Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/
For decades, Goa has walked a dangerous path in tourism – one where the visitor is treated as currency, the local as disposable labour, and land and culture as commodities. The dominant model has celebrated volume over value, profit over dignity, and extractive commercial interests over community rights. But tourism, in its truest form, is not a market – it is a relationship. It is a meeting of cultures, a respectful exchange, a shared experience. Goa deserves tourism that reflects the dignity of its people, the fragility of its ecology, and the richness of its heritage. That means a socialist tourism model, grounded in justice and community control, not a corrupt capitalist model dressed up as development.
The government’s obsession with numbers reveals the hollowness of its imagination. Every domestic tourist, we are told, adds a mere ₹88 to Goa’s economy. Yet this statistic is flaunted as triumph. Tourism success cannot be measured in headcounts or hotel nights. If arrivals rise while local livelihoods shrink, if unemployment persists, if culture is diluted, if land is quietly transferred to outsiders, then tourism has failed. A society cannot price its identity, nor should it allow its future to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
The central question today is not how to get more tourists, but who controls the tourism economy? The answer must be clear: Goans must control it, not corporate platforms, not external aggregators, not political brokers, and not predatory investors. Tourism must be rooted in the community that built Goa’s hospitality ethos long before tourism departments existed. People are not service workers in their own homeland; they are custodians of its culture and soul.
This is why the taxi debate has become symbolic of something deeper. For more than 20 years, governments have tinkered, threatened, and promised reform. They have failed—not because transport systems are unsolvable, but because they insisted on imposing models alien to Goa’s social fabric. The argument that Goa needs aggregators like Uber or large rent-a-car operators is a convenient myth pushed by those who profit from external control. Goa does not need multinational mediators to drive its own people. It needs an indigenous, cooperative system run by Goans themselves, accountable to users and workers, and insulated from corporate capture.
Of course, a modern system must include technology, transparent pricing, training, and grievance redressal. But reform must be by the people, for the people—not for investors or platforms. Taxi workers are ready to adapt. Many have already asked for structured digital booking and professional training. What they resist is not modernity, but colonial‐style intrusion disguised as innovation. A cooperative transport model—built with local software talent, running on community governance, and respecting Goa’s ecology and roads—is entirely possible. Kerala has demonstrated this. Bengaluru has shown it with the open mobility model. Goa too has the capacity. What it lacks is a government willing to trust its own people.
Tourism works only when the host retains dignity and agency. A socialist tourism vision demands that the worker, not the corporation, stands at the centre. Shacks must employ Goans, not labour imported cheaply. Homestays and guesthouses must remain in local hands. Watersports must be run by coastal communities, not subcontracted firms. Restaurants must showcase Goan cuisine, not generic menus that erase identity. When establishments refuse to localise, they do not “serve tourists” — they serve capital, and cheapen Goa.
Tourism must also honour ecological limits. If a village or beach is saturated, access must pause. When forests and wetlands are threatened, construction must stop. A destination is not a mall to be maximised; it is a living ecosystem. The world’s most respected tourism economies — Iceland, Costa Rica, parts of Spain and Portugal – learned that saying no is sometimes the greatest act of hospitality, because it protects what is precious for future visitors and generations. Goa too must learn to say no — to overdevelopment, to casino-style excess, to noise-driven nightlife, to land speculation disguised as luxury tourism.
Cultural preservation is not nostalgia; it is sovereignty. Tourism should immerse visitors in Goa’s mosaic: the mando and dulpod, xitt kodi and bimbli, Konkani and Konkani-Marathi, festivals that honour rivers and saints, Hindu, Catholic, Bahujan, Muslim and tribal traditions. Let the tourist learn a Goan rhythm instead of importing theirs. At present, we build replicas of what the tourist already has—nightclubs, malls, generic resorts. This erases the reason to come to Goa at all.
A socialist tourism economy means reversing this logic. It means viewing the tourist not as a consumer, but as a guest entering someone’s home. It means the state becomes a facilitator of dignity, not a broker of contracts. It means planning is done in gram sabhas and community assemblies, not behind closed doors in bureaucratic chambers. It means wealth circulates within the community, not extracted by platforms and conglomerates. It means the goal is not rapid gain, but shared, dignified prosperity.
This vision is not idealistic, it is necessary. The alternative is slow cultural death, rising inequality, environmental collapse, and a future where Goans serve tables in hotels owned by outsiders on land once belonged to their families. Tourism must be reclaimed before it becomes irreversible.
When tourists come to Goa under this model, they will not find an escape; they will find a lesson in dignity, culture, and ecological respect. Then we may finally say, without apology or anxiety:
“This is my Goa. Come again – not to own it, but to be part of its story.”
The author Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator and human rights advocate who co-founded the Centre for Responsible Tourism and served as General Secretary of the Global Coalition for Third World Tourism.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.