at the Goa Human Resource Development Corporation (GHRDC), Porvorim. The second was at the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) where vendors jostled to collect the form to put up stalls for the Ashtami fair (Sept 6-17) (Letter in TGE, Sept 9, 2023). At the GHRDC hundreds of people had applied for 370 contract posts. Noticing the surging crowd, the authorities baulked and conveniently cancelled the recruitment programme. Similarly, the CCP could have accepted online applications for stalls and a public draw could have been held to pick the lucky winners. On Aug 4, about 4,000 female candidates lined up to submit documents and attend the interview that was to take place for 100 posts of contractual nurses. Several candidates had come from far-off places, stood in queue since the crack of dawn, and had no facilities for breakfast and washrooms, and no shelter from the inclement weather. The applications could have been collected online and after scrutiny the eligible candidates could have been called for interview.
