Politics of manufacturing majoritarian insecurities -Soter

 Lead Article published in oheraldo on Sept 28, 2026

The theatrics of inter faith meetings has not resulted in an inter community backlash against such divisive tactics

For decades, local politics has always told a different story from what gets portrayed in tourism brochures and social media. The unspoken games of a disguised majority versus minority politics continues to frustrate any efforts for consensus on key policy issues. Any political movement which enjoys support from the minority community witnesses a counter movement from the majority community, under the disguise of protecting Goa’s culture from Moghul and western influence. Goa is caught in a deep cultural contradiction, fiercely romanticizing an identity while actively participating in its erosion.

In the theatre of modern Goan politics, there is no greater vulnerability than a short memory of citizens. An uncomfortable truth is that the current misery of Goans is, in many ways, the bitter harvest of profound political blunders committed post-liberation. No lessons learnt to this day on manipulative political patterns. With the prevailing denial and refusal to objectively introspect, can the 2027 electoral outcomes be any different from old wine in a new bottle?

Goans, minorities in particular, have entertained fiction and failed to recognise the dark socio-political reality lurking in the shadows. A community repeatedly fed with nostalgia of the past is left emotionally charged with a feeling of victimhood but clueless of the larger menacing political truth.  A decade later after the seismic political shift of 2012, a year that fundamentally altered the political fabric of the State, the contribution from minority communities to the anti-corruption movement and the subsequent dream for a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ (Congress-free India) is now backfiring. The romanticization of history under the catchphrases of ‘Asmitai’ (identity) and ‘Goenkarponn’ (Goan-ness) projects an image of effortless syncretism to the outside world. This tool has served a repeated denial of an underlying toxicity which remains unaddressed and keeps raising its ugly head time and again.

The latest weapon in the dark tactics of majoritarian politics is a ‘Goa Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Bill, 2026’. Call it anything from a ‘red herring’ to ‘throwing a dead cat on the table’ to divert the narrative away from the crisis resulting from gross failures in governance. For a government to suggest that an 80% majority needs State protection from "allurement" is an insult to the majority community. It paints a community as gullible and vulnerable to coercion and allurements from a 20% minority community. It implies that the majority, despite holding the reins of State power, the police force, the administration, and the sheer force of numbers, is essentially a fragile collective easily susceptible to being preyed upon by a micro-minority. But what is not surprising is that the theatrics of inter faith meetings has not resulted in an inter community backlash against such divisive tactics of this government.  

The introduction of an anti-conversion Bill and its withdrawal was in no way a miscalculation, as was the impression sought to be created by the media. This Bill is neither an aberration nor a story about a State listening to its citizens. It is a textbook demonstration of how majoritarian policy experiments are introduced, normalized, and strategically calibrated. The Bill, no doubt, represents a localized adaptation of a broader national political strategy aimed at systematically reshaping the State’s multi-faith social landscape. Such laws have rolled out across some other Indian States, creating a clear regional blueprint.

The timing in proposing such a Bill in an election season appears to have achieved its dual objective. As expected, the predictable knee jerk reactions from self-publicity seeking elements fed the fundamentalist game-plan. The noise against the Bill remained nothing more than a formality of beating around the bush with stereotyped ‘pravachans’ (preachings) on infringement of constitutional rights, and some alien threat imported to disrupt an otherwise perfect paradise. Such projected nervousness in minorities helped reinforce the myth of a proselytization threat as perceived by the majority. The withdrawal of the Bill was an unspoken message to the core voter that we tried to bring the law, but the internal arithmetic stopped us this time. Give us a more absolute mandate, and we will finish the job. It allowed civil society to feel righteous in its opposition while preventing everyone from asking a much harder question: Why does the majoritarian political laboratory find such a fertile ground in Goa in the first place?

Until Goans collectively acknowledge the disguise of majoritarianism masquerading as cultural assertion, which has subtly manipulated the political choices since 1961, they are simply rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship of State identity. Over the last six decades, these fissures have been managed, monetized, and manipulated by successive political regimes. Opposing a bad bill or policy with dishonest arguments and half-truths does not save Goa. It merely ensures that citizens remain comfortably numb while the foundation of society continues to decay. When a community is made to feel under siege, dissent is silenced, and conservative, opportunistic elements within the community seize control of the narrative. It keeps communities politically segregated, ensuring that voting blocs remain predictable, defensive, and easily manipulated when elections approach.

