Home / Cover Story / Nov 07 - Nov 13, 2026 / WHO’S DREAMING OF A BLUE WAVE IN GOA?What will it take? Asks PhD researcher and architect… Tahir F de Noronha
WHO’S DREAMING OF A BLUE WAVE IN GOA?What will it take? Asks PhD researcher and architect… Tahir F de Noronha
No Comments on WHO’S DREAMING OF A BLUE WAVE IN GOA?What will it take? Asks PhD researcher and architect… Tahir F de Noronha

WHO’S DREAMING OF A BLUE WAVE IN GOA?What will it take? Asks PhD researcher and architect… Tahir F de Noronha

Cover Story, Nov 07 - Nov 13, 2026 November 7, 2026 , by

Satellite imagery of Meta’s 23 lakh sqm campus in Altoona, Iowa

THE verdict is still not out as to why America voted as it did! What happened this week, however, is clear enough. Two years after Donald Trump returned to the White House with 49.8% of the popular vote in the best performance for his Republican party in two decades, the Democrats took both houses of the US Parliament, flipping Senate seats in states like Texas, and Kansas. While there are a few votes still being counted, it appears the Democrats obtained a vote share of 55%, against the Republican’s 43.5% – a flip of about 14 percentage points from 2024.
The Senate result is particularly interesting. Unlike the House of Representatives, where constituencies are created according to population, every US state is given two senatorial seats, regardless of population. This arrangement puts the Democratic party at a disadvantage. A small rural state like Wyoming (population 6 lakh) sends one representative to the House, but gets two senators. Large, populous states like New York and California, where the Democratic party are particularly strong, send 52 and 26 House members respectively – but get two senators each. Democrats needed to win outside the big, populous industrial states associated with their party to take over both houses of the Parliament. Flipping seats across the Carolinas, in Iowa, Kansas, and Texas was truly a feat for the Democrats.
There are competing explanations for this “blue wave,” commentators broadly agree on five:
(1) The war with Iran and the devastation in Gaza;
(2) Immigration enforcement by masked ICE officers;
(3) Inflation and the cost of living;
(4) Corruption; and
(5) Opposition to the rapid construction of AI data centers.
An exit poll by the Associated Press found that roughly half of voters considered the cost of living and government corruption crucial to their vote (apnews.com). Of these five issues, I argue that the latter three resonate strongly with the current moment in Goa.

AI IN MY BACKYARD
CONSIDER the data centers. Across America, residents have been resisting enormous structures, given their demands on water and electricity and their noise. Of particular interest has been the opposition from farmers in the agricultural heartland of the US, including Iowa, where the democrats won significantly. Here, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, put up a data center admeasuring around 23 lakh square meters in the village of Altoona. Residents and farmers argue that AI buildout is driven by speculation – if the AI bubble bursts, the farmland lost to the boom will not simply return to cultivation.
DURING the campaign the Republican governor of Texas Greg Abbott put all data center and AI projects on hold. Donald Trump criticised his actions. Abbot received around 2.75 lakh more votes than the other statewide candidate Ken Paxton (whom we’ll discuss shortly). But the reactive stop-work order did not save Abbot’s seat, and Democrats got their first state government in Texas in 36 years.
Trump’s administration has pressed ahead, despite the resistance to data centers, and pressed for faster construction. Through an ordinance, he imposed timelines for permitting AI projects on government agencies, and eased environmental regulations. A subsequent order sought to challenge states attempting to regulate A.I. Such policies are known to planners as preemption: higher levels of government displacing rules made below them in the name of a larger national priority.
For Goans, the underlying question is familiar. Who decides what a village needs? The people who depend on its water, roads and fields, or an authority sitting in the capital, that has already decided that a particular project must proceed? Think of the controversial Section 39A, and how it uses the same mechanism of preemption to ensure that a village cannot plan itself. As Solano Da Silva and I argue, a Regional Plan presented to gram sabhas and debated collectively is now being unmade through private piecemeal applications in Goa, through individual applications and altered plans, questions about the future of a village are broken into separate permissions. Residents are then required to chase the files, reconstruct the changes and explain why the place cannot absorb what has already been approved.

LAND AND HOMES ARE UNAFFORDABLE
A 2026 report found from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that 2.27 crore households in the US spent more than 30% of their income on rent. The high cost of housing predates the Iran war. In research I am doing with two economists, we find that building more housing is not going to resolve this issue, so long as corporations continue to buy up vacant homes and land around the country. For example there is a company called McKinley in Ann Arbor owned by Ron Weiser which owned close to 20% of the student housing stock in the city. Ann Arbor is where I met Abdul El-Sayed, one of the rising stars in the democratic party in 2023.
Sound familiar? In parts of Bardez, land is trading for approximately Rs70,000 per square metre. At that price, even 100 square metres costs Rs70 lakh. What chance does a young Goan entering the workforce have of buying land and building a home? The state’s real estate boom is increasingly organised around second homes and investment properties – just like in the US, the houses multiply, while the people who invest their blood and sweat to sustain Goa struggle to find a place of their own.
Housing needs to be discussed with infrastructure. A cheaper house at the end of an inadequate road, in a settlement without reliable water or drainage, carries costs to the community which the sale price conceals. Planning should bring these questions together. Instead, residents are frequently asked to celebrate the investment first and deal with the consequences later.

