DR. LUIS DIAS
Touristification and casinofication sound like made-up terms, but they have unfortunately entered our lexicon.
Touristification is “the process where a neighbourhood, city, or region transforms from a place for local residents into a space designed and consumed primarily for tourists.”
The word was coined in the 1980s, and was initially used as a neutral academic term in geography to describe territorial transformation. But from the early 2000s, it has come to “negatively describe the displacement of local residents, mass overcrowding, and the conversion of cities into commercial tourist commodities.”
If you are a Ponnjekar in the true residential sense, and live in or around the city tourist hotspots (São Tomé, Fontainhas, the areas with the “coloured houses”; Church square; more and more of our once-scenic Mandovi riverfront, no thanks to the casino lobby; the list keeps increasing), you will have noticed first-hand how the very character of those spaces residents prized and were justly proud of for their quaint charm have degenerated into round-the-clock, all-year tourist thoroughfares. Residents are mere museum exhibits in a tableau to be tolerated at best; irritating obstacles and party-poopers at worst when we call out traffic or parking violations, loutish drunken behaviour, invasion of our privacy, disturbing the peace or open urination
and defecation.
I am not against tourism. I love travelling, which means I become a tourist myself in the destinations I visit, and there are several places still on my bucket list. It is a question of balance and proportion, and is also a matter of marketing and presentation. This is where Goa in general and Panaji in particular got it terribly wrong.
Last September, I attended an online workshop on ‘Heritage-based Urban Planning’ at which stakeholders in tourism and heritage from various parts of the world (India, South Africa, Hong Kong, South Korea, etc) participated.
One important message that stuck with me was to “bring heritage upstream” during urban planning. This means giving foremost importance to the heritage assets of a town or city before even beginning the civic planning of that area, and designing everything, from the industries and businesses one encourages, and in which part of that city or town. Bring the heritage upstream; and then everything follows from there. It dictates the areas that should be pedestrianised, the traffic flow, the public transport network, the last-mile connectivity, the designated parking spaces, etc.
Had Panaji kept her own heritage “upstream” at every turn in our urban planning and design, it would have been a win-win for residents as well as tourism. There should have been clean, efficient, reliable, affordable public transport, greatly reducing the need for private vehicular traffic for residents and visitors. Visitor vehicles would have had designated parking outside city limits, with frequent public transport connectivity to and from Panaji. It would have facilitated pedestrianisation in residential areas, making life easier for everyone.
I recently visited Daman for the first time. The little Union Territory, our former “little sister” has much to teach us.
A big lesson, that I’ve written about before, is the courage and moral uprightness with which her citizenry and government rejected the tentacles of the casino industry and its satellite ills and nuisances. Allowing the casino juggernaut ‘Trojan horse’ here was our
monumental blunder.
In addition, the heritage areas in Moti and Nani Daman, although small, are spick-and-span with cleanliness levels I’ve never experienced in Panaji. The upkeep and landscaping of the two forts put Goa’s many, much larger forts to shame. No alcohol is served within the Moti Daman fort precinct. Contrast this with the rampant mushrooming of more and more bars, pubs, clubs and ‘spas’ within our heritage and residential spaces.
Not just Panaji, but nowhere in Goa is there a street as well-constructed, with exemplary storm drains and pavements, as Daman’s Seaface Road. It gets pedestrianised every evening, 8 to 11 p.m. Affordable bicycle-rentals allow one to use the cycle lane along its
breath-taking coastline.
‘Casinofication’ was first used to describe the proliferation of casinos throughout Las Vegas, even into the suburbs. The word aptly summarises Panaji’s unfortunate fate. A once-proud and beautiful city has been betrayed by her own custodians who have turned a blind eye, a stony heart to her casinofication, spreading like a Stage IV cancer through her ‘arteries and veins’, her sacred River Mandovi and her once-dignified streets and avenues.
There is another sad word that has been coined in parallel with touristification. It is solastalgia, “the collective melancholia that a community feels when its space is touristified”. It is “the homesickness you feel while still at home,” a nostalgia for the peace and quiet we had before the touristification onslaught.
In her 2020 paper ‘Solastalgia: An application in the overtourism context’, Lidija Lalicic analyses the effect of “unfettered growth” in tourism causing “a tense ratio of residents-to-visitors in some urban spaces”, generating “additional difficulties for residents who must compete with tourists for local resources”.
Lalicic’s observation on heritage spaces becoming de facto “visitor-oriented environments that service an excessive number of unpredictable tourists in search of a personalised experience” reminds one of the insane compulsions of Indian tourists to take selfies against the backdrop of Panaji residents’ heritage homes to upload on Instagram and other social media, ignoring with impunity the nuisance caused.
“Solastalgic people feel deprived when their daily activities are altered or restricted to cater for a more affluent tourist class and yearn for the past pre-mass tourism.” Lalicic laments the “decided lack of research on how residents perceive tourism and the potential distress that tourism may cause them.” So much in her Austria-based paper fits our predicament like a glove.
On the subject of lack of research: I was shocked to learn that Goa University has so far never studied the adverse social impact of casinos in Goa, nor is there research in the public domain on the public health implications. Will the evidence be too damning to ignore, is that why it is a no-go area in research?
One common thread, not just in Lalicic’s paper, but in the September online workshop, and indeed in the coverage of the touristification phenomenon, is that the governments of those areas are taking steps to address it.
But not our government or bureaucratic machinery. Residents only have “voter value” and are forgotten, ignored between elections. Our politicians and bureaucrats have selective blindness, deafness and muteness. Our needs and grievances are not addressed, and neither are the many flagrant violations of the casino industry. Opposition to the casino industry is dismissed by politicians and even some media-persons as prudery.
Touristification and casinofication have radically transformed Panaji’s ethos and use of its own private and public spaces. Neighbourhood stores that once catered to residents, now prioritise purchasing demands of tourists, casino staff and patrons over local needs for better commercial gain. Residents have been nudged out of our gardens, once oases of peace and calm, and our riverfront. Female residents get leered at and subjected to verbal and physical abuse by gangs of men, and so avoid those spaces as they feel uncomfortable and unsafe. No wonder we
feel solastalgic.
Panaji’s unique charm is her biggest asset but also her Achilles heel.