The minority community, and indeed civil society at large, can no longer afford to remain in the drama triangle of manipulative politics. The pattern of infringement on constitutional rights to politically disempower minorities needs to be understood from a wider perspective, not as isolated events. The anti-conversion and the FCRA issues are not distinct from the imposition of language, script, medium of instruction, and food choices, the rewriting of history, Vishal Gomantak vision, CAA/NRC/SIR, the insult to saints and claims on historical places in a display of majoritarian entitlement. It is in such a political climate that citizens cutting across caste and religion need to be seen collaboratively rejecting such divisive politics, if the claim of social harmony in Goa is not a myth.

 Lead article published in oHeraldo on August 24, 2026

The true measure of democracy is found in the safety of the dissenter

We want a clean, just, and democratic nation, but our social thinking and behaviour often appears to be deeply undemocratic. The lack of civic literacy creates a dangerous void, allowing majoritarian narratives to replace constitutional values. The lack of civic discipline, which puts self-interest over community well-being, enables manipulative political leadership. We seem to have developed a split political consciousness. For many, the Constitution is reduced to a historical relic rather than a living shield that protects their daily liberties. We castigate authoritarianism in public spaces while enforcing rigid caste, class, and religious hierarchies within our own domestic and corporate spheres.

The current political crisis in the country is not occurring in a vacuum. It is blooming on a deeply fertile ground of widespread public ignorance of political systems and a pervasive culture of citizen apathy. A fundamentalist pattern offers easy scapegoats for complex societal anxieties. They do not require everyone to be an active extremist. They merely require the masses to be passive spectators. If this toxic political climate is to be dismantled, the people’s movements must also transition from highlighting complaints about rampant corruption and attacks on public dissent to radical civic self-examination.

A critical diagnosis of the modern framework of protests reveals an immense structural and philosophical departure from the foundational lineage of Indian resistance. A movement that plays to the tunes of a polarised public thinking, without challenging how that public acts, builds its house on shifting sands. It treats political action as an occasional event with a viral video or a weekend demonstration rather than an enduring and daily ethical practice. Modern movements ignore the moral health of society and accept the citizenry exactly as it is, even when that citizenry has been thoroughly compromised by years of hyper-nationalist media, deep-seated communal biases, and everyday civic apathy.

The recent surge in youth protests across the country proves that the desire for democratic renewal is alive. We see an abundance of passion, anger, and desire for change in the younger generations. But anger is said to be a highly volatile fuel which, as much as it burns bright, tends to burn out quickly. To understand why peaceful modern campaigns so often dissolve into cynicism, or get co-opted by the very regimes they oppose, we must contrast them with Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of Satyagraha.

For Gandhi, a freedom struggle was never merely about replacing a tyrant or exposing State failure; it was about “Satyagraha” (insistence on truth or truth force) by cultivating the “Atma Shakti” (soul force) of the Satyagrahi. This process involved a radical, introspective transformation of the self that turned ordinary individuals into unshakeable agents of non-violent defiance. We need to recognise that Gandhi’s method of Satyagraha was never a passive political tactic; it was an active and spiritual science. Gandhi understood that an oppressive empire does not exist in a vacuum. It survives because the populace, out of fear, greed, or moral laziness, chooses to cooperate with its structures. Therefore, the primary battlefield of Satyagraha was never the British Viceroy’s chambers. It was targeted at forming the conscience of the individual citizen.

Gandhiji’s ‘soul force’ demanded a rigorous, often uncomfortable introspection. It was focused on ‘kya karti Public’, which differs from the emphasis on understanding ‘kya bolti Public’ by some recent movements. Before a volunteer could march against the oppressive colonial laws or face the batons of the colonial police, they had to commit to absolute self-discipline. This involved a deliberate dismantling of internal prejudices, a commitment to communal harmony, and the practice of radical empathy even toward the oppressor.

Non-violence was not a weapon of the weak; it was the ultimate demonstration of an internal strength so profound that it rendered the state’s physical weapons obsolete. By anchoring resistance in self-purification, Gandhi created an asymmetric moral battlefield. When an empire confronted a Satyagrahi, it was not fighting a political competitor. It was fighting its own conscience reflected in the unyielding moral clarity of a self-governed individual.

The true measure of a democracy is not found in the comfort of its conformists, but in the safety of its critics. The Indian Constitution was explicitly engineered to protect the dissenter. A former Justice of the Apex Court, in the course of a hearing in a petition challenging a draconian anti-terrorism law invoked by the State against some protestors in 2020, was reported to have expressed his anguish with a remark that, “Dissent is the safety valve of democracy. If pressure valves are shut, the machinery will burst.”

