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Who goes to Goa, known for its sunny beaches and all-night parties, to spend time at a yoga retreat? Turns out, a lot of people do, including Friday’s Anand Raj OK who enjoyed sun salutations on the sand

By Anand Raj, Friday magazine
Published: 00:00 April 20, 2012
Friday

My wife couldn’t stop laughing. “You’ll leave me with a stitch in my side,” she said, pausing to catch her breath before guffawing again. “It even kind of rhymes – you’re doing yoga in Goa!”

“No, honestly it’s an official trip,” I said trying to explain it all over again. “The editor has asked me to go to Goa, India, along with a bunch of people from Fitness First Dubai – all yoga practitioners – stay at a yoga retreat and write about my experience.” It’s difficult to keep a straight face when your spouse not only doesn’t believe a word you say, but is rolling with laughter with every word you say.

“Yeah,” she said, “and now you are going to tell me that after reading that first piece you wrote about yoga, the editor felt you were just the person to go.”

“Well, actually that’s the truth,” I said.

She burst into laughter once again. “I’m sure you planned this with your pals and on your return you’ll tell me you spent your time doing the bow pose on the beach or balancing your chakras by the chalets.”

Actually, even I was more than a bit surprised to get the invitation simply because the first image that comes to mind when you mention the palm-fringed, beachy state of Goa isn’t exercise of any kind. The most extreme yoga pose I could imagine doing on the beaches of yoga was shavasana (lying like a dead man). But I wasn’t sure that would qualify as yoga at a proper retreat.

But when the editor suggested I visit Goa, a place more famous for its hippies than for yoga, who was I to say no? How intense could it be?

The first thing I did was call Craig who was coordinating the trip with the Fitness First team in Dubai. “Everything’s arranged,” he said. “You’ll meet Sara Bell, another coordinator for the trip, and the team at the Dubai airport on D-day.”

After checking in I began scanning the airport to see if I could spot anyone who looked like they might be heading to a yoga retreat, although I wasn’t sure what people heading to a yoga retreat would look like.

Would they be carrying very little luggage? Yogis have little need for material things, right? Would they look serene and peaceful? If they are already serene and peaceful, why are they going to a retreat? Would they be doing headstands in the lounge to de-stress? Questions, questions… Most people I saw in the terminal looked a bit worried as they scanned the flight departure screens, while some appeared to be in pain hauling their heavy luggage. A few women were teary eyed bidding their spouses goodbye.

Then I saw it. Tucked in the backpack of a woman who was sipping a hot drink – probably green tea – was a pink yoga mat. Next to her was another woman – also with a mat. And another… The yogis had arrived. And then it struck me: I hadn’t brought a yoga mat. How could you forget? I thought to myself. ‘Now they’ll think you don’t have even the basic common sense of a beginner yogi. I considered checking out the duty free shop for a yoga mat, but on second thought felt I’d seem silly looking for one there. After all, who buys yoga mats at duty free? Isn’t it where you stock up on big bags of sweets, chocolates and everything else that’s bad for you? No, I told myself. Part of the package also includes a detox programme.

I decided to forget about my mat and started reading my book, hoping to delay meeting the yogis. But then my mobile rang.

“Hi,” said the caller, “we’re at the airport.” It was Sara from Fitness First. “I am too,” I said. Then I walked over to the nearest woman on a phone carrying a yoga mat and introduced myself. “Nice to meet you,” she said, before turning to a woman sporting a warm smile next to her. “Meet Pee Wee, she’ll be conducting a few classes for us.” Pee Wee beamed and her smile reassured me that I would enjoy the experience.

But after I read the itinerary, I wasn’t so sure anymore. It said: “Day 1. 7-8 am. Shangkapratchalan (cleansing session).” 7am? Cleansing? Deciding to cross that particular bridge when I reached it, I leaned back in my seat and prepared to take off.

It was early morning when we landed in the tiny state that hugs the Western coast of southern India. The sight of the airport that still had Christmas decorations including styrofoam cutouts of red bells and a Santa offered a hint that time really does stand still in this beautiful place known for its unhurried pace of life, kilometres of beaches and moonlight parties on the sand. Either that, or someone had just forgotten to pack away the decorations this year.