CORRUPTION
LET me use another example that combines the inequality and housing issues through corruption. In Texas, James Talarico repeatedly attacked Ken Paxton’s property holdings, alleging that his opponent owned 15 homes while ordinary Texans struggled to afford one. Paxton allegedly was able to purchase all these properties on a modest bureaucrat’s salary. The attack drew from a Texas Tribune investigation, that identified omissions of rental income and mortgages from Paxton’s election finance affidavit. Paxton had also been impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House over other financial irregularities and alleged embezzlement. Talarico connected these controversies to a simple distributive question: whose finances had improved while Paxton exercised public power?
 In Goa, where government decisions can substantially alter fate of a project, or event, corruption is an especially important question. One only has to make inquiries with local businesspeople to hear a plethora of complaints on the bribe-culture propagating across all departments in the government. I argue that the piece-meal zone changes in Goa are a different form of corruption, as they create a benefit without any meaningful payout by the beneficiary. The surrounding community must then bear the additional infrastructure and environmental costs.
Asking who applied, who approved, who owns the company and who gained from the decision is basic scrutiny of public power. Democrats were able to message along these lines to great success in the US.
Trump’s Reflecting Pool renovation offers another instructive episode. CBS reported a $14.7 million contract on nomination to a Republican donor’s company – Atlantic Coatings – who had only ever done swimming pool work before being given the contract. Those familiar with the Kala Academy fiasco will see the parallels right away.
The White House denied involvement in selecting Atlantic, blaming the departments. Trump had celebrated the pool’s transformation. When its surface began peeling, the administration blamed vandals, accusing an Olympic athlete of taking a cutting blade and slashing the waterproof membrane – even as the CCTV evidence, and experts pointed towards problems with the civil work. The spectacle of achievement depended on keeping questions about procurement, workmanship and responsibility outside the frame. Senator Martin Heinrich

El Sayed’s campaign put up stickers in petrol pumps across Michigan.

VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE
IT was surprising then, when the Republicans used projects like the White House ballroom, a new triumphal arch and the Reflecting Pool as proof of their ability to govern. Writing about Delhi, D Asher Ghertner explains how judgments about what a world-class city should look like can displace the procedures and evidence through which urban space is ordinarily governed. This offers a useful way to understand the political work performed by monumental projects. The image of a transformed capital becomes evidence that the ruler is delivering. Questions about cost, need, legality and public benefit struggle to compete with a photograph.
Alongside this spectacle of infrastructure and megaprojects, the Republicans attempted to scaremonger – transgender athletes in women’s sports became an extraordinary political preoccupation. Mr Talarico was attacked repeatedly on his refusal to condemn transgender people. The truth is this is a non-issue. The most notable case is a swimming race, where athlete Riley Gaines tied for fifth, with transgender Lia Thomas . Four female swimmers finished ahead of both. I’ve never heard of someone getting an award for finishing fifth. In December 2024, NCAA President Charlie Baker told the Legislature that his organisation was aware of fewer than 10 transgender athletes among 5.1 lakh college athletes. These figures expose the enormous distance between the scale of the issue and the attention devoted to it, while millions struggled to pay for housing, healthcare and food.
Against these messages, Democratic candidates like Abdul El-Sayed and James Talarico offered a clearer vision of what government should do. Take El-Sayed’s slogan for example “Money Out of Politics, Money in Your Pocket, Medicare for All.” Abdul, a muslim doctor from the college town of Ann Arbor, linked household hardship to the influence of wealthy interests on government. He kept returning to groceries, petrol, rent, and medical bills, presenting his refusal of corporate donations as evidence that he would answer to the people paying those bills.
Talarico, a Christian seminarian, likewise connected corruption to the cost of living. His formulation was blunt: “We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis” pointing to politicians giving data-centre companies tax incentives, while residents faced a spike in electricity and water bills.Their religious identities and political styles differed. Both made the material consequences of corruption and self-enrichment central to their campaigns.
For Goa, this offers a useful political lesson. The connections between unaffordable homes, depleted water supplies, land conversions and the private enrichment of public representatives need to be made explicit. Each is routinely treated as a separate grievance to be addressed by a different department, or as the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of Goa’s rule under the BJP. Like trump’s ballroom, the Pramod Sawant administration touts around its bridges, flyovers, ‘smart cities’ and coastal concretisations as ‘world class infrastructure’. Will Goans’ see through the smoke and mirrors?
IF IN 2027, Goa is to go the way of the democrats. If we want to see a wave of our own, Goa’s opposition will have to offer more than its 30-minute rakhon yatras. It must purge all corrupt individuals from its ranks, ensure the real-estate interests are not given tickets and explain to Goans what governing differently would entail. That means a credible program for housing and public services, protection of ecological and agricultural systems, and a meaningful way for people to decide the future of their settlements. Goa has more than enough spectacular nature and geography to photograph. Whether its people can build a life here is the question that deserves an answer.

(Tahir Narohna is an architect and town planner who is doing his PHD in Berkeley, which is in Michigan which elected Dr Sayed to the US Senate. Tahir has met Dr Sayed on a few occasions.)

No related posts.

Search

Back to Top