The framers of our republic, having spent decades resisting colonial suppression, understood that a state unchecked by public criticism inevitably lapses into tyranny. In a healthy democracy, political parties are expected to host a clash of ideas, represent diverse regional interests, and allow open debate before arriving at a consensus. In contrast, a party obsessed with the optics of absolute unity views internal debate not as a strength, but as a dangerous vulnerability.

The unmistakable signal that the democracy showcased on the exterior is actually hollow within has been amply demonstrated by the government through its recent response to the student protests against governance failures. Force, intimidation and legal retaliation have replaced dialogue with aggrieved citizens. By treating disagreement as disloyalty and protests as a national security threat, fundamentalist impulses within the State apparatus are actively rewriting our constitutional realities without ever changing the letter of the document. The nation stares at a possible slide into a majoritarian autocracy disguised as a democracy, where laws are tools of oppression and citizenship is conditional. The governance pattern reveals that the State’s economic welfare schemes are not designed as rights-based entitlements to empower citizens, but as patron-client handouts meant to manufacture political docility among the impoverished masses while stripping them of their fundamental rights.

India's democracy is staggering under narcissistic politics

 Lead Article published in oHeraldo on June 22, 2026

The personal image increasingly overshadows institutions, policies, and collective governance.

In recent years, a familiar pattern has come to dominate India’s politics. Democracy is now about personalisation of power, conflation of leader and nation, narrative management, loyalty-centred politics, and the elevation of spectacle over institutional accountability. This is a style of politics centred less on institutions, policies, and collective problem-solving than on identity, attention, spectacle, and emotional gratification. Such politics thrives on the cultivation of leaders who present themselves as singular saviours, victims, or embodiments of the people's will. The features of contemporary Indian governance resemble patterns that political psychologists associate with ‘narcissistic politics’.

A political atmosphere now prevails wherein disagreement ceases to be democratic participation and becomes evidence of disloyalty. Criticism of the government is equated to criticism of the nation itself. Every question posed to the ruling establishment, criticism of policies, protest movement, uncomfortable international report, and dissenting voice is quickly framed as sedition and part of a larger foreign conspiracy to destabilise the nation. It instantly gets framed as externally manipulated, while supportive narratives are treated as expressions of authentic nationalism.

Political theorists sometimes describe this as “securitising dissent”, whereby ordinary democratic disagreement is twisted into a matter of national security. Once criticism is moved into that category, governments gain moral justification for surveillance, crackdowns, censorship, or public vilification. The danger of such a “foreign conspiracy” framework lies in how easily it absolves governments of accountability. It merely has to discredit the critic under the guise of protecting national interests. When power continuously frames criticism as sabotage, democracy slowly ceases to function as a system of accountability. It begins functioning as a system in loyalty testing. Patriotism becomes conditional upon political conformity.

Narcissistic political authority thrives on spectacle. It encourages people to view politics not as a collective effort to solve shared problems but as a stage upon which identities are performed and affirmed. From a political and sociological perspective, the relentless display of leaders' faces on government banners and publicity materials reflects a deeper problem. This phenomenon may get ignored as a harmless feature of modern politics. It is anything but harmless. Supporters of such displays may argue that leaders deserve recognition for their work. However, there is a difference between recognition and glorification. Recognition informs citizens about who is responsible for decisions. Glorification places the leader at the centre of every public activity, regardless of relevance.

When governance is marketed through carefully curated images, public debate can become more concerned with optics than performance. Leaders are rewarded for visibility rather than effectiveness. Constant visual glorification of political leaders sends the opposite message that institutions matter less than the individuals who temporarily occupy positions of power. The personal image increasingly overshadows institutions, policies, and collective governance. Citizens come to view governance through personalities rather than institutions, making the constant projection of political faces seem inevitable rather than problematic. In that sense, public acceptance of such practices may itself be a symptom of a narcissistic political order. The warning sign is the emergence of a political culture in which one individual becomes the centre of reality, criticism becomes heresy, and loyalty matters more than truth.

The rise of narcissistic politics with leaders cultivating exaggerated self-images, demanding personal loyalty, and dominating public discourse through spectacle, poses a profound challenge to the quality of electoral choice. Instead of evaluating candidates based on policy competence, administrative record, or constitutional values, voters are encouraged to focus on personal narratives. Elections become emotional contests. When politics becomes personality-centric, supporters may overlook policy failures because criticism of the leader is perceived as a personal attack. Narcissistic politics, by contrast, often encourages the replacement of facts with narratives tailored to preserve the leader's image. Voters may find themselves making decisions based less on verifiable performance and more on emotional identification, fear, or admiration.