Hopping into the car that was waiting for us, we hit the road and headed to Sushumna Yoga School and Studios (www.sushumna.in), a yoga retreat in Ashvem in northern Goa. The 50-minute trip from the airport cut through little villages and past busy market places teeming with people, many of them gathering around what my nose told me was the morning’s catch of fish.

Wow, I thought to myself, seafood! And then I remembered reading the brochure that said food at the resort would be vegetarian.

All the elements for relaxation

Spilling out of the car an hour later in front of the white-washed walls of the resort, I stretched my limbs and breathed in the warm, fresh air. “The air’s so pure,” said Ida, a lithe 30-something who was part of our group. The weather was a pleasant 24 degrees. Coconut palms were swaying lazily in the breeze and banana trees were growing wild. The grass looked inviting and I looked forward to walking barefoot on an early morning when the dew would still be glistening on it.

Greenery was everywhere and combined with the faint smell of the sea in the air, the place seemed to have everything you need to relax. I closed my eyes and breathed in the clean air deeply before I was rudely interrupted by a scooter whizzing past, emitting noxious fumes. Riding it was a guy with dread locks and a T-shirt saying ‘Keep the earth clean!’

A world away from home

Stepping in through the wooden doors of the resort was like entering a new world. Silent except for chirping birds, the place was pretty in a sparse way. No ostentatious architecture, no buildings fighting for attention.

Set on about half a hectare of land, the retreat has 12 cottages, two yoga centres, an ayurvedic massage centre, an open-air restaurant, a swimming pool and a small office.

“Welcome,” said Gitanjali Sahni, who, along with her partner Sonja Appel, operates Sushumna. Then they showed us to our cottages. Ours – I was sharing mine with Marcus Pepperel, a senior vice-president of a PR company in Dubai and a yoga enthusiast – was pretty bare, or what design guys might term ‘minimalist’. There were a couple of beds, a chair, a table and a wardrobe without a door. The bathroom was just as sparse, but luckily it had a door. There was no TV, no AC, no newspapers or magazines. For a moment I wondered whether I could survive without the TV, but the moment I stretched out on the bed I realised that I had all I really needed. And who’d want to spend time in a room when the beach is just three minutes down the road?

We arrived later than expected so we missed the cleansing session. I had been a bit worried about what that would entail, so I must admit, I wasn’t too disappointed.

“It’s time for yoga,” Marcus said. It was 9.30am and as much as I wanted to explore the place, I dragged myself off to the yoga studio. The entire team had already assembled there and everyone was stretching their limbs. I grabbed a mat and took a place at the back of the room.

Sonja Appel, our yoga guru, began the class with a short talk on the various asanas (positions), then showed us how to do them.

“We’ll practise vinyasa flow,” she said. For those who came in late, vinyasa, in simple terms means, breath-synchronised movement. It involves a series of postures where you move from one to the next in simple, fluid movements in tune with your inhalation and exhalation.

“Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing,” she said. But my attention promptly slipped from my lungs to my stomach as it started to rumble. The last meal I’d eaten was on the plane at some unearthly hour.

“Imagine your spine and breathe deeply,” she said, but I could only think of a nice fluffy omelette, a stack of toast, a large glass of fresh juice…

The series of sun salutations seemed endless and just when I began to tire, she called it quits and we finally headed to the restaurant.

The buffet table was set for us – home-baked wholemeal bread, butter, omelettes, muesli, oat porridge, fresh fruit, honey, lime juice and green tea – and it was all organic and fresh from the farm. The muesli was out of this world. With fresh milk and a dollop of wild honey it rivalled a brunch at any fancy restaurant. Back in the room after a relaxing shower, I found Marcus studying the schedule. “Hatha yoga at 11.30,” he said. “You’re coming, aren’t you?” he asked. I followed meekly.

This class was taught by a man named Ivan. Hatha is a slightly slower practice than usual. It involves holding postures for a relatively long period of time.

“How long have you been practising yoga?” I asked Esther, the woman next to me after our class was over. “Oh, for about five years,” she said. “I’m in college but I make time for it every day. I prefer yoga to mall crawling,” she said.

Energy centres

The sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid 30s and the pool was already busy.

