Lead Article published in oHeraldo on 24 July 2023
The fears of over 3 decades, about the Government’s subtle intention to replicate the tourism model of Bangkok and Las Vegas for Goa’s tourism now appears to be justified. A deceptive government’s hide and seek on permitting cross massage in Spas to avoid hurting public sentiments, has now found a legal disguise to plead helplessness in preventing the menace by dumping the blame on court orders.
What next? Nudist zones?
The reluctance of this government to protect forests and wildlife has also been exposed. It is common knowledge that forests and wildlife pose a threat to the predatory ambitions of real estate and mining sharks in Goa’s politics. So also, the Portuguese laws and culture are found too normal to coexist with the vulture culture being imported into Goa from the Hindi heartland.
When roofs come tumbling down and infrastructure gets washed away, the corruption of a 5 trillion economy speaks for itself. What more do Goans need to realise the extent of abnormality and corruption in Goa’s governance?
Perhaps, in the desi scheme of governance, New Goa is about casinos, pubs, drug dens, brothels, sex parlours and safe havens for criminals. Such perversion does not hurt Hindutva sentiments or found offensive to Hindutva culture as long as it rakes in the money. We see how a politician is pleading to go soft on traffic violations by tourists and compromise the road safety for locals. Laws and rules are interpreted and applied to fit the convenience of the moneyed class. Goa’s land is no longer meant for the low and middle income landless Goans. The road designs are no more for those who do not own SUVs and MUVs. Such lunacy in governance is not surprising when the common Goans tolerate drainage water falling on them from flyovers, and ignore the absence of adequate public transport, footpaths and pedestrian crossings. One wonders whether Goans have any dignity and self-worth left in them.
The pathetic state of infrastructure, spiralling costs of living, unemployment, lack of affordable housing, environmental degradation and the breakdown of law and order is perhaps a small price to pay, for a Goan thinking drenched in a nostalgia for the glorious past and xenophobia. What's alarming is the growing species of intellectuals, academicians, medicos, clerics and businessmen stooping so low as to literally worship and market politicians like Gods. This may leave some who sense the lawlessness and alienation, due to the deteriorating state of affairs in Goa’s governance, with a question: ‘Are citizens so brainless and blind as to not see this political game of ‘one nation - one loot and plunder’ played under the banner of development and progress?’
The politics we experience in Goa is not just about a failed governance, but more of a failed citizenship in a splintered society which is unable to hold its elected representatives accountable. They are now clueless on how to tame their MLAs and MPs who go berserk once elected. Amidst the 24X7 and 365X12 fun and frolic, will Goans ever find time to ponder and redeem themselves from this political mess? The antidote to a totalitarian regime cannot be found by asking irrational questions such as, ‘what is the opposition doing?” or, “why are the courts not acting?” Instead, each one needs to be asking themselves, ‘how am I sustaining the political abuse?’
The response of Goans to the present political crisis has a lot of similarities with the dynamics in families afflicted with substance addictions and other mental health problems. The denial to admit the problem and the resistance to a rational and professional intervention lands up feeding the problem rather than treating it. And this is how citizens continue employing the same outdated responses to tackle the political abuses of a right wing government fired by technological sophistication and ‘flying monkeys’.
In our obsession with issues of corruption, criminal cases of politicians and freebies, we have somehow ignored the psychopathological angle in assessing our leaders and the governance. We forget that ultimately political abuse and violence could also be about sick human minds flushed with money grabbing power. This mental disease or disorder is not just limited to political leaders, but may also afflict those who hold sway over religion, industry and civil society groups. According to some psychologists, a ‘Toxic Triangle’ of dangerous leaders, vulnerable followers and a society which provides the ripe ground for collusion is what sustains totalitarianism. Considering that mental health is not a priority for our society, the inability of citizens to recognise mental diseases or disorders makes it easy for pathological personalities to manipulate and buy their way into positions of power, and wreak havoc which they believe is progress and clean governance.
Perhaps, the political deviancies in Goa may be better understood through the findings of Polish psychologist Andrew M Lobaczewaki who experienced totalitarian governments and was involved with the resistance movements against Nazi and the Soviet Union occupations. His secret investigations along with some colleagues to objectively understand the evils of fascism and communism, under which he and his neighbours suffered, led to the concept of ‘Pathocracy’—‘a system in which a small minority of individuals with personality disorders occupy positions of power and unleash a trail of sufferings and misery’. Pathocracy is the opposite of Democracy.
There is hardly any doubt that the present destructive political regime in Goa cannot be tackled with arbitrary and tokenistic prayers and protests to attract cheap publicity and increase followers on social media platforms. The disease of psychopathy in politics, according to Lobaczewski, requires the cultivation of “an individual and collective psychological immunity, based on a naturalistically objectified understanding of this other reality.”
(The writer was a Counsellor at a Drug Prevention and De-addiction Centre in Goa)
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