Such political phenomena may be better understood through a different framework, the psychology of abuse. The deeper impact of such narcissistic politics is not merely restricted to leadership. When politics begins to mirror the logic of abusive relationships, the greatest danger is not that citizens become convinced, they become conditioned. The consistent practice of such politics gradually drives citizens into adopting similar patterns of political engagement. It reshapes citizenship itself. Individuals are encouraged to interpret compromise as humiliation, criticism as persecution, and political loss as an existential threat. Under such conditions, democratic institutions remain formally intact while the psychological foundations of democratic citizenship erode. This can weaken critical thinking, encourage tribalism, and reduce accountability.

In healthy democracies, participation is grounded in deliberation, compromise, and a recognition that political life is necessarily plural. Higher engagement, louder public voices, and greater activism are generally taken as signs of democratic health. A nation of 1.4 billion people cannot remain intellectually secure if every contrary opinion is treated as evidence of betrayal. In fact, democracies are enriched by citizens who are willing to question power, regardless of which party governs. The strength of a democracy lies not in unanimous applause, but in its ability to withstand disagreement without seeing ghosts behind every voice. Governments change, the republic endures.

In an age increasingly shaped by such personality-driven politics, not all participation strengthens democracy. Public discourse in a narcissistic political environment may become centred on personalities, symbolic victories, emotional gratification, and group loyalty. As a result, the political solutions that emerge may address symptoms, identities, or immediate emotional needs rather than underlying structural causes. Citizens can be drawn into forms of engagement that feel like movements for change while actually reinforcing unhealthy political cultures. People become more politically active while becoming less politically empowered. When narcissistic politics dominates the electoral landscape, democracy risks becoming a mirror reflecting the ambitions of its leaders rather than the aspirations of its people.

‘Goa First’ - A limited offer till elections? -Soter

 Lead article published in oHeraldo July 27, 2026

The electorate is treated to a high-pitched symphony of panic and salvation that blinds reason.

The lure of power and money in Goa's notorious history of political musical chairs is strong, and the people currently in such a system do not see the need to change their ways. A sense of artificial urgency is created by framing every election as a final and apocalyptic battle to "Save Goa". A politician's market value in an election drastically inflates on an emotive anti-establishment platform. Voters are pressured to ignore the candidate’s personal integrity, past defections, or complete lack of a constructive policy roadmap. The fear created is that any dissent or scrutiny will split the vote and hand the state over to the destructive forces. This manufactured panic is highly effective at short-circuiting critical thinking. 

In the months preceding a major election, we witness a predictable theatrical performance. It’s all about a sudden and dramatic outburst of discontentment followed by revolts and desertions. Prominent faces walk away in a huff of righteous indignation, sometimes instantly floating a brand-new political outfit or gravitating towards the ruling dispensation depending on how their selfish ambitions can materialise. They present themselves as regional saviours, born out of a desperate need to give Goans a "clean local alternative" untainted by the compromises from party high commands. The optics are perfect, a united front fighting to save the state from exploitation. This performance offers a glimmer of hope for voters desperate for change and stability.

The latest explosive public exchanges in some or the other political party, over change of leadership or accusations of corruption within the party rank, appears to be about a singular nakedly ambitious commodity. This desperate infighting has absolutely nothing to do with safeguarding any party’s collective interests, nor is it a noble defence against some leadership collusion with the regime in power. It’s a brutal transactional turf war over who gets to dictate the candidate list for the upcoming assembly elections, and whose personal electoral ambitions have suddenly been jeopardized by the change of guard.  Such internal bickering becomes an excuse to blackmail or float new political outfits under the guise of salvaging secular politics from some imagined conspiracy within the leadership.

There are enough warning signs that the very unique fabric of the State is on the brink of total annihilation. Goa, is passing through a dark phase of gloom and uncertainty and cannot afford the cost of a squabbling opposition looking to further their selfish ambitions. The painful truth is that in Goa’s deeply transactional political ecosystem the jargon of resistance has been thoroughly commodified. Some opportunists and habitual disruptors cannot restrain their urge to add fuel to fire in a bid to make themselves relevant. The electorate is treated to a high-pitched symphony of panic and salvation that blinds reason. Phrases like "Saving Goa" and "Secular Opposition Unity" are no longer a guarantee of genuine ideological commitments. They function as sophisticated emotional toolkits designed for a singular and dual-layered purpose of acquisition of State power and the furthering financial prospects.

