More people are now willing to speak out, even if those willing to support the noise makers have a bigger stake
A friend (of a friend) rang up the other day. He had an unusual query: he was searching for an expat Goan willing to sell a home to a young local family that was keen to build their own nest. But that was not all.... The kicker in his message was this: he was leaving his village of Anjuna, because it had become "simply too unlivable" in recent years.
For obvious reasons, names and identities need not be mentioned here. We have enough resident goons across Goa's geography, who are out to teach "troublemakers" a lesson and harass them. By "troublemakers" they mean those who are not willing to tolerate their unacceptable behaviour. People are, rightly, scared.
But, nowadays, locals are also beginning to speak out. In this endeavour, they also have the support of some recent settlers to Goa. The latter too feel the pinch, due to issues like noise pollution. And they are less afraid about speaking out. Things have simply overstepped the bounds.
In the case of Anjuna, the situation has turned far more dramatic. Goa's one time hippy-capital has taken on its new-found bourgeois status with a vengeance. Step aside wine-women-song; that's the old formula for rewarding the winners of a patriarchal race. Now the heady mix could be classified as one of music-sensuality-substance.
Among the villagers who have openly begun speaking out, many were upset by a lengthy video that had been distributed online recently. It featured many small vendors from the village, and their views on the excessive noise pollution issue.The video in question interviews small vendors from Anjuna. It has them reiterating how important "music" is to the Anjuna tourism product.
Their lament is predictable: many of them depend on tourism. Without the "music", there would be no tourists coming. Some linked the drop in tourism to the lack of music and parties (definitely debatable).
In the one-sided interviews, the vendors, taxi-drivers and others argued against cut-off timings for noise pollution. The same should be allowed to go on till at least one am, one interviewee was heard suggesting. Maybe they could stretch it for an hour more after that. The video goes on and on, explaining why tourism can't survive without music. But this is clearly only one side of the story. As the protesting villagers pointed out, they are against noise pollution and loud music, not music per se.
On the other hand, the people who have stood up against noise pollution, have been pointing out to the way this uncontrolled nuisance makes life tough for them. They can't get to sleep for much of the night, children find it impossible to study, and it makes life in Anjuna a living hell. This is a far cry from the 'Village Anjuna', which the author Dominic Fernandes of Gaumvaddy described.
For those of us outside the village, whom do we believe? For a fact, the Panjim-eye's view of Anjuna is quite off-track. I've seen journalist colleagues (with a few exceptions) who don't have a clue of how things work along the North Goa (particularly Bardez) coastal belt. As someone who lives three kilometres from the beach belt, one has seen decades of changes that came into Goa, and nearby Calangute in particular, which had the first hippies in the 1960s.
But one gets hints of the times then, by reading a first-person account like that of Dr Cleo Odzer's 'Goa Freaks'. Cleo, an American Jew, was herself a hippy in the Goa of the 1970s, cleaned up from her drug addiction (which almost killed her), did her PhD on sex tourism in Bangkok, and then returned to Goa where she died quite young in the new millennium.
Someone wanted to know, in an online discussion, as to why the residents of the place had "kept quiet" all this while, only to wake up about noise pollution now. But this is not quite right. In the past, the hippy-Goan interaction was of quite another level.
While the hippies did indulge in things that also offended local sensibilities (drug-taking, nudism, full-moon parties), they did so at quite another level. Today the situation has drastically changed. The 1960s and 1970s tourism was in pockets away from the inhabited areas; today, the metastasis has spread all over. But Anjuna is not the only area to face sound pollution.
Much noise pollution happens along the Bardez coast. The Xavier Retreat House fathers, at Baga, mentioned their retreat centre gets drowned by the daily noise. In the Mandovi, the cruise boats make life painful for people on both banks of the river.
The festival noise is unbearable. It's time that all religious leaders gave the lead by issuing calls to celebrate religious festivals without excessive noise, loudspeakers, crackers. In the 1980s and 1990s, the political campaigner Floriano Lobo of Moira had raised the issue of noise pollution there, and took it to court. We need people to speak out against all forms of excessive and needless noise.
The only thing which one can give Goa and Goans full marks for is the low use of horns in vehicular traffic.
The protests against noise pollution have been met by being dismissive. When people protest, everyone will say they are "bhatkars", rich folk, those who have other options, etc. But it is also true that vested interests will also manipulate those struggling to make a living. They are used as the skirt behind which other dubious interests can hide. But more people are now willing to speak out, even if those willing to support the noise makers have a bigger stake.
The stand taken by politicians, policy planners and the officials (including the police) will be watched and monitored. They need to show that they care for the interests of non-vested interests too.
