Dungflingers is what the travel and tourism industry and the first charter tour operators called them.The environmental group that protested the entry of the first charter tourists in the early nineties by pelting their buses with cowdung instantly earned for the Goan green movement the twin anti-progressive tags of intolerance and militancy. What the Jagrut Goenkaranchi Fouz (Vigilant Goans Army) set out as an action motive against tourism later extended for the dual bogey of the Konkan Railway Corporation and Du Ponts Nylon Rs 6,600 plant as the essential warfare element.
The interface between Goas greens and tourism undeniably an industry on which the vast bulk of the coastal populace depends for employment and which fuels local village economics has been an uneasy one ever since. The compulsions of Goans on the ground have only rarely truly mixed with thegreens agendas.
Today the states government is desperate to change its foreign tourist mix, and has been so since the early days of liberalisation. Permission has beengranted for casinos floating offshore retreats where the tourist can actually play blackjack or baccarat and that is a far cry from the gaming clubs set up by several resorts.
From the early days of the Kondor charters that brought in the unfortunate Germans at the start of the decade, Goas place among the worlds directlyaccessible beach destinations has been immovable.What has not changed is the budget-tourist-paradise label, which is the subject of state proclamations on its planned tourism policy.
For the greens the Fouz, the highly litigation-oriented Goa Foundation, and the fulminating All Goa Citizens Committee for Social Justice and Action being the prime organisations tourism in the small state has bred a host of problems. According to them these are drugs the sale, consumption, reshipment, and absorption of drug money into the local economy sex tourism (which has focussed on various paedophilia cases recently); unchecked and unplanned resort and condominium development in the coastal belt particularly the north; and the apparent unwillingness of Goan youth to take to vocational training given the easier and more glamorous route of earning a living through tourism.
Claude and Norma Alvares, the prolific and active spearheads of the Foundation, say their NGO has pointed out the anomalies time and again to the state authorities, as also to the travel and tourism industry at various fora, and to international tourism policy research organisations.
What they have highlighted is the utter lack of a comprehensive policy in the state for the industry and, therefore, the shortsightedness in continuing to live from one season to the next on short-term charter arrangements.
For its part, the Fouz, which is noted for its vehement anti-golf course campaign that existed for three years and certainly scared investors in the sector away, has attempted to generate a movement at the local level where conflict has arisen, as in the case of villagers mobilising against the Leela Beach resort in South Goa. Krishnan Nair, the groups chairman, had then told this newspaper that theapparent support for the Fouz was orchestrated.
All the major resorts though have been targeted at one time or another by the greens for environmental violations: the Taj Aguada, the Cidade de Goa and Ramada Renaissance among them.
As in the case of the Goa greens versus corporate India, the groups have picked out select issues and mustered support from local decision-making bodies during an agitation.
From industry here, for example from iron ore mining group Salgaocar which has interests in the hotel industry, criticism of the greens centres on the perspective that they attack but rarely want to work with the industry or government to arrive at alternatives that will keep tourism an employment generator and an engine of growth for the coastal communities. Who else is going to point out the blatant violations of the zoning laws and the coastal regulation zone laws, at least to the population if not the authorities? asks Alvares.
Chief minister Pratapsingh Rane and deputy chief minister and tourism minister, Wilfred de Souza have, according to industry sources, failed to inject any urgency into the sector: the crying need for bigger-spending foreign tourists is three years old, as are the announcements of water-sports complexes, marinas, an oceanarium and sundry attractions. These have just been repeated at this years Travel Agents Association of India meet held last month in the state.
The Goa experience of sustainable tourism or what should have been more sustainable than it currently is - is one that other developing charter destinations in India could have learnt from and still can. For the first time in this decade, the Goan industry is feeling its slice of the international arrivals pie diminish with the introduction of charters to Kerala particularly, and Tamil Nadu.
The states apparently matchless USP fabulous beaches and a Latin flavour is apparently no longer good enough given the rickety state of infrastructure and the threat of overdevelopment in coastal belts. As of late September the number of charters fixed for arrival per week was 11, down from 18 last season.
This looming crisis is one that the greens say they predicted years ago. We have tracked what has happened to other charter destinations that the British have been to (about 80 per cent of the arrivals in Goa originate from the UK), and weve seen how they degenerated, said Albertina Almeida of the womens group Bailancho Saad.
What she refers to is the construction boom the state has over 150 real estate developers crammed into a kilometre wide and 10 km long strip in the north, and three or four concentrations in the south that has ignored necessities like water and sewage, the alarming rise of sex tourism, which is directly related to charter tourism, and the spread of drug abuse.
Every dollar that is spent by the charter tourist on a hotel, as an average of industry estimates, is multiplied upto three times in funds that are absorbed directly by village entrepreneurs. Thegreens know this but they also protest the ersatz culture the state is forced to adopt in order to keep the dollar inflow healthy. The industry hasturned normal Goans into people putting on a show in order to live, says A Fernandes, long-time Panjim hotelier.
The greens and other citizens groups have unfailingly condemned the state governments and the industrys penchant for portraying Goa as a beach idyll complete with unlimited alcohol and the implications of describing Goans as `fun-loving, the Citizens Committee said.
Still, an average of studies conducted by Goa University students, estimates from established tour operators, and from hoteliers state figures are more or less fiction indicate a tourism economy, per season of nine months, of around Rs 1,500 crore.
This still leaves uncovered the informal tourism economy beach shacks, beach vendors, unregistered boarding houses - that mops up some spare sterling and dollars.
Iron ore mining, the next biggest single sector, is an approximately Rs 800 crore industry but little of that percolates into local communities.
The industry, with no policy directives from the state and faced with sporadic attacks on it by the greens, has expanded rapidly nonetheless. Womens groups recently blackwashed hoardings advertising gaming clubs in response to permission being granted for casinos but that isnt holding up plans for investment: a major US-based international timeshare operator is scouting the state for sites. Both industry and ecologists, though, continue to blame each other for hampering constructive criticism while the state remains silent.