I decided it was a perfect time to head to the beach then I heard Marcus call out to me. “In half an hour we have an experiential introduction to the chakras by Pee Wee,” he said, holding the schedule like it was his passport to peace. “Sure, I’ll be there,” I said hesitantly as I looked longingly at the road to the beach.

I had a plan. Just like in my college days I chose to sit in the very back, determined to make a quick and silent exit during the session in order to ‘do some research’ on the resort.

But the session, which was about the role of chakras – or energy centres – in maintaining good health was so engrossing that an hour and a half later, I was still in the studio listening.

“Yoga is truly amazing,” I told Pee Wee after the session was over. She just smiled calmly at me with a knowing look on her face. “The next session…,” before Marcus could continue I told him I wanted to rest. “Oh, I was going to say that I won’t be attending the next session either. I’m heading to the beach,” he said. I was booked in for a relaxing and rejuvenating massage and I was really looking forward to it. My therapist Arjun was all ready for me. “I have eight years experience in ayurvedic massage,” he said, as if to reassure me.

Once I was lying face down on the table, he spread herbal oils generously all over then began to knead, pummel, slap and press my body.

“Wait for an hour and then have a shower,” he suggested at the end of the 60-minute massage session. I’m not sure if I would say it was a relaxing experience, but I definitely felt rejuvenated – and hungry.

At lunch we had mint pulao, vegetable curry, salad and fresh fruit. Everything was so good we all helped ourselves to seconds – some of us even had thirds. Dessert was the chef’s special papaya delight – pureed papaya with chocolate shavings.

Animal kingdom

The second day began with a session by Sonja. “Let’s begin with some deep breathing techniques. We’ll start with the crow sound,” she said.

After we were seated in a comfortable pose, she suggested we open our mouth wide, stick our tongue out “and caw like a crow”. I was sure she was joking but everybody around me was doing it, so I joined in, and was it fun! I cawed for all I was worth, putting any pesky ravens to shame.

“Good”, said Sonja, “now let’s do the lion’s roar”. I was sure my eight-year-old nephew would have loved to be in my shoes – if I’d been wearing any. Imagine being told by an adult to make bird and animal noises, and loudly for as long as you want! We sat on our knees, threw our heads back, opened our mouths and roared. I must say, at the end of it I did feel better, though we scared the daylight out of the birds that were resting on a nearby tree.

The rest of the day and the next one were packed with yoga sessions by experts in the field. I must admit I didn’t participate in all of them. “I’m going to do some ‘research’ for an article on the beaches of Goa,” I told Marcus. I could hear him laughing as I closed the door.

The Ashvem beach was barely three minutes from the resort. Stretching for as far as the eye could see, it had just a scattering of tourists sun bathing or sipping drinks – ones with those pretty little umbrellas on them – in the shade of the beach shacks (Goan for rudimentary restaurants). The sand was clean and the water turquoise blue. In the distance were a few fishing boats making their way to the horizon.

I sat on the sand and contemplated life… It was so peaceful, beautiful and relaxing here in Goa that it was difficult not to consider giving up my life in Dubai and hitting the hippie trail, if there still was one.

Finding the hippie trail

Since we didn’t have any yoga classes at night we decided to head to the famous Anjuna Flea Market situated along Goa’s old hippie trail, which was very much still alive. The night market starts at around 8pm and winds up at 6am. It’s definitely a must-do for all visitors to the state.

Spread over an area as big as a football field were rows upon rows of little stalls selling just about everything – joss sticks, trinkets, silver jewellery, linen, garments, decorative wall pieces, candles… The only thing to keep in mind is to bargain hard. I was doing just that in front of a T-shirt stall.

I was hoping to spot Jade Jagger, Mick Jagger’s daughter, who reportedly shops here whenever she is in India. No luck on that front.

There were stalls selling all kinds of food and beverages while bands entertained the crowd with music.

It was early morning before we made our way back to the resort. Later in the day, we would be returning to Dubai.

But before we left, I was curious about the other yogis’ impressions of our trip.

“I learnt a lot about the various benefits of yoga, particularly the chakras,” said Denise Monce, a yoga practitioner at Fitness First in Dubai.

“I am planning to return for a course in hatha yoga,” said Sara.

“And what are your impressions of this place?” one of them asked me. I thought about it for a moment then said, “I never knew vegetables could taste so good.”

