G’bye Goa: Goan Emigration-7
By Valmiki Faleiro
By 1920, Goa’s population dipped to 4.69 lakh (from 7.00 lakh in 1914.) The figure was
inclusive of the seven New Conquest talukas, from where emigration was minimal. Over
two lakh Goans had left for India/Burma/Pakistan, Africa/Gulf, Europe, the Americas,
and aboard ships. Bombay alone had close to one lakh Goans in 1920.
From then, among Goa’s eternal ironies, began the largest, and yet surviving, wave of
emigration/out-migration...
Such it was that the colonial administration saw it as opportunity, and promptly slapped
an “Emigration Tax!” Even on impoverished maidens fleeing for better life in Bombay,
where at least 510 (largely from temple dancing traditions) worked as whores in 1923.
Emigration was a mixed blessing. Aptly reflected in its two categories. Transient émigrés
left families behind to take up jobs elsewhere, but returned home on retirement. The
permanent ones took all they had, including families, to their new domicile.
Permanent émigrés returned only on pilgrimage to family deities or on special visits.
Those settled in Europe, the Americas, and Australia/NZ, never will return. (It is this
genre of emigrants, paradoxically, whose hearts ache the most for the metamorphosis
currently overrunning Goa…) They were a loss to Goa.
Transient emigrants, though, were a gain. By 1928, they enriched Goa annually by a
whopping Rs.134.25 lakh (multiply that by 1,000 for today’s value), in remittances. That’s
the only bright side to the story of Goan Emigration. Away from home-‘n’-hearth, they
shed sweat and tears, to remit savings, raise local living standards, and engineer a new
economic model, the “remittance economy.” The singular credit for boosting Goa’s
economy, on both sides of the 1961 divide, goes to these sons and daughters of Goa,
who worked elsewhere in India, the Gulf and on ships, and built her Remittance
Economy.
In contrast, mining, the state’s blue-eyed baby, did little (save screw the environment.)
Its profit was concentrated with a few. What trickled, via ancillaries, was a slender slice.
Today’s tourism, save its luxury lobby, is infinitely more egalitarian.
Expat remittances, now at 33% of Goa’s revenue receipt, provided purchasing power. It
enriched shopkeepers, hawkers, and service providers. And don’t forget banks, which,
like mineowners, benefited much but ploughed back little. Forget deposits to advances
ratio, India’s nationalized and scheduled banks financed just nine percent Goan émigrés
to lay the golden eggs for them!
Remittances are estimated by the CDS survey (see this column of 09 and 16 August) at
Rs.800 crores per annum, 72% of it received by Goan Catholics and 36% by Salcetans.
A large section (82% local households) uses it for daily sustenance. A substantial share,
heartening to note, goes into education and healthcare. A quarter of households deposit
it in banks. Twenty percent build houses or purchase land.
Émigrés and remittances, paradoxically again, created most of the problems we wail
about today, often at the wrong wall.
Remittances fuelled a never-before demand for goods and services. The demand was
not met by locals. Skilled and unskilled Goans of prime working age were already in the
Gulf and elsewhere. The few back home developed skewed ideas about manual work
and dignity of labour. As larger numbers of Goans left in the *Petrodollar-Rush*, to fuel
more wealth, and more demand for services they themselves once provided, they left a
ballooning local vacuum in their wake.
Nature abhors vacuum. Mass emigration by Goans presaged equal and opposite waves
of immigration by others. In the 19th century, as Catholics went overseas, Goan Hindus
from the hinterland talukas took their place, changing the demographic profile of Bardez,
Tiswadi and Salcete. In the 20th century, while Goans went to the Gulf, Goa became the
Gulf to India’s poor. They took the place vacated by expats.
As kids, we would tease in a chair-taking prank, “Quem foi à Madeira, perdeu a cadeira”
(s/he who left for Madeira – the Portuguese archipelago in the North Atlantic – lost the
chair back home), or the original, "Quem foi ao ar, perdeu o lugar" (s/he who went
daydreaming, lost his/her seat.)
Before going to the story of in-migration, let’s check some interesting reader responses
on Goan emigration next Sunday. (ENDS)
The above article appeared in the Herald, Goa, edition of August 30, 2009
