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Goans refuse land for IIT
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Goans refuse land for IIT

Stray Thoughts October 4, 2025 , by

AND a few stray thoughts for yet another Saturday when Chief Minister Pramod Sawant claimed that Goans do not want to work. The chief minister is in denial of the fact that there is severe and high employment in the state. The CM insisted on Monday that there are enough jobs in Goa for everyone who wants to work. He apparently made this statement on the basis of the enrolment at the Employment Exchange.
Pramod Sawant claimed that most of the so called unemployed are either already employed, or pursuing higher education (while the remaining 20% are jobless because they don’t want to work for a living). People are coming from neighboring states for interviews and taking jobs because Goans are not applying for the jobs available.
Yes, there are plenty of jobs in Goa. For butlers and cooks and waiters in restaurants. There are plenty of jobs for sales assistants in all the new shops that keep coming up. There are plenty of jobs in the casinos. There are plenty of jobs for hard physical labor work. There are plenty of jobs for drivers, security personnel, liftmen, plumbers, electricians and carpenters. There are just no jobs even for qualified Goans passing out of engineering colleges in Goa.
You do not expect graduates of BITs Pilani and the IIT and the NIT to take up take up jobs for Rs15,000 a month. Considering that they have invested over Rs50 lakh on their education. The premier technology institutes are training not Goans but outsiders for jobs outside the state. There are no suitable job opportunities for our engineers, doctors, pharma college graduates, for management graduates from the Goa Institute of Management.
The bottomline is Goans are not interested in lowly paid jobs in the service sector. Goans will not do menial jobs in Goa. This is true not only of Goans but the Mallus of Kerala too who all prefer doing menial jobs in the Gulf countries or in England where labor is valued and is scarce. Cleaning washrooms at Heathrow Airport can fetch an average of more than Rs1 lakh a month by of wages.
That said both private and central organizations continue to recruit people from outside the state. It is long been known that all the postal employees in Goa, including postmen who should know their beats, are recruited in Maharashtra. National institutions like the NIO and even IITs and BITs Pilani hire clerks and peons from outside the state. The pharma industry hires pharma diploma holders and graduates from outside Goa. Recently, the MRF, leading tyre factoy based in Ponda recruited a large number of people from Kerala for expansion in their factories.
The casino bosses prefer to hire Nepali and North-Easterners perhaps because of their fair skin and trim figures and obliging manners. The 5-star hotels for some reason prefer to employ young people from Bengal. As far as I know there is not a single general manager of any hotel who is a Goan, though there are lots of Goan chefs.
NO IIT PLEASE!
AND a few stray thoughts on the government decision to abandon Curdi in Ponda taluka as a permanent location for the Indian Institute of India campus. Curdi is a small tribal village which has a lot of farm land. The residents of Curdi rose in strong protest against their land being grabbed for the IIT campus which requires over 18 hectares of land.
In the wake of the fact that even the local MLA and Minister Subhash Shirodkar, extended support to the protesters, the chief minister had to finally scrap the project. Earlier, the CM had lashed out at the locals for opposing a project of national importance. There have been repeated attempts to find land for the IIT campus in Canacona, in Quepem and several other parts of Goa. Uniformly, the locals have said, No. they have said No because they do not see any benefits for the local community for making the sacrifice of giving up their land to the IIT or any other national project. There will be no reservations for Goan students in the IIT because seats are filled in by a National Competitive Exam. Goa does not have highly qualified professionals who can fill the vacancies for faculty in these institutions. Goans will only get jobs as mess workers and peons and security guards, jobs which they are not interested in.
Goans are tired of the land grabs taking place in the name of national projects. The search for a campus for the IIT is not an isolated example. The government has notified the acquisition of a large area of land in Merces, a suburb of Panjim, for the Unity Mall, which is apparently being promoted by the Home Minister Amit Shah. It is supposed to showcase handicrafts and handloom products from the country over. It is touted as the tallest, biggest building to come up in Goa. The locals are not interested. They do not want their land to be acquired for malls.