A full day at Sushumna Yoga School and Studios

7.00 – 8.00am Shangkapratchalan (cleansing)
8.15 – 9.15am Pranayama and meditation
9.30 – 11.00am Sushumna vinyasa flow
11.00am Breakfast then shower / break
11.30 – 1.00am Hatha yoga
1.00 -2.00pm Experiential introduction to the chakras
2.30 – 3.30pm Lunch
3.30 – 4.30pm Beach, sunbathe, massage, chill by the pool
4.30 – 5.30pm Restorative yoga
5.30 – 6.30pm Sunset flow yoga
7.00 – 8.00pm Dinner
9.00 – 9.30pm Guru yoga meditation

Murder trial witness threatened

by: Paul Lampathakis
From: The Sunday Times
April 21, 2012 6:29PM

A THREAT made to a new witness in the Lloyd Rayney murder trial has put pressure on authorities to give an assurance to people who testify that they will be protected.

A Perth man told The Sunday Times that he was “shocked” to be subpoenaed this week to give evidence at the trial.

He feared he or his family would be harmed because he claimed he had previously received an anonymous phone call warning “I’d better not talk” about the case. He said the caller gave details about his family that few were aware of.

The man said he received information about the case in the course of his work and the source had his phone number. There is no suggestion that anyone associated with Mr Rayney made the threat.

A spokeswoman for the NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, which has responsibility for Mr Rayney’s case, moved quickly to dispel safety concerns, saying: “The office is aware of the issues raised by the witness and will endeavour to ensure the safety of all the witnesses in this matter.”

WA Police also phoned the man on Friday night, soon after the concerns were raised with the DPP, saying that if he received any more threats to immediately contact them. They were also seeking a meeting with him this week about the issue.

The man, who will ask to have his name suppressed during the trial because of his concerns, said he told police about information related to the case that he had received shortly before Corryn Rayney’s body was found in August 2007.

“I just thought, ‘This can’t be true’, so I didn’t tell anyone, but then they found her body, and I couldn’t sleep for three days,” the man said.

“I thought, ‘I can’t just sit on this information. I have to tell the police’.”

He took time off work soon after and went to a police station where he told officers about what he had heard.

“I remember that they (police) basically said at the time that ‘This shouldn’t involve you at all’, and that if they did need anything else they would contact me within a ‘reasonable period of time’,” the witness said.

“Then a few weeks later I got a call from someone on my mobile phone saying, ‘You don’t know me but I know you’, and that I’d better not talk to anyone about what I’d been told.

“I felt worried as they knew facts about my family that not many people were aware of.

“Then this week, nearly five years later, I get a subpoena and I’m told I have to appear in court as a witness.

“And they gave the subpoena for me to my wife, when I’m sure that should only have gone to me.

“So it’s pretty shocking how she found out about it.”

The witness’s concerns follow WA Supreme Court proceedings on Monday, when Mr Rayney’s judge-alone trial was delayed by two months to July 16.

Mr Rayney’s legal team had argued that the case, which is expected to run for up to five months, should be started three months after the original May 14 commencement date, for reasons including an “endless debate about disclosure” between the defence and prosecution.

Mrs Rayney, 44, who worked as a Supreme Court registrar, disappeared on August 7, 2007, after leaving a bootscooting class in Bentley. Her body was found in a bush grave in Kings Park on August 16, 2007.

Mr Rayney, who has always emphatically denied involvement in his wife’s death, was charged with her wilful murder in December 2010.

Protecting children from abuse
March 24, 2012 11:32 AM | Bookmark and Share
Alekh Angre

Children’s Rights in Goa is the first NGO set up specifically to address tourism-related child abuse

Goa’s reputation as a great tourist destination is sometimes sullied by its murky underbelly that makes news headlines occasionally because of the dogged perseverance of activists like Dr Nishtha Desai. Tourism-related paedophilia, child labour, school dropouts, exploitation and trafficking of migrant children are among the many issues addressed by Children’s Rights in Goa (CRG). It is the first not-for-profit organisation in India set up specifically to address tourism-related child abuse.