The primary strategy of manipulative politics is to keep the electorate in a permanent state of emotional crisis. Political parties in Goa do not operate on ideological convictions. They invest in studying how to manipulate the voters. They operate on data, psychological profiling, and economic leverage. Leaders switch sides, fake ideological shifts, and fabricate political crises to keep the public confused, angry, and distracted. The people’s anger becomes their currency. Political strategists do not fear people’s anger; they budget for it. They know that public outrage has a short shelf life, easily disrupted by a sudden influx of money, targeted community divisions, or a wave of freebies when elections are due. When a political party relies on manipulation, its strategy is clear. Divide the opposition vote, engineer artificial crises, and buy out local influencers. Politicians do not create a fragmented electorate out of thin air. They simply farm the fractures that voters willingly provide.

The public's exhaustion is used to make them cynical and passive, knowing that an exhausted public will be too drained to hold them accountable. An anxious electorate will not question their backroom deals in the interest of unity and development. Manipulative politicians are experts at using emotional triggers. They talk about identity, religion, or sudden "development emergencies" to justify their games of political convenience. This cycle will continue to repeat itself until there is a fundamental shift in how the electorate evaluates political issues and alliances. When the public separates a politician's theatrical statements from the actual reality on the ground the political circus will lose its power over people’s emotions.

Goa’s tragedy is that the voter's response to this manipulation is rarely about any counter-strategy. It is ridden with a herd mentality and reactivity coupled with expectations for a quick fix. The voters play into the hands of politicians by treating elections like a seasonal football match. They cheer labels rather than subjecting political narratives and individuals to scrutiny. The voter then cries foul and alleges a betrayal by the political class, while failing to realise that it was their own ballot that engineered the outcome.

The future of Goa will not be saved by hoping for a political messiah. It will be saved when the Goan voter decides to stop being a pawn in the political game and starts rewriting the rules of the board. Voters need to invest their collective energy in studying how to recognise and defeat manipulative strategies.  The true test for the forthcoming election will not be about whether opposition parties have succeeded in their political strategies, but how the electorate has performed against a highly manipulative political system designed to subvert their will. When citizens evaluate the next election, they need to look at their choices in the mirror, not the television screen.

 

The addictive logic of religious fundamentalism -Soter

 Lead article published in oHeraldo on May 25, 2026

A society does not become tolerant merely because the streets overflow with booze, food and merriment.

The recent controversy surrounding the hate-filled remarks against a revered catholic missionary saint was yet another flashpoint in Goa’s struggle with communal rhetoric. At first glance, the outrage it generated appears to signal a society unwilling to tolerate bigotry. But a closer look suggests something more troubling; the reaction itself may be fuelling the tactics employed from the playbook of societal polarisation it claims to resist.

There is no doubt that the remarks were reprehensible. But how they were circulated, debated, and instrumentalised can enable a pattern that benefits forces investing in deepening societal divisions. The cycle is by now familiar. An incendiary statement is made, it is amplified through social media, outrage follows, and political actors seize upon the moment to consolidate their respective bases. The public sphere gets gradually polarised along communal lines, episode after episode.

For decades, Goa has sold itself as an exception in India’s increasingly polarised landscape. But beneath this comforting self-image lies a harder truth: Goa has never been entirely free of communal fissures. Goa’s much-celebrated pluralism is less a lived reality than a convenient myth. The duplicity of ‘goykarponn’ makes it difficult to configure as to where the caste manipulation for political power and business monopoly ends, and religious intolerance begins. A society does not become tolerant merely because the streets overflow with booze, food and merriment. Violence does not need to be only physical rioting. It can also be psychological, social and political. It exists in humiliation, suspicion, intimidation and the constant signalling that a community does not fully belong. And it is this disguised and diplomatic form of violence that is being employed in Goa.

The hypocrisy surfaces in insinuations that some minorities are somehow less Indian because of their faith. It appears in conspiracy-laden conversations about conversions, demographics and “foreign influence”. It emerges when minority initiatives are viewed with suspicion while majoritarian assertions are framed as natural expressions of nationalism. It becomes visible when attacks on minority identity are dismissed as isolated incidents rather than symptoms of a broader ideological shift. Even if no stone is thrown and no place of worship burned, but a community is repeatedly given the message, directly or indirectly, that its history is suspect, its patriotism conditional, or its political and cultural presence is excessive, the damage is profound. Fear does not require mobs. Alienation does not require riots.

