
Is there a crypt operative in the politics in Goa today? If so can we decode it? No crypt presents itself. It stays disguised and hidden. Still further a crypt disguises the act of hiding as well as hides the disguise. This means we have the challenge to decipher the crypt that hides the act of hiding and thus reveal that which is disguised or masked. That is why we have a double task. First, we may have to unravel the act of masking or hiding and next we have to bring into the open what is hidden. We have the challenge to unmask the encryption process as well as that which stays covered by the crypt. We have to break open the secret interior that remains covered under the vault of a crypt. One way of doing this is to construct a counter discourse that interrogates the reigning discourse that juxtaposes democracy and development. Often, discourse of development provides cover for corrupt vested interest and slams denial of democracy on the people. Therefore the decoding of this crypt is both urgent and compelling.
Opening of the crypt that we have taken up here requires us to penetrate into the dark space that houses an anti-Goa and anti-Goan interest. What is at stake here is the manner or the mode of covering that anti-Goa interest. The break- in technique that we may use to enter the secret space that hides this interest is to observe the practices that produce the discourse of the rulers. Thus, a study of the very act of declassification of the coconut tree from the forest act clearly manifests how it provides cover for those who want to bring huge mega projects in a hurry in Goa. Another practice that can be looked at in depth and understood is how the term investment promotion area is used as an euphemism to hide the second coming of the SEZs. We might further scrutinize the practice that offers single window clearance and might bump into the free lunch offered to elites who might be called the ‘investment republics’. The practice of keeping the MOI issue on the boil while staying away from solving it provides the Government as well as opposition to speak in multiple tongues to suit their vote bank politics. The practice of naturalization of nagrized form of Konkani and orphaning of other children of Konkani mai can be seen as a front to construct hegemony, cultural and political capital for an elite upper caste.
The scrutiny of the above practices will allow us to enter the dens that hide the faces of anti-Goa and anti-Goan interest. The process of facing the faces of anti-Goa interest embedded with our society is discomforting and uneasy. But this face up is the only way to get off the seductive and intoxicating discourse that enslaves us and blinds us into a feeling of fake self enlargement. Once the fortification of crypt crumbles, we might see the face of the real enemies of Goa and its people. Do we have the courage to face the face of the anti- Goa interest? Maybe we have become used to the illusion induced by the crypt. But decrypting may be the only way we can free ourselves as well as our beloved Goa. Being in an election year, our responsibility to decrypt is much greater. We may have to become anti-heroes or anti-Oedipus as we dismantle some of the hieroglyphic codes. The several master signifiers and symbols that cover the face of the real enemies of Goa will come down crashing when we come together for Goa.
Decrypting leads us to the other side, the side that is craftily kept hidden from us. While we are told that we are living in a borderless world, the fact that the boundaries between the rich and poor , the locals and investors (both foreign and domestic ) are only increasing by the day. Hence, the regimes of crytonomies have to be studied critically and deconstructed. In Goa, we have to dismantle the apparatus of the reigning crypt that hides poisonous fangs that poison us and destroy our land, culture and Goan-ness. This leads us to decipher how even certain national parties cloak their thirst for our resources by faking that they stand for the interest of the majority or minority community as the case may be. The national parties with their high command culture and their inter-mediators seem to have reduced Goa into a colony of Delhi. Hence, one regime of cryptonomy exploits, milks and abuses national emotion only for their advantage. The so called diktats of high command often conceals the self command of the local stooges who pose as leaders pretending to foster the interest of Goans. All this wounds democracy and deduces us citizens to mere voters. We have the disenfranchisement of Goans.
Often this disenfranchisement hides through the conversion of religious differences into religious divides and hate politics. One may also discern in a similar way how cultural differences, like the Romi Konkani becomes hollowed out of all Konkani and reduced to a foreign script. Hence, we Goans have the challenge to rise to a critical leap of consciousness which tells us how we are led to think from a where we are not. This means the cogito of Descartes which says ‘I think therefore I AM’ has become ‘I THINK where I AM NOT’. Hence, coming back to the locus of our thinking and being (Goa) is urgent and vital. Will Goans dispel the reign of the crypt and embrace critically and not blindly local politics that gives primacy of Goan interest. Federalism and the high command of the Goan people is the way forward to take Goans and Goa forward. This would mean that we will have to become citizens and not mere voters.