CRG’s origin dates back to the notorious case of paedophile Freddy Peats who was arrested in 1991 and convicted five years later. There were twin reactions to the case—NGOs thought it was only the ‘tip-of-the-iceberg’, while the government insisted that it was just an aberration. Intrigued, Dr Desai, a PhD in sociology, began to research tourism-related paedophilia. “I wanted to find out what the reality was,” she says. See the Evil: Tourism related paedophilia in Goa, a research, was supported by Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK), an NGO, and conducted with the help of community workers. It examined the prevalence of tourism related child sexual abuse and the modus operandi of travelling sex offenders.

In 2000, Dr Desai joined CRG, a part of VAK which was conducting awareness programmes to urge local communities to understand and report the menace of paedophilia and increase awareness about children’s rights. Dr Desai intensified the drive after joining CRG. In 2001, she launched a concerted campaign called STOP (Stop Tourism-related Paedophilia). To raise awareness about paedophilia in villages required hard work. “Though migrant children were more susceptible, Goan children are also at risk. Many foreigners take accommodation in villages. They call kids, supposedly to teach them English and to engage them in fun activities,” explains Dr Desai.

CRG worked with tourists to conduct a signature campaign and submitted it to the then chief minister, expressing these concerns. “The CM organised a dialogue between the police and NGOs. Handouts were kept at airport counters to warn tourists that sex with a child is a serious offence,” she explained. CRG worked at drafting of the Goa Children’s Act (GCA) along with other NGOs. It was enacted in 2003 and is the first legislation in India to address child abuse issues. Dr Desai says, “A major outcome of the campaign is a shift in the state’s stand from denial of the problem to an acknowledgement of the issue.”

CRG was registered under the Societies Registration Act in 2006 with Dr Desai as its director. It started empowerment and awareness sessions at schools in north Goa, informing students about their rights and how to resist abuse. “While interacting with teachers, we found that some children are very sleepy in school during the tourist season and also bring expensive gifts given by foreigners. It was then that we found how susceptible these kids were to advances by foreigners,” she says.

CRG focuses on increasing awareness on the provisions of GCA, like no child can be denied admission in government-aided schools on the basis of being HIV+ or lack of identification papers. It assists the tourism industry to adopt a child-friendly tourism code provided in the GCA. It runs two activity centres which children can attend after school. CRG has conducted special sensitisation sessions for the Goa Police. “We provide counselling to children and also assist them to seek justice at the Children’s Court,” Dr Desai. One can volunteer for CRG, donate financially or in kind, like toys, picture books, etc, for its activity centres. All donations are eligible for tax exemption under Section 80 (G) of the Income-Tax Act.

CHILDREN’S RIGHTS IN GOA

CT-2, Block C, Building A,
Nevio Apartments, 3rd Floor, Angod
Mapusa, Goa 403507
Tel: (91+832) 2263838
Mobile: (91) 9822983336
www.childrightsgoa.org

Verdict for change

PAMELA D’MELLO
in Panaji

The Congress suffers a crushing defeat, its worst performance since 1980.

PTI

AS Goa’s new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government settles down in office, it is easy to forget that a month ago the Congress seemed confident of returning to power in the State. The party is shell-shocked at its crushing defeat, its worst performance since 1980. The Congress won a mere nine seats, and, worse, eight of its Ministers lost the election. The party lost 11 seats, eight of them to the alliance between the BJP and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), two to independents and one to the newly revived Goa Vikas Party (GVP), floated by Francisco Pacheco, former Tourism Minister of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The NCP, Congress’s alliance partner, lost all of its three seats, two to the BJP and one to an independent. Independents, meanwhile, increased their seats from two in the previous Assembly to five.

The BJP increased its tally from 14 in 2007 to a simple majority of 21 on its own and 24 in combination with its partner. Its alliance with the MGP is one of the many factors that scripted huge wins for the party. Ever since it rode piggyback on the MGP in 1994, the BJP has grown in the State at the cost of the MGP’s soft Hindutva credentials. In the past few Assembly elections, the MGP, which is now reduced to being the hegemonic entity of two brothers, Sudhin and Deepak Dhavlikar, in Goa’s interior Ponda taluk, contested on its own and entered into post-electoral alliances with the Congress for government formation. A regular split in the traditional vote bases of the BJP and the MGP gave the Congress an advantage in the past.

