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The expensive fantasy of Goa displaces Goans and runs on cheap migrant labour
The 25 deaths at the nightclub in Arpora on December 7 were not merely the casualties of a party gone wrong but are human sacrifices offered at the altar of Goa's “vibe” – an illusion packaged and sold, often by non-Goan wealthy elites, its cost underwritten by cheap human labour.
This tragedy isn't limited to flouting safety norms or corrupt officials who let the club operate despite a demolition order 20 months before. At the core of this is a narrative that sells Goa as a morality-free zone for the mainland – a suspension of reality where the conservatism of Indian society holds no valency. This narrative creates a ferocious, insatiable desire to consume Goa, to eat its land, drink its water and burn its silence.
Over the past two decades, Goa has come to be defined as a scenic tourist destination and open to buyers of second homes escaping the hazardous air quality of their own cities. An entire economy has been built around this high-spending demographic who inhabit Goa as a tourist or a settler.
This trend has only increased post-Covid-19 in the “work from home” culture aided by India's digital nomad community. This in turn has fueled a real-estate industry with wealthy Indians often putting up their second homes on Airbnb as a side hustle. The breakneck speed at which these shifts are occurring are transforming Goa – and the friction is visible.
This economy in Goa also needs a service industry that mows the lawn of the settlers, cooks their gourmet meals and works in the vegan cafes where they pretend to work. The elites bring with them a demand for a service ecosystem that bends to their will. This is where migrant labourers enter the tragedy.
It is this demand that pulls workers from various Indian states to Goa, a place where they can earn slightly more than in their native villages and towns and are thus roped into working on criminally underpaid salaries, living in accommodations that compromise basic human dignity and eventually being asphyxiated by smoke in rooms designed without safety in mind.
Once these labourers arrive in Goa, the disparity in how they live creates a dangerous illusion for the average Goan. Because the working-class migrant is paid a pittance to sustain the settler's luxury and the extractive tourist economy, they are forced to rely on Goa's public infrastructure.
They cannot afford private transport, so they pack into the local buses. They cannot afford private healthcare, so they queue up at the government hospitals. They cannot afford the boutique supermarkets where the settlers shop, so they buy from the small local stores. They are accommodated in shanties set up by contractors or restaurant owners.
This creates a paradox of visibility. The settler elite is socially invisible to the average Goan's daily struggle: they socialise and hobnob within their gated complexes and dine in exclusive circles. Meanwhile, the vulnerable worker is forced into the public eye, sharing the crumbling infrastructure with the locals.
When the average Goan looks around, who do they see “taking over”? They see the labourer on the bus, the patient in the next bed at the hospital, the crowd in the market. The most visible migrant is the most vulnerable one. It is structurally obvious, then, why Goans think that these migrant workers are the real villains driving a change of their surroundings.
The settlers privatise the benefits of migration (cheap labour, comfort, luxury) while socialising the costs (crowded hospitals, strained transport, shanty housing).
For generations, Goans have been a mobile community. We know the weight of leaving home for the Gulf, the United Kingdom or the ship. We went as labour. We went as economic refugees in foreign lands to feed our families back home. We share the same struggle with the men who died in that basement: the struggle of the one who leaves home to serve.
The Goan and the migrant labourer are both victims of an extraction economy. Goans are being displaced from their land while labourers are being exploited for their life. Both are being hollowed out by a system that views Goa not as a place to live, but as a thing to be used up.
Today, the only way for a Goan to rise in this tourist-settler economy is through liquidation and intermediation. They are forced into the role of the “broker”, who primarily packages and hands over the state's assets to the highest bidder. This brokerage begins with the land itself. For many, the only way to survive the inflating cost of living is to sell their land, or to become the agent who facilitates that sale for someone else.
They become the “fixers” who navigate the labyrinth of local bureaucracy, obtaining permissions and clearing titles so that a wealthy outsider can acquire the last standing Indo-Portuguese heritage home in a village that is no longer affordable for the locals born there.
But this transactional mindset has mutated beyond real estate to create a class of cultural and intellectual brokers as well. These are individuals curate Goa for the “outsider's gaze”. They package Goa's history, its lifestyle, its festivals into consumable, bite-sized aesthetics for tourists and settlers.
In doing so, the Goan is no longer the protagonist of their own story, but merely the tour guide, the concierge and the real estate agent in a theme park built on the ruins of their own community.
Every theme park also requires an invisible machinery to keep the illusion alive: a subterranean layer where the ugly reality of servitude is hidden away from the guest's enjoyment. The luxury sold to the tourist is subsidised by the perilous conditions forced upon the migrant labourers, a tradeoff deemed acceptable until it results in a tragedy like the one in Arpora.
There is no force more destructive than a wealthy man wanting to fulfil his frivolous desires. Convinced of his own invincibility, he views regulations as price tags. He is ready to shatter anything that stands in his way. He can simply throw enough cash at the hurdle until it disappears.
Goa has tragically devolved into the ultimate manifestation of this desire. It has been reduced to a canvas for the ego of the settler, a place where the fantasies of the elite are etched into our soil regardless of the cost. When the rich man demands an island club in a salt pan, the geography is forced to submit. When he demands a party that defies time, the village's right to sleep is suspended.
In this collision between a tycoon's fantasy and Goa's reality, the cracks are bound to show. It begins by breaking the laws and the ecosystems and eventually breaks those are left to clean up the debris.
This time, however, the debris is the haunting remains of the very workforce that kept the fantasy alive, proving that in this economy, the worker is just another perishable commodity.
In the wake of their deaths, the owners have fled to Thailand's holiday island Phuket while politicians have returned to campaigning for the local elections. But the silence of those who suffocated in the basement should hang heavy over us.
Kaustubh Naik is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.
Source: Scroll
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