For a long time south Goa and Vasco have strongly opposed the acquisition of land by the South Western Railway for double-tracking the railway line from port city Vasco d agama to Hospet in Karnataka. The double-tracking is being undertaken not because there is a boom in passenger traffic. It is being done entirely for the transport of coal from the Mormagoa port to the steel plants of the Jindals in Karnataka. This is being done for the benefit of Gautam Adani, who has been importing huge quantities of coal from Australia through the Mormagoa port. Goans are not blindly opposing projects. But they refuse to accommodate the real estate grab by Central government agencies.
GOA TOURISM
AND a few stray thoughts on the perception that Goa is losing out as a tourism destination as it is pricing itself out of the market. Goa is one of the few international tourism destination which adopts surge pricing. This means that all the prices go up during weekends and the festive season when there is a huge demand for air tickets and hotel accommodation in Goa. Goa has become a favorite weekend destination for all the IT software engineers in Bengaluru.
Either for Dassera or Diwali or Christmas or New Year a whole lot of Gujus and Bongs and Delhiwallahs descend on Goa, not attracted by the temples of Goa as the government would like to think, not attracted by the scenic green attractions of Goa, but entirely because they want to swing in the night clubs and gamble in the casinos. Indeed, it is the casinos which guarantee 100% occupancy to all the 5-star hotels in capital smart city Panjim. This is because anyone who is willing to deposit Rs1 lakh with the casinos is given a free room in a 5-star hotel. Even the Panjim Residency has been leased to the Deltin Group casinos and properties.
During the peak season and even during weekends, the air fare to Goa goes up between 200% to 300%. Hotels correspondingly increase their tariffs with room rates going up to as much as Rs50,000 during peak tourism season between Dec 24 and Jan 3. Even the restaurants and those who operate water sports facilities hike up their prices. The taxi drivers justifiably argue that they also have a right to make hay while the tourism sun shines.
TOURISM NOISE
AND a few stray thoughts on the Goa government officially asking the Centre to let clubs and hotels to blast the ear drums of those who live in the tourism belt. There is a Centre- imposed ban on amplified sound between 10pm at night and 6am in the morning. This is of course routinely violated with not only the fancy night clubs but even shacks in Anjuna, Vagator and Candolim playing loud trance music all through the night to give Goan residents nearby sleepless nights.
Then there are all the festivals ranging from Hindu jatra to Christian feasts and of course Christmas, New Year, and the carnival, shigmo. Not surprisingly under pressure from the tourism lobby the State government keeps increasing the number of days in a year on which amplified sound is okay. There is now a demand that for the benefit of tourists all tourist establishments should be allowed to shatter everyone’s ear drums till at least midnight. Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has justified this demand for a relaxation of the sound limits by claiming that Goa could lose out to tourists going to other countries if the sound bar continued. Interestingly, in Sweden, there is a ban on even flushing the toilets between 10pm and 6am as this might disturb other residents.
ATALA SURFACES ANEW
AND a last stray thought on the alleged notorious drug peddler Atala being released from custody once again. Atala first came into the news over two decades ago when he was implicated in a huge drugs scam. The scam came out when his then girlfriend Lucky released a video of the son of former chief minister, Ravi Naik, selling drugs seized by the police to Atala.
It is a routine for drugs seized in a raid to be kept in the police warehouse. In theory after recording the quantity of drugs only a small portion is preserved for the trial and the rest is supposed to be destroyed. It has come to light that the police were not destroying any of the drugs they had confiscated but selling it back to the drug mafia. Atala was arrested and the case was handed over to the CBI. Atala, who had fled the country, was extradited from Europe and put on trial. The high court dismissed the case for want of any evidence.
Recently, about three months ago, the police discovered that Atala has returned to the country and was living quietly in Siolim. Apparently, he was back in the narcotics business and the police caught him with a large quantity of drugs. It was even discovered that Atala, an Israeli national, had an Aadaar card which only Indian citizens are entitled to. Recently, all the cases against Atala were dismissed for want of evidence. Either the police have been victimizing Atala or they have been bribed again.

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