This time, the MGP and the BJP found themselves on a common platform in opposing government grants to mainly Christian primary schools which wanted to shift from Konkani medium to English medium. This emotive plank helped the alliance consolidate traditional Hindu votes in some regions, to the detriment of the Congress. Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Hindu Janajagruti and their women’s wings helped with a hushed campaign to vote for the lotus and even for the Christian candidates in their fold.

The BJP contested 28 seats, left seven to the MGP and strategically supported five independents and other regional outfits such as the GVP in the Christian-dominated Salcete taluk. In a crucial departure from its earlier stance, the BJP sidestepped its own loyalists and picked “winnable” candidates who were new to the party but had the financial wherewithal to run a campaign.

The strategy worked. Anti-incumbency and an anti-Congress wave decimated the Congress in this taluk, which in the past had given the Congress all its eight Assembly seats. This time, Salcete swung its votes in favour of three independents, two GVP candidates and one BJP candidate. The Congress won two seats.

Swing in Catholic votes

In another careful strategy, the BJP replicated a successful experiment in fielding Christian candidates. Over several terms, its Mapusa MLA Francis D’Souza had returned unerringly and with huge margins to the House, benefiting from both the BJP-MGP vote base and his own status in the community. This time the BJP gave at least six Christian nominees the ticket in constituencies with sizable Christian population. It kept away all hard-line Hindutva elements and agendas from the campaign and instead concentrated on corruption and development issues.

All six of the alliance’s Christian nominees won. “There can be little doubt that the Church played a big role in the move away from the Congress,” said hotelier Ralph de Souza. In its pre-election statements, the Council for Social Justice and Peace, the wing of the Church that comments on social matters, had “advised” people to vote wisely, for honest, non-corrupt candidates. And this time, it overtly downplayed its traditional anathema to “communal” politics.

Voters here have long been uncomfortable with their back-against-the-wall plight of having to choose between Congress regimes that sank into corruption and real estate speculation (a bugbear with Christian voters) and the BJP-MGP’s brand of communal politics.

“Voters seem to have been simply fed up with the arrogance and hubris of the Congress and the BJP. It was an anti-Congress wave, not a pro-BJP wave, and certainly not an endorsement of the Hindutva ideology,” said Dr Oscar Rebello, a physician and an activist. According to the Citizen’s Initiative for Communal Harmony, “the anger generated by the Congress and its abysmal levels of corruption clouded the people’s minds so much that they failed to see or overlooked the communal ideology of the BJP.”

The no-nonsense charisma of BJP leader Manohar Parrikar and his abilities as an able administrator played no small role in the voters’ choice of the party. There is still a great deal of mistrust with the BJP, alongside the realisation among a section of the people that while some towering Christian politicians have been eased out, those now elected to the House are largely businessmen, some of whom have in the past displayed scarce abilities to put aside their business interests and stand up to a strong leader.

Dr Wilfred de Souza, the seasoned politician, feels that “Christians have been played for fools this election by the BJP”.

Congress, its own enemy

While the BJP suffers from the complete domination of a single leader, the Congress has too many. In Goa, power centres in the Congress revolved around Vishwajit Rane, son of former Chief Minister and Speaker of the outgoing Assembly Pratapsing Rane; Chief Minister Digambar Kamat; and Ministers Churchill Alemao, Atanasio Monserrate and Ravi Naik.

The party’s ticket distribution exercise – conducted under intense media spotlight – saw each satrap successfully jockeying for the ticket for relatives and cronies, with an eye on a majority in the legislature party and chief ministership. In the process, at least three loyalists were ditched in favour of “winnable” last-minute defectors from the BJP. That these loyalists-turned-rebels won at the hustings was an indication of both the flawed choices the Congress made and the voters’ disgust with its politics.

“There’s something called the aesthetics of corruption, when it gets too vulgar and too in-your-face, it can be the tipping point,” said Alito Sequeira, the sociologist and Goa University professor. The four seats allotted to the Alemao clan would certainly qualify for this, as was the arrogance and presumption in setting out to eye the top job even before a vote was cast.

