Last week, the tourism department of India’s sunshine state did something quintessentially Indian. It decided that the best way to counter negative publicity was to double all the way down. Rajesh Kale, Goa’s deputy director of tourism filed a police complaint against Ramanuj Mukherjee, an X user who had cited publicly available data to point out that foreign tourists were abandoning Goa for places like Sri Lanka. His crime? Causing “significant annoyance” by sharing data that stated foreign tourist arrivals “fell” from 8.5 million in 2019 to 1.5 million in 2023.
Now, by any stretch of imagination, the figures themselves are absolutely wild. According to several reports, in the pre-pandemic years between 2014 and 2019, Goa received around 0.8 million foreign tourists each year. But that clarification did not come from the state’s tourism department that busied itself with offing the messenger’s head. “Mukherjee referenced China Economic Information Center (CEIC) data in his post; however, the credibility of this data is questionable as he neither consulted with the Department of Tourism prior to posting nor validated the data he collected,” alleges the complaint. “The statements made by Shri Ramanuj Mukherjee appear to have the intent to cause public unrest and may induce individuals to commit offences against the State or against public tranquillity.”
Mukherjee’s post would have sunk without a trace had it not garnered so much attention. I see versions of this tired debate get ignited every few weeks on X, where domestic tourists complain about feeling unwelcome, and are countered swiftly by local residents who let them know in no uncertain terms why they are unwelcome. Like a lot of things in Goa, both sides of this tussle are simultaneously right and wrong—a perfect Rashomon moment where official statistics and lived experience tell completely different stories. While the tourism department might be technically correct about Mukherjee’s numbers being off, the lakhs of responses his post triggered suggest he stumbled onto an uncomfortable truth. When so many tourists share stories about being scammed, overcharged, or generally disappointed, perhaps the exact numbers matter less than what the chorus is trying to tell us.
At least this absurd episode perfectly encapsulates how Goan authorities respond to criticism—with denial, obfuscation, a healthy dose of passing the parcel, and the occasional police complaint—whether it’s about declining tourism or disappearing ecosystems.
These tensions between the pro-tourism government, anti-tourism residents, and tourists themselves have reached an inflexion point several times in the last few years. After the pandemic, city folks armed with work-from-home policies and deep pockets have bought up land and houses across the state, pricing locals out of their own neighbourhoods. The disruption to local life is impossible to ignore: residents in Anjuna and Vagator recently staged a silent protest against ear-splitting EDM parties, while in Sancoale, former sarpanch Premanand Naik went on a protest fast against a mega infrastructure project by Bhutani Infra. These are valid concerns that the government can’t keep papering over. Sooner or later, they’ll have to address the growing discomfort that tourists and a floating migrant population bring to Goa’s residents.
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A disappearing state
Here’s the darker irony: While we’re busy arguing about who gets to enjoy Goa, the state itself is vanishing piece by piece. There is a battleground on every front, whether it’s Goa’s hills, forests or beaches. The state’s wetlands, mangroves, and khazan lands—ancient ecosystems that have protected the coasts for centuries—are under attack. And when the fight is between our last lines of defence against climate change and a dead-eyed corporation promising “sea view” second homes to jaded city folk, we all know which way the scales will tip.
As usual, the only form of meaningful resistance comes from civil society. A couple of weeks ago, while authorities were presumably busy scanning social media for complaints against Goa, a small festival attempted to shine a light on one of these endangered guardians. The Mangrove Odyssey brought together artists, musicians, chefs, and environmentalists to celebrate and understand Goa’s mangrove ecosystems. These complex networks protect our beaches from erosion, shield our coasts from flooding, and sustain the very biodiversity that makes Goa unique.
The festival was organised by One Earth Foundation, a year-old organisation in the marine space that focuses on “education, building nature-based resilience and a circular economy”. The foundation is an NGO that also turns plastic waste collected from beach and mangrove clean-up drives into furniture, and is supported by MakeMyTrip and Pirojsha Godrej Foundation.
Over a month, One Earth Foundation organised workshops, walking trails, lectures, and photography and painting competitions themed around mangroves. It all kicked off with a pre-event “Mangrove Musicana”, where musicians played gentle odes to the mangrove with local instruments. Chef Michael Swamy demonstrated lost recipes from the mangrove, including one made with the highly coveted mangrove salt, gathered from the leaves of the shrubs.
The festival also featured an installation by Miriam Koshy-Sukhija of the mangrove rakhandar—the guardian spirit—fashioned out of medical gauze. Two years ago, Koshy had put together a moving exhibit at Merces, the most prominent locality of dead mangroves in North Goa, which was bisected by a newly constructed highway.
Despite the slightly depressing nature of the festival, Ferdin Sylvester, director of the foundation, seemed very upbeat with the results. Sylvester, who is pursuing a PhD, is mapping Goa’s mangroves through drones and remote sensing technology. “Officially, Goa’s mangrove cover has grown by 2 per cent, but I am trying to see how much of that is true,” he told me, pointing out the acres of dying mangroves near Ponda, Nerul, and along the Divar-Chorao island belt. Still, he hopes that festivals like Mangrove Odyssey will spark some curiosity among attendees.
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A global problem
The threat to mangroves isn’t just a Goan problem—it’s a global crisis unfolding in slow motion. In May, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced that 50 per cent of the world’s mangrove ecosystems are at risk of collapse. Air pollution from the Indo-Gangetic Plain is choking the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, which protect millions of people living in the delta region and sequester more carbon than even the Amazon rainforest. The same story repeats everywhere from Florida to Sri Lanka, the very destination that’s supposedly stealing Goa’s tourists.
These realities found their way into the haunting photography exhibition, “Breath of Mangroves” by Harshay Jha and Pranay Chandok. The two, as part of a residency organised by Atelier Monad, spent two months documenting these ecosystems, though most of their time was “washed out by rains”. The result is 20 desaturated images shot on film, that capture the “duality” of Goa’s mangroves. “They encroach on land but then they start to die out,” Jha said. The metaphor repeated throughout their research—in Merces, Jha and Chandok found water lilies flourishing where mangroves once stood, a deceptively pretty sign of an ecosystem in distress. The exhibition, much like the mangroves themselves, tells a story of the constant struggle between nature and humanity, where even attempts at preservation sometimes hasten destruction.
Perhaps this is why the tourism department’s response to criticism feels particularly tone-deaf. While they’re busy filing police complaints about “damaged reputations” and “public tranquillity,” Goa’s actual reputation—its mangroves, its khazans, its entire ecological heritage—is being bulldozed into oblivion. The real damage to Goa’s reputation isn’t coming from social media posts. It’s coming from those who claim to be protecting it.
This article is part of the Goa Life series, which explores the new and the old of Goan culture.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)