Goa’s resentment toward outsiders and settlers is rising. Calangute tourist tax is a sign

An overcrowded beach in Goa's Calangute. The Calangute Panchayat has now proposed to tax tourists | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Two pieces of news brought me great personal joy last week. The first was watching the live results of a protracted Lok Sabha election, humbly witnessing a democracy in action, and feeling the euphoria trickling through my veins. The second was a proposal by Goa’s Calangute panchayat to adopt a resolution requiring tourists to either show proof of hotel reservation or pay a tax to gain entry into the village.

The tax is meant to finance sanitation efforts in the village, and in all likelihood, discourage tourists from littering the area. The village’s sarpanch, Joseph Sequeira said that the “panchayat decided to take the step after realising that groups of tourists, packed in jeeps, buses and other vehicles arrive at the beach, litter it and just go away without bothering to clean the place”. If approved, the resolution could come into effect as early as October, when Goa’s high season really takes off. It will also pave the path for other beaches and villages in Goa to adopt similar measures.

Like every resident of Goa, I treat the proposal like a gift from above – even if I fear it might embolden tourists who are already paying the tax to litter further. Tourism in Goa, which successive state governments cannot stop trumpeting, has a way of wreaking havoc over the lives of its citizens.

It isn’t just Goa’s beaches that are treated with contempt. It’s also the riverfronts, the vast paddy fields, and the tiny crumbling bridges that make it to breathless Instagram reels promising travellers the undiscovered and exclusive. Nowhere do the aspirations of the travelling masses and the lives of ordinary Goans collide more violently than on the hallowed Parra Coconut Road, popularised by the 2016 film Dear Zindagi. If I ever find myself on that stretch, which is as lovely as it is narrow, in a bid to get home, I have to fend off:

1. Hundreds of couples trying to get a completely unique shot against the sunset
2. Young men lying in the middle of the road and feigning insouciance
3. Teenagers half-assing dangerous tricks on their hired Vespas
4. Young women gesticulating to whatever reel is trending that week
5. OB vans, giant fans, and people holding aloft light reflectors in service of wedding photo shoots

Honestly, a part of me feels terrible, snarking at folks who’re only out to memorialise their well-earned holiday. That part is not strong enough to overcome the rage I feel when I have to scream at 40 stubborn people blocking a public road. Versions of this story get repeated, with varying levels of menace, wherever tourist experiences intersect with resident life.

Indians can be awful travellers

Three years ago, I fell in love with a river snaking through a tranquil neighbourhood of North Goa, far away from the coastal belt. Now, I have to hopscotch over the broken beer bottles that young men speeding past on noisy bikes fling at the riverfront promenade for sport. The salon I visit has to explicitly spell out that it’s a decent establishment and that visiting customers should refrain from asking for “happy endings”. Houses in quaint Fontainhas put up signs imploring tourists not to put their feet against the walls of their freshly painted homes. Chryselle D’Silva Dias wrote that residents around Panaji’s Mandovi River, are forced to deal with loud casino workers, partying on the roads during the wee hours, after serving equally loud casino-goers through the night.

The stereotypes on display in Goa follow Indians around the world. There seems to be a general consensus about our unmitigated awfulness as travellers. Every few months, we become the thing the internet loves to dunk on, when we are found stealing towels and tchotchkes from resorts or when hotels have to issue special directives to their Indian guests. Beyond hints of criminality, our reputation of being incapable of basic courtesy precedes us. I’ll never forget the Swiss guide briefing us on the eve of an early morning trek at the base of the Matterhorn, who looked me dead in the eye while informing us the group could not wait for anyone who wasn’t on time. Or the face of the aghast Vietnamese guide leading a noisy, disinterested group of Indians on the very solemn Cu Chi Tunnels tour.

Everyone is an ‘outsider’ in Goa

I empathise entirely with the people of Calangute, who’re likely caught in the endless loop of dealing with the aftermath of a day-tripping party. But after everyone has agreed that tourists have ruined Goa, over a round of afternoon urrak, things begin to get a little fuzzy. Because in Goa, the boundaries between the tourist, the traveller, the settler, and the migrant begin to blur. Everyone is an “outsider”, and often, everyone gets painted with the same brush.

The resentment against tourists spills over to those who have moved to Goa, including the very rich Dilli and Bombay-wallahs, who own multiple homes, and the very poor who build them. Somewhere on that spectrum lie people like us, who’ve moved for work or to pursue careers that allow us to be remote. A few years ago, novelist Deepti Kapoor wrote in The Guardian about her experience of leaving after living in Goa for eight years. Kapoor decried the rampant mining, the heaps of rubbish piling up in her tony Assagao neighbourhood, and the uncontrolled construction… all without once examining the role people like us play in these elaborate dramas we complain about. She got rightly dragged for it by her indignant Goan neighbours who questioned why she hadn’t made the slightest effort to assimilate.

That discontent is understandable and justified to a large extent. Who can blame local Goans for being upset with the moneyed elite, who keep moving into quiet neighbourhoods, driving up rental values and pricing people out of their own land? All of us are implicated in the pillaging of Goa’s ecology and biodiversity.

The hierarchy of outsiderness 

Sometimes though, this rhetoric takes on the nebulous haze of a cultural clash. It borders on what is considered bigotry in other states. North-Indian “bhaile” – Punjabis, UP-ites, Biharis – are accused of “spoiling” the pristine culture of Goa by migrating here. It’s a pervasive sentiment, and in my experience, aired most often by Goans who themselves have migrated outside the state in search of the same opportunities that bring others here.

There’s a clear hierarchy of outsiderness at play. Rich Goans bristle at the influx of wealthy North and South Indians. Meanwhile, these affluent non-Goans prefer to distance themselves from the local poor. Poor Goans might tolerate the presence of rich Indians, but they draw a hard line against poor non-Goans encroaching on their territory. Eventually, it’s the low-income non-Goans – migrant workers from UP and Bihar or sleepy tourists in mini-buses – who don’t have the luxury of deciding who they can turn their noses up at, that are the most disadvantaged.

Goans are hardly alone in furthering this exclusionary outlook – it’s a human trait. If we didn’t view everyone through binaries like insiders and outsiders, if we refrained from sitting in judgement over who gets to be a migrant, we’d recognise that the world has always thrived on movement and exchange.

In a 2019 essay for the National Geographic magazine titled ‘In the 21st Century, We are All Migrants’, Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid wrote: “We are told not only that movement through geographies can be stopped but that movement through time can be too, that we can return to the past, to a better past, when our country, our race, our religion was truly great. All we must accept is division. The division of humanity into natives and migrants… Such are the dreams of a species defeated by nostalgia, at war with itself, with its migratory nature and the nature of its relationship to time, screaming in denial of the constant movement that is human life.”

Understanding that people move to seek a better life, a safer home, a place to belong – or a temporary seaside holiday – is a radical idea. The proposed tourist tax in Calangute is a step toward holding tourists accountable for their impact, but it can also be an opportunity to examine the inevitable movement of people with grace and fairness, ensuring that both residents and visitors can coexist harmoniously.

Except the hordes on Parra Coconut Road, who treat the world like their Instagram backdrop. There’s a special place in hell for you guys.

Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)