While the leaders jostled for the ticket, the Congress ran an unorganised campaign. In contrast, the saffron party was hyperactive on Facebook, new media sites and the Internet. Digambar Kamat’s supporters are livid that the party did not sufficiently highlight the Chief Minister’s accessibility, responsiveness to public demands and achievements – he scrapped special economic zones (SEZs), held the country’s first-ever citizen participatory Regional Plan, gave a tremendous boost to art and cultural activities, implemented the Sixth Pay Commission, and introduced schemes such as the distribution of subsidised vegetables and grain and those for the girl child and senior citizens. The Congress ran a lukewarm campaign and was unable to counter any of the BJP’s doublespeak on family raj or the Sangh Parivar’s communal agenda in the State.

BJP and NGOs

The BJP’s campaign was well-planned, aggressive and spread out. The party has in the past decade systematically set up a network of NGOs and back-room activists who bat for it covertly. Occupying the activist space, these satellite NGOs whipped up anti-Congress sentiments, encouraged a split in the votes to the BJP’s favour, and brought the issue of corruption centre stage. Team Anna’s India Against Corruption (Goa unit), with its vote for change slogan, ran a campaign in the State just days ahead of the election. Speeches at the meetings left no one in any doubt about who it favoured.

Another NGO, The Forum of Good Governance, ran a multi-crore advertisement campaign in the print, television/cable and hoarding media that damaged the Congress’ prospects significantly. “How does an NGO get crores [of rupees] to sponsor defamatory advertisements of that nature?” asked Congress’ Rajya Sabha member Shantaram Naik. He holds that the NGO was a smokescreen to beat the expenditure curb of Rs.8 lakh for candidates and has complained to the Election Commission about it. It ended up making a mockery of the Election Commission’s guidelines, he says. While the BJP thanked the media after the campaigning closed, several Congress leaders complained that the media had been less than fair to it. Aside for a BJP mouthpiece, at least one other English daily played an aggressive role in creating an anti-Congress wave.

Political analysts accord no small measure of the BJP’s victory to the effect of a delimitation and redrawing of Assembly constituencies that took place under an earlier BJP regime. At least a few of the seats it won came because of the “delimitation effect”. The accusation – not unfounded – is that in redrawing the Assembly segments, Christian segments were sought to be weakened, by adding in pockets with the majority population and vice versa. This was especially done in Salcete taluk.

This was quite clear in the case of the Cuncolim segment, where the Congress lost to the BJP. “Cuncolim was always Christian-dominated, and even in case of a split of votes, the BJP could rarely win the seat. With delimitation, it added two other areas, Balli and Ambaulim, from a different taluk and revenue district. This seems to have changed the arithmetic here,” says Guilerme Almeida, a local journalist.

And, for all the noise made against mining and real estate lobbies, more than a normal share of legislators in the new House, irrespective of party affiliations, have direct connections to these lobbies. While some columnists hail the “people’s verdict for change”, there are some who caution that Goans may have jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

Faleiro to resign as NRI chief today

PANAJI: Goa commissioner for NRI affairs Eduardo Faleiro will resign from his position with effect from Thursday, he announced to the media on Wednesday. Faleiro has held the post since February 2006.

Briefing the media, Faleiro said that he “did not at any stage seek the present appointment nor any other office in Goa” and that he had only taken up the post at the request of former Goa chief minister Pratapsingh Rane “considering that since I was in Goa I might as well help my fellow Goans in some way”.

Asked if he would continue if the new BJP government asked him to, Faleiro said he would not. He said his leaving was a “natural thing” which happens in a parliamentary democracy. He, however, explained that though his term was set to expire at the end of March, the Congress government had extended it by five years. With the exit of the Congress, Faleiro had to leave too. “I am honoured by the fact that the prime minister and the Union finance minister, among others, have praised this office, verbally and in writing, for its efficiency and the vast range of subjects of interest to NRIs that it deals with,” Faleiro said.

Faleiro also praised his two officers, vice-admiral (retd) John D’Silva, chairman of the Overseas Employment Agency and U D Kamat, director of NRI affairs, calling them “quite competent to run this office on their own”. Faleiro also hoped the NRI office would complete his unfulfilled projects.

PS. On behalf of the Goan of Australia we would like to express our sincere thanks to Mr Faleiro for the many intiatives, especially the Know Goa Program for the diaspora youth and helping out and giving a patient hearing to the concerns of Goans overseas.

Tony Colaco
President
GOA NSW Inc Australia.