This denied reality in Goa explains why those who target the minorities through inflammatory rhetoric and communal provocation can operate with growing confidence. They are not creating divisions from nothing. They are exploiting tensions that already exist beneath Goa’s carefully preserved self-image. Beneath this visible coexistence lies an undercurrent that many Goans privately recognise yet publicly hesitate to confront, the growing normalisation of anti-minority sentiment in social discourse and political culture.

History across the world shows that societies fracture long before physical violence becomes visible. The emotional groundwork comes first. Stereotypes get repeated often enough to become common sense, minorities are pressured to constantly prove loyalty, and public discourse is shaped around resentment and grievance. Communalism often advances gradually through language, symbolism, historical revisionism and social suspicion before manifesting in more visible forms.

Fundamentalism, like chemical addiction, feeds on vulnerability, rewards repetition, resists correction, and thrives in enabling environments. Treating it only as a legal and political issue without addressing its psychological roots ensures that society remains trapped in an endless cycle of provocation, outrage, and recurrence. Hatred offers emotionally vulnerable individuals a seductive illusion of superiority. By reducing another community, religion, caste, or ethnicity, the bigot temporarily elevates himself.

Like chemical addiction, ideological extremism provides emotional intoxication. It offers certainty to the insecure, belonging to the isolated, identity to the confused, and power to the resentful. The bigoted mind, much like the addicted mind, becomes dependent on emotional highs from outrage, victimhood, superiority, and the constant reinforcement of “us versus them.” Just as addicts frequently resist intervention by becoming defensive or hostile, ideological extremists interpret criticism as persecution. For them police action feeds the delusion that they are “dangerous truth-tellers.” Public condemnation feeds their martyr complex.

When bigotry is tied to identity, fear, political power, or emotional conditioning, facts alone rarely produce immediate transformation. Psychologists call this motivated reasoning, in which people tend to protect beliefs that give them belonging, certainty, or status, even when contrary evidence is presented. In such cases, rebutting distortion with facts can paradoxically make some people cling more tightly to the falsehood because admitting error feels like losing identity or community.

This is not to advocate for silence in the face of hate speech. Accountability is essential in any democracy and the law must take its course. However, when outrage becomes performative rather than transformative, it risks serving as a recruitment tool for majoritarian politics. Each viral clip, each angry hashtag, can harden identities rather than challenge prejudice. The conversation shifts from addressing the root of what enables such rhetoric to a spectacle of indignation that ultimately changes little. The visuals of reactions from clerics, with religious symbols as the backdrop, provide the most desired publicity material for the fundamentalist propaganda. A “healthy” response does not ignore the insult, but tactically avoids getting pulled into the emotional and social dynamics that make such provocations powerful in the first place.

Better late than never, Goa needs to wake up and resist the current trajectory. But resistance requires honesty. It requires acknowledging that communalism does not always arrive shouting. Sometimes it arrives smiling, joking, provoking and normalising itself into everyday conversation until prejudice becomes ordinary.  Combating hate requires more than outrage after each incident; it requires long-term civic healing. The law can punish conduct. It can restrain incitement. But it cannot alone cure emotional dependency on hatred.

What's Goa’s carrying capacity for performative outrage? -Soter

 Lead article published in oHerald on April 27, 2025

It is not that individuals suddenly abandon their values, but that the environment in which they act steadily reshapes what feels acceptable.

In recent months, Goa has been grabbing the national headlines for all the wrong reasons. Thanks to digital technology, there is no end to the streaming of hot and sensational news spewing from an overdose of Goa’s model governance and a culturally decaying society. The bubble of political genius leading to economic prosperity is bursting with sex scandals, deaths from drug overdose in educational institutions and at beachside night parties, hate campaigns, horrific road accidents, political defections, and even the hijacking of election processes. The government hides its embarrassment behind claims of a conspiracy to malign Goa’s image, and in some cases, even registration of an FIR by the cops to intimidate whistle-blowers. Nothing seems impossible; the sky is the limit in such a toxic social and political environment.

In recent years, Goa has witnessed a surge in protests over illegalities, immorality and crime. Conversations increasingly lament a perceived decline in morality, whether it is political corruption, lawlessness, substance abuse, casinos, reckless driving, religious polarisation, or the erosion of social responsibility. But beneath the cycle of outrage lies a denial, a more uncomfortable truth, one that fewer are willing to confront. The result is a civic culture that oscillates between spikes of anger and long bouts of resignation.

