Goans seem to know where they are standing and where they have to go. There is something disturbing about our times. Goans seem to have understood that things which mess our life are not going to sort themselves by themselves and we have to take responsibility to change them. Our dissatisfaction with the reigning order of things has pushed us to look for alternatives. Goans from the coastline, urban areas and villages have come on the street to seek change. Our food security is threatened. Our rivers are being handed over to cronies of the rulers in the name of nationalisation. Our coastline is in danger as a result of new coastal regulatory regimes. Our PDA’s seem to preside over the interest of the builders lobby. Lack of jobs and rising prices does not seem to stop. Konkani woes and dropping standards of higher education in Goa continue to distress us. Health woes of our CM and some of his ministers have jeopardised our governance. It seems that our democracy has been put under house arrest. All these and many more conditions have made us look for alternative modes of goanising. This welcome love of Goa is a silver lining on a dark cloud that seems to envelope us today. The quest to bring a transformative change is congruent to the very nature of Goa, Goans and Goan-ness. We have to take this forward but at the same time we need to critically examine individual pragmatism that is ruining us for a long time.
Timothy Synder and American historian in his book, the Road to Unfreedom, invites us to consider what we Goan’s call ‘hanv mhozoch food kadtam’. He studies how Americans have walked the road to their unfreedom by electing Trump. To get trumped has become an expression today to a condition that we may describe as a blind walk into a trap of self destruction. In this light, we may ask this all important question: do Goans self-destruct? The answer is not simple. Goans do exhibit care and responsibility for themselves, Goan-ness and Goa. We do not think that things will sort themselves for us just like that. We take it upon ourselves to change things or at least strive and struggle to bring the desired change. Time does not necessarily bring the change that we need. There is no invisible hand in society that pushes it to the desired change. Adam Smith, a Scottish economist taught us that there is an invisible hand of the market. Each of us has to only pursue our self interest. Our competition will bring a balance and each will get what one deserves. Our notorious crab mentality has taught us that what Adam Smith calls balance or equivalence is nothing short of mediocrity and even cut throat pragmatism. Hence, we have rightly taken upon ourselves the responsibility to change. Yet we need to still examine this striving for change and try and free it from all self interest that mars our crab mentality laden society to some extent. Socrates taught that unexamined life is not worth living. It is painful to examine ourselves. This is because we like to think of ourselves as always innocent. But to lead our goanizing to emancipative mode of being Goans, we have to step into the critical and examine our practices, modes of being and feeling as Goans.
We need to examine what makes us feel that we are always innocent. A Russian thinker with fascist leanings tells us that history repeats a pattern. People are innocent. All evil intrudes from outside. All that is distressing us has origin outside us. We are not responsible for the issues that afflict us. It is the other who is responsible for all our ills. This is almost like the great political satire movie , Kissa Kursii kaa (1978) that names the rat/ udir/ chua as the enemy of the nation and calls the citizens to kill all the rats. It takes humility to (un)think that one may not be that innocent. The politics of responsibility that seeks alternate order of things in Goa that we are already exhibiting has to be radicalised. Radical politics of responsibility may have to consider the caution given to Americans by Timothy Synder about their uncritical pragmatism. He teaches that we are not innocent but are somehow responsible for the mess in society. He says that we elect rogues and dubious leaders and invent our collective innocence. Now we can blame the rogue politicians/ leaders for our problems. We seem to cultivate a fascist habit that constructs one’s innocence over and over again. Maybe we have to examine realistically how we Goans invent our innocence through the ballot box. This may be true even of social movements. This examination will assist us with radical responsibility for Goa, Goan-ness and Goans. Our goanising therefore, needs to free itself from self interest that leads us to sell our land to the highest bidder. It will challenge us not to break ecological rules while we build homes or business outlets. This means we have to take full responsibility for our individual and collective goanising. We are largely on the right path of collective emancipative goanising. What we need the most today is to examine our individual goanising and align it to emancipative ways and modes of being Goans.
