Twenty-year-old Khateeja Khan has lived in Goa all her life but she says she has never seen a tourist. Express incredulity, and her friend Razia Sheikh, 24, counters wryly, “Does this look like a place where tourists would come?” Indira Nagar, peopled mostly by migrants from other states, might be less than 10 km from Goa’s capital Panaji, but it is unlikely to make it to the cover of a travel brochure. The houses are cramped and jostle for space next to each other, the drains are open and there is a big pile of garbage like in any other jhuggi-jhopri in urban India. But it’s not what one expects in Goa, ranked the least backward state in the country on the Raghuram Rajan Committee’s multi-dimensional index of backwardness. With one of the fiercest debates this year having been between renowned economists Jagdish Bhagwati, who favoured the ‘Gujarat model’ of development, and Amartya Sen championing the ‘Kerala model’, the Rajan report may well raise the question of whether there also is a “Goa model” of development.
Rajan’s panel identified indicators of relative backwardness for allocation of central funds and the tiny coastal state outperformed most peers on several indicators, from education to poverty rate to health. And though first impressions may suggest otherwise, the reasons are evident even in Indira Nagar. The committee had selected infant mortality rate as the sole measure of health, and Goa, with infant mortality at 8.55 per 1,000 live births when the national average is 42, has often been hailed as the best place to be born in India. It also has the highest rate of institutional deliveries, at 96.3 per cent, and maternal mortality reportedly does not cross seven in a year, according to the state planning board. Khan and Sheikh affirm that even in their colony, most women choose to have their baby in a hospital, usually the Goa Medical College, which is the state’s biggest and located 15 km away in Bambolim. The primary health centre, one of the 24 in the state, located 15 km away in Betki, is spick-and-span. The one doctor who was present, and requested not to be named, said the staff of three doctors and a dentist, as well as three regional medical officers who travel to sub-primary health centres, caters to around 60,000 people in the region. Patients have to pay a one-time fee of Rs 20 for their medical cards and nothing after that for the consultation or medication, he says.
The impressive progress Goa has made in health is the result of efforts by consecutive governments, sustained awareness campaigns and the state’s high literacy rate, according to Dattaprasad Kholkar, deputy chairman, state planning board. The figures he and his staff share roll out sound impressive — no child in the state, he says, travels more than 0.75 km to the nearest school. A survey conducted two years ago found there were just 680 children not in school in the state. Measures were then taken to ensure these children, too, began going to school, he says.
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Goa also enjoys one of the highest per capita incomes in the country at Rs 1,68,572 — over thrice the national average. The small population of 14.75 lakh is a major factor in this. Professor Mridula Goel, head of the department of economics at the Goa campus of BITS, Pilani, says that despite being a major tourist destination, the cost of living is not high. “Rents are not high, vegetable and fruit prices would be at par with other states and of course, petrol and diesel are much cheaper,” she says. With the current BJP government slashing VAT on petrol, Goa buys the cheapest petrol in the country at Rs 52.10 a litre (diesel is Rs 52.70). According to figures released by the Planning Commission, Goa also has the smallest percentage of people, 5.09 per cent, living below the poverty line. And while the state may not have any major malls yet, a sales executive at an auto showroom says the state sees sales of 30-40 luxury cars a month, and the companies expect year-on-year growth of 15 per cent, after a 30 per cent dip in sales when the ban on mining came into effect in 2011.
Driving through Goa is probably a more pleasant experience because the roads you are travelling on, while no six-lane highways, are almost uniformly good, even the narrow ones winding through villages and while activists point out that the state has not yet got around to introducing organised garbage collection and removal and sanitation system, there are no stinking mounds on street corners.
Being early October, the ‘season,’ when the bulk of foreign tourists descend, is yet to start. Nikhil Desai, director, tourism department, says tourism contributes an estimated Rs 600 crore to state revenues and provides employment to about a third of the population, directly or indirectly. The number of tourist arrivals has grown 4 per cent over the previous year, but Goa lags rivals like Rajasthan and Kerala. “The temporary closure of mines has pushed tourism to the top,” says Desai, of the two major contributors to the state’s revenues. In 2012, 2.3 million domestic and 0.4 million foreign tourists visited the state. The government has recently awarded a contract to draw up a tourism master plan to KPMG, whose mandate will include drawing up strategies to attract international tourists.
Manufacturing, the secondary sector, contributes 38.05 per cent to the GSDP. Nitin Kunkolienker, former president of the Goa Chamber of Commerce & Industry, says the state has over 165 big manufacturing units and over 1,500 active small-scale units. Kunkolienker is also the vice-president of Smartlink Network Systems, a manufacturer of computer hardware with around 1,000 employees, and we are in his office in Verna Industrial Estate, which houses around 140 major manufacturing units. “Goa’s actual industrialisation started after 1993 when income-tax holidays were extended by the centre and the state government offered sales-tax incentives.” He adds, however, that the state has been unable to attract any major investment in manufacturing in the last 10 years, partly because of other states like Himachal Pradesh offering more incentives in the form of tax breaks.
The biggest hurdle to manufacturing, at present, is lack of availability of land, says AK Burman, president, Goa Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association. The pharma industry attracted one of the biggest investors in the state due to tax incentives offered post-1993. Currently, there are 40 pharma units in the state. “We want to expand but there is no land. A lot of it is locked up in legal disputes over the government’s withdrawal of its special economic zone policy. Power is also in short supply; there is no water either,” says Burman. Blaise Costabir, member of Goa Industrial Development Chamber, is hopeful of the process becoming more transparent. “Bosch, for example, had to wait for years to get land — why would any company keep waiting? We have also put forward a proposal to have a single-window clearance facility for industry to the government,” says Costabir.
Goa’s remarkable performance on a number of human development indices, combined with the preference of locals for white collar jobs and relatively high wages left the door open for migrant workers from all over the country. Many Goans hold out for an official job, with the result that the state government has a bloated workforce of nearly 55,000 and one of the highest ratios of government employees to citizens.
Goa has nearly three lakh migrants living in the state. This might not be huge number in isolation, but significant when you consider the state’s population is just 14.75 lakh. This proportion is, perhaps, one reason for the uneasy relationship locals share with migrants as is evident when you talk to any resident of Goa. Many tend to blame them for a rise in crime and a dip in sanitation standards, though there have been no reports of actual confrontations.
This is one of the challenges Goa has to deal with. “If you improve human capital but do not improve the living environment and employment options, people will migrate out,” says Laveesh Bhandari, founder-director of research firm Indicus Analytics. Bhandari also feels the state needs to do more before it can lay claim to having promulgated a Goa model of development. “As of now, there isn’t really a Goa model of development but they may be moving towards one. They will need to do far more on human capital development (in higher education and vocational education, for example) for it to become a full-fledged ‘Goa Model’.” BITS-Pilani’s Goel also says the development has been only in specific sectors.
Zarina da Cunha, an activist in the village of Nuvem who has most recently challenged the illegal construction of a school which allegedly has the backing of former chief minister Digambar Kamat, says Goa is not evolving into a better state “There is no system of garbage collection or treatment in the state, and nothing is being done to conserve Goa’s wetlands. From an emerald, Goa is becoming a trash can,” says the feisty da Cunha. “We may be doing alright compared to others but considering this is a miniscule state, we could do so much better.”