The question is whether Goa has the carrying capacity for such episodic, performative, and quickly dissipating mode of protests, and how much change such outrage can deliver.

The image of Goa as a permissive, “anything goes” destination reinforces patterns of abuse and violence that spill beyond tourist enclaves into local life. Alcohol-fuelled nightlife, drug-linked party circuits, and a growing tolerance for exploitative practices have, over time, been packaged as part of the “Goa experience.”  When local livelihoods depend on demand, and demand is driven by indulgence, there is an inherent incentive to promote, or at least overlook, misbehaviour and public nuisance. Activities that once might have been questioned are normalized as 'responsible' if they contribute to local income.

When economic gain is tied to practices that strain ecosystems and dilute cultural meaning, lines become harder to draw. Regulations are seen as obstacles rather than safeguards. Public spaces are treated as expendable, and accountability is diluted. It is not that individuals suddenly abandon their values, but that the environment in which they act steadily reshapes what feels acceptable.

While Goans decry the environmental degradation, unchecked development and influx of migrants, there is no drop noticed in the local mood and participation when it comes to booze, food and music festivals all around the year. Goans decry the nuisance caused by tourism-related activities, but at the same time participate in the noisy cultural festivals promoted by the tourism industry. They endorse the propaganda that Goa is about indulgence unlimited. This is definitely not consistent behaviour.

To express outrage at this immorality and crime while continuing to endorse their underlying drivers is to ignore cause and effect. It is about normalisation of hypocrisy - decrying overdevelopment while quietly benefiting from it, condemning corruption while navigating it as a necessity, celebrating culture in public while neglecting it in private life.

Goa is not merely being “lost” to external forces. It is, in many ways, the predictable outcome of a collective and cumulative contradiction, a society that wants to enjoy the benefits of rapid economic growth while preserving the illusion of an untouched paradise. It is being hollowed from within, through everyday compromises, selective denial, and a growing disconnect between public posturing and private reality. In simpler terms, it is about Goans wanting to eat the cake and keep it too.

In the given circumstances, protecting one’s “individual sanity” becomes crucial. It is not a retreat into apathy, as some might argue, but a refusal to participate in collective self-deception. It means recognising that not every slogan reflects substance, and not every public movement is rooted in integrity. It requires the courage to step back from the performative urgency of outrage and turn the focus inwards. It requires sustained introspection and action to ensure that our thinking, attitudes and actions do not enable the very situation we are politically engaged in battling.

Performative outrage thrives on visibility, not depth. It rewards the quickest take, the sharpest barb, the most shareable image. It does not reward the slow, unglamorous work of understanding how a problem is structured, who benefits from it, and what it would take to dismantle it. A society that avoids self-examination cannot sustain genuine reform; it can only recycle outrage in increasingly hollow forms.

Those in positions of power understand this rhythm all too well. They have learned that time is on their side. If they can withstand the initial surge of public anger, they can often outlast it. Each unfinished episode of outrage chips away at public trust. People begin to doubt whether speaking up makes any difference. Fatigue sets in, cynicism follows.

The challenge is to resist the pull of immediate emotional reaction. Not every alarming post in social media reflects the full picture. Seeking out primary sources, local reporting, and diverse perspectives becomes essential in navigating a landscape where influence is often performed rather than practiced.

Such introspection and restraint is neither glamorous nor immediately rewarding. It does not produce viral moments or visible victories. But it is the foundation if any meaningful change is to come about. Saving Goa requires a shift from reaction to reflection. It must move from expression to strategy, from visibility to impact. Not every issue demands the same kind of response, and not every response should be immediate. There is value in pausing long enough to understand what, exactly, is at stake. Without this groundwork, even the loudest protest risks missing its mark and ends up compounding and complicating the problem. 

Symptoms attacked, system untouched in Goa's planning controversy - Soter

 Lead article published in oHeraldo on 23March 2026

What gets repeatedly brushed under the carpet is the inconsistency of the Goa TCP Act, 1975, with the provisions related to decentralised planning and development in Part IX and IXA of the Constitution.

