End to annus horribilus

When Queen Elizabeth declared 1992 an especially awful year meriting the Latin term “annus horribilis” she was referring to several personal setbacks—fire at her home in

Windsor Castle

, the divorce of her daughter, and separate sordid affairs involving two sons and her daughter-in-law. But all that was a temporary slump, and just a decade later public approval of British royalty crested to record levels. Nothing like that kind of recovery can be expected from the devastating downward spiral that Goa has experienced in its own worst year in modern times. The year 2018 has been an unfettered epic disaster, and there’s no indication of any end to the miseries unleashed.


The year has been an endless catalogue of disappointments and debacle. Tourism crashed and operators, big and small, are still hurting through the worst high season this century. Garbage is now ubiquitous, strewn along every roadside and piled high to rival the dunes in every beachfront village.

Ill-conceived (and very often illegal) construction overwhelms rice fields and hillsides, as huge swathes of the landscape are torn up in the name of “development” that no one wants or needs, and is being imposed in the most brutal and unsustainable model imaginable. Meanwhile, politics has deteriorated to the theatre of the absurd, as conmen and criminals run rampant in the vacuum of leadership.

Some of these are reflections and repercussions of what ails the nation. Starting at the end of the UPA’s tenure, and now accelerating ever-faster under Narendra Modi, the prevailing policy direction that India has taken is to sacrifice environmental concerns in favour of economic growth. This has translated to aggressive land grabs from tribals and farmers in favour of industrialists, fast-track approvals for polluting industries, and altering regulations that protect forests and coastlines. All this is being done in an atmosphere of overt violence, often accompanied by threats like those state power minister Nilesh Cabral recently made against an environmental campaigner.

Politics and policies can change dramatically with fresh elections, and it is already apparent the voters of India’s smallest state have soured on the current dispensation. But what troubles most deeply is the extent of damage being sustained right now, which might already have reached an irrevocable tipping point. This administration is simultaneously ramming through an egregious “second airport” project, highway expansion cutting right through the heart of the state, and inappropriate real estate development. If all of them happen exactly as planned, it signals nothing less than the end of Goa as we know it.

In this morass of bad news, two glaring factors stand out and they are related to each other. The first is mass-market domestic tourism, and the other is garbage. Millions of the former greatly contribute to mountains of the latter. Take a good look around Goa this New Year, and it’s very clear we are already there. The state has never been so dirty and seedy. To paraphrase T S Elliot, this is the way 2018 ends, not with a bang but an anguished whimper.

New Years are famously time for making resolutions, and this year should be no different. We must resolve to try for better, because the status quo is not working out. No one expects this tiny sliver of the

Konkan

coastline to solve problems for the rest of the world, but surely there exists some wherewithal to tackle some issues within? It certainly can happen here— just like everywhere else— with individual and collective actions, and enough people willing to say “enough is enough”. It can’t get much worse than 2018, so perhaps it’s just the right moment for an “annus mirabilis”.