Go, Goa, Gone: Bhumi Adhikarini Bill may once again stir pot of identity

Bhumi Adhikarini Bill is expected to ignite debates, provoke questions & controversies that simmer beneath the surface in this tiny emerald land: who qualifies as a Goan, and who does not?

The calm of Goa’s mornings is disrupted by the cawing of crows, the chatter of squirrels, and the toot of bicycle horns. Carrying their precious cargo in deep cane baskets carefully wrapped in newspapers and plastic, these cyclists are a crucial element in the daily lives of Goans.

They are vendors of pao, the freshly made, soft pillows of bread that accompany all Goan meals. Making and selling pao is hard work. Families wake up early in the morning to bake it fresh, and the men are dispatched on cycles to sell it. Over the years, as local boys became harder to find, bakeries resorted to hiring migrants.

Jawed is from Patna. He has lived in various parts of Goa since he was a small boy who ran away from home almost 20 years ago. He speaks in the local cadence with ease, though the Bihari drawl surfaces occasionally. He is exceptionally well-informed about Goa’s politics and society.

“Goans are friendly people, even though many call us ‘Indians’,” he says. “I consider myself Goan. I sell pao, I know how to make all the local food, and I understand the customs. Once I have saved up enough, I hope to buy a small plot of land that will make me a complete Goan.” He says the Bhumiputra ‘Vidheyak’ (Bill) will help him become a ‘son of the soil’.

This is exactly what politicians who oppose the Goa Bhumiputra Adhikarini Bill, 2021, are afraid of: that non-Goans who have acquired land in the state by encroaching on government or other land will be able to regularise their claim, and the demography of Goa, already diluted, will change further.

Neither Jawed nor the Opposition is completely right.

The story of the Bhumiputra Adhikarini Bill starts in July 2021 when it was introduced and passed in the Goa Assembly amid a walkout by 12 members of the Opposition in the 40-member Assembly. However, due to the ruckus both inside and outside of the Assembly on social media, the Bill was never referred to the governor and never notified. It hibernated until the government headed by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Pramod Sawant withdrew it on the last day of the Assembly on August 10, 2023, and has promised to bring it back in a new form while upholding the spirit of the legislation: “to enable the ‘mool Goenkar’ (original Goans) to live with respect”, Sawant said in the Assembly.

The (now withdrawn) Bill says anyone living in the state for 30 years or more with a cut-off date of April 1, 2019, will be deemed a bhumiputra (son of the soil) and will be entitled to own his or her “small dwelling unit” if ownership is unclear.

The statement of objects and reasons of the Bill says it “provides for a mechanism to give ownership rights to the self-occupied dweller of a small housing unit to enable him/her to live with dignity and self-respect and exercise his/her right to life”.

“Small housing unit” means a house on 250 square metres of land, which can be government land, privately-owned land, or comunidadé (community) land.

A committee with the Deputy Collector as its chairperson and officials from the Departments of Town & Country Planning, Forest, Environment & Climate Change, and Mamlatdars of respective talukas, is tasked with examining the claim.

The committee can invite objections within 30 days, including from the landowner, which could also be a local body, and then take a decision on granting ownership to the bhumiputra.

Therein lies the rub.

Already agitated by the influx of outsiders into Goa, Opposition members strongly protested the Bill, which they said was nothing more than an exercise to win over migrant voters registered in Goa ahead of the 2022 Assembly elections, even if such migrants had encroached on government land.

“The very essence of bhumiputra stands defeated by its definition and is an assault on every honest citizen living in Goa and Goans at large. According to this definition, this bhumiputra needs to have resided anywhere in Goa for the last 30 years but should have constructed the illegal house by encroachment before April 1, 2019, which means even an encroacher who has not been on the land for 30 years or more will qualify,” says Carlos Ferreira, chairman, Congress Legal Cell.

Nonplussed by the ferocity of the Opposition, the government on August 10 withdrew the Bill but promised another version, this time called the Bhumi Adhikarini Bill, 2023. This will be introduced in the upcoming session of the Assembly, due in about two months.

Explaining the new provisions, Revenue Minister Atanasio Monserrate, also known as Babush, told the Goa Assembly: “We are planning to link Aadhaar numbers with land records. This move aims to ensure that whenever any changes are made to property rights, the registered owner receives a notification. The government also intends to enhance the online property register managed by the Directorate of Settlement & Land Records. This upgraded register will enable people to verify property ownership and access other relevant information before entering into any transactions.”

However, the Opposition wants to see the details of the Bill and asserts that it must be consulted before the Bill is passed. Internally, the BJP shares concerns about migrants.

Data from the 2011 Census reveals that Goa has a population of 1.45 million, of which around 18.5 per cent of the people are migrants from different states of the country.

Many, like Jawed, do the work that Goans themselves don’t want to do.

The Bill is expected to raise once again questions and controversies that bubble below the surface in Goa: who is a Goan and who is not?

A petition circulated about the 2021 version of the Bill puts it starkly: “Although we have one citizenship for the entire country, the ‘sons of the soil’ concept is firmly etched in the human mind. We believe that the fruits of development must first go to the sons of the soil and/or the original settlers here in the state of Goa.”

Jawed from Patna and others like him could become collateral damage of politics around an identity battle.