The weeks gone by have been witnessing an unprecedented spike in protests against the destruction of hills, fields, forests, sand dunes, water bodies and other natural resources across this ecologically fragile State of Goa. Villages are being ravaged by mega commercial and housing projects beyond the carrying capacity of the existing basic infrastructure. The environmental impact and social consequences of the government’s unsustainable and chaotic development are increasingly becoming visible and felt across the State. This plunder is resulting in strain on the coastal ecosystems and basic infrastructure like roads, water and power supply, sewerage, garbage disposal, and health issues due to rising pollution levels, besides other related problems.

There is no doubt that the crisis arising from failure of governance in Goa is traumatic for the common man who is left clueless and helpless in the prevailing chaos. The public outrage against various development projects is very much justified, because ultimately it is the common man who is left to bear the brunt of such non-participatory, non-transparent bureaucratic paternalism in planning and development processes. The cost of such governance failure is the loss of precious lives in road fatalities, natural calamities and health hazards. What makes matters even worse is the offensive approach of the government towards citizens who rightfully come on the streets with their problems.

It is in such times of frustration, distress and desperation that political narratives about a threat to Goa’s ecology and identity tend to strike an instant emotional connection with the public. The emotional reaction to the situation from citizens tends to blind reason, thereby becoming a fertile ground for political manipulation. Any truth or attempt to reason gets outshouted by the propaganda machinery of the powerful political lobbies at play to keep the public constantly charged emotionally, giving no time to think.

Amidst such an environment, wherein opportunistic forces tend to exploit public emotions, observing the propaganda patterns adopted for the protests and movements and subjecting them to critical thinking becomes necessary. This could avoid political disillusionment setting in after repeated deception from illusions of change forwarded for selfish political and business gains. It is in this above context that citizens need to ask the question: Is the pattern of the current protests against the large scale conversion of land use in 2026 any different from the anti-RP2011 agitation which swept Goa in 2006? Is the narrative and control of what is claimed to be a ‘People’s Movement’ actually participatory, or, is it remotely driven by hidden political and real estate considerations?

The propaganda patterns of 2006 leading to the anti-RP 2011 agitation and the current hysteria around sections 39A and 17(2) of the TCP law are about attacking isolated aberrations, rather than questioning the deeper structural deficiencies in planning. Amplifying the noise about an ‘outsider’ threat from real estate, destruction of natural resources, the convenient scapegoating or villainizing of some or the other minister and bureaucrat as responsible for the sell-out of Goa, and the timing of protest one year before the Assembly election are all similar tactics which were employed in the anti-RP 2011 protests. The controversy around massive land zoning changes was central to the 2006 agitation, and now two decades later the same problem gets blamed on a couple of problematic provisions of the very same planning law.

Could it be that the episodic and recurring cycle of protests against land zoning changes is the result of toying with some or the other sections of the TCP law instead of questioning the system, more like treating the symptom instead of the underlying disease? Is it really the particular sections of the TCP law which are the cause of Goa’s destruction, or, a structurally flawed planning buoyed by an outdated law? The recent debate on section 39A which beat around the bush in the August House is perhaps enough of a clue about the political reservations to nail and tackle the root cause head on. This observation is in no way intended to give a clean chit to any minister in government when it comes to their abuse of powers.

Amidst all the technical and legal jargon around Goa’s destructive planning, what gets repeatedly brushed under the carpet is the inconsistency of the Goa TCP Act, 1975, with the provisions related to decentralised planning and development in Part IX and IXA of the Constitution. It was the historic passage of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, in 1992, which fundamentally altered the architecture of democratic governance in the country. It was meant to transform governance by decentralising power and embedding democracy at the grassroots.

These amendments constitutionalized Panchayats and Municipalities, mandating participatory planning through local self-government institutions. The amendments envisioned District Planning Committees (DPCs) that would consolidate plans prepared by Panchayats and Municipalities into holistic district development blueprints. The spirit was unmistakably that development must be planned from the ground up, not imposed from above. But there is a strange silence from politicians and technocrats on the failure of the government to accommodate the District Development Planning under Article 243ZD of the Constitution into Goa’s planning laws.

Some or the other provision like 39A and 17(2) may continue to provoke debate and public anger every time elections are due. But the planning disaster in Goa did not begin with isolated provisions in the law, nor will they end if the provision is amended or scrapped. It is the planning system that remains vulnerable to discretionary, technocratic and bureaucratic hegemony, instead of a decentralised approach, that needs to be addressed. Beyond the technical arguments also lies a fundamental democratic truth, that the laws which govern society are inseparable from the choices made in the voting booth. If citizens wish to have laws and better policies which promote a decentralised and participatory governance, the first step in saving Goa is to vote in lawmakers who will not get drunk with power.