Sunshine, sand and unemployment: A Goa’s story

“What place do we have in this broken system,” he asks, “when our jobs and land are taken away?” Asking his young audience to “look for the football symbol while voting”, he urged them to “show the world our revolution”.

The familiar slogan of his Revolutionary Goan’s Party (RG) drives the crowd crazy, everyone chanting the Konkani word for fire: “Ujjo! Uzo!”

Parab’s rally is just another real aspect of Goa’s 2022 election season, which will culminate with polling on February 14. Here, the national media is in agony, but the most important story nonetheless is almost entirely off-camera. This is nationalism, and the ever-increasing politics of dissent, which has spread through hashtags on social media to direct elections.

While every other party will swing like this in future, it is Parab’s brand new outfit that is riding the current wave. RG was formed in 2017 but was recognized by the Election Commission of India only in January this year. Apart from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it is the first political force to contest all 40 seats.

RG’s chaotic appeal revolves around its proposed The Person of Goan Origin (POGO) bill, which is meant to “protect the rights of a person of Goan origin [the] Goa state regarding jobs, benefits of various government schemes, education. In every campaign appearance, Parab announces that he will ensure that his party wins only one seat, even if it introduces legislation. Every time he says so, the audience raises his feet to give him a standing ovation.

These figurative fireworks are undoubtedly amusing, especially because RG’s entire 2022 group—with the possible exception of the Parab—is sure to lose its deposits after the votes are counted. However, the forces driving his party are not funny at all. They highlight the less flattering side of Goa’s famous economic report card of being one of the richest states – the failure to inter-related issues of higher education and jobs.

While Goans have witnessed this failure since at least the 1980s, unemployment figures now ring every alarm bell. We’ll come to this in a while.

To be sure, the number of different studies and surveys paint an extremely complex picture. NITI Aayog’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for 2021 indicates that Goa is well ahead of the other four states that are going to polls this season – Uttar Pradesh (UP), Punjab, Uttarakhand and Manipur. Only 3.76% of the citizens of Goa are officially registered as deprived in the three weighted dimensions of education, health and standard of living. In contrast, in UP this percentage is 37.79 percent. According to an analysis by the Center for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA), Goa’s per capita GDP (international dollar, PPP) is $21,922. This is comfortably higher than China and dozens of other developing countries.

Look beyond the bombshell, though, and shadows infiltrate pretty quickly. The same MPI shows that 25% of Goans are deprived of nutrition, and about 10% are deprived of housing.

What does the job report card tell us? According to the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), Goa’s unemployment rate, or the number of people not working but willing to work and actively looking for jobs, was 11.6% as a percentage of the total labor force. January 2022, the national unemployment rate for the month is much higher at 6.57%. Goa’s rate is also worse than other electoral states. For example, UP had an unemployment rate of only 3% in January.

A comparison of CMIE data between 2017 and now reveals even more. In September-December 2017, the unemployment rate of Goa was around 6.65%. Female unemployment was high at 18.8%. By September-December 2021, the overall unemployment rate doubled to 13.09%, while the female unemployment rate rose to an astonishing 40%!

While some labor market watchers in Goa agreed that the methodology used in the survey is flawed, others said the high unemployment rate among women is not surprising.

“Across India, female labor force participation has declined further during the pandemic. There are several reasons for this. For example, women gave up on additional household workloads, especially since schools were closed for the better part of two years and children were at home,” says Sabina Dewan, president and executive director of JustJobs Network, an employment think tank. Said. Second, during any economic crisis, women are the first to be let go. The third reason is the regional impact of the pandemic. Are more women employed in specific sectors?”

In the case of Goa, a significant number of people employed in the tourism and hospitality sector would have lost their jobs.

aspirations and vision

If true, the vast majority of relapses do not reveal the full picture. It is the wrong government policies that encouraged pharmaceuticals (about 12% of national production comes from Goa) and manufacturing, even though the vast majority of jobs in those industries are considered undesirable by students entering the workforce from the state.

This means an endless stream of graduates are constantly moving out in search of opportunities in IT/outsourcing hubs such as Bengaluru and Pune, or even more distant in the Middle East and West. His departure leaves a void for the migrants, who now form the backbone of the labor force at every level, partly because of their willingness to bear the wages and conditions that the people of Goa refuse to tolerate. .

Another aspect of this puzzle is, of course, the widespread belief that government jobs are the most desirable option for locals as they provide security without much pressure to give. Like everywhere else in the country, this means that new openings attract an almost unbelievable demand. In 2018, around 4,000 desperate graduates thronged the North Goa collectorate in Panim, as it advertised only 64 contract jobs that would last only 11 months.

An additional side effect is that government jobs can become the currency for retail politics. Last weekend, on a campaign trail, a Congress MP alleged that a Goa minister had filled 95% of vacancies in his department with people from his own constituency.

According to Nilesh Borde, Professor of Management Studies at Goa Business School, the fundamentals of the state’s employment landscape haven’t really changed much since his graduation. “Employment policies were ad hoc then, and they are ad hoc now. These flawed government policies have led our students and graduates to believe that there is no professional future for them at home,” the 48-year-old professor said in an email interview.

Borde described part of the problem as attitude. “Earlier, the standards were high. Therefore, students found it difficult to pass out, and because opportunities for higher education were few, they entered the job market at an early age.”

The difference now is that the results are generous. He said that many students pass, though their quality is questionable. “It’s bringing a false reputation to the youth that our industrial policies are creating, leaving skilled jobs like carpentry and plumbing unwilling to take up the type of shop-floor jobs.”

What Borde describes resembles a classic negative feedback loop, where system output is fed back in a way that intercepts and prevents a change in the status quo. On the one hand, the government mismanages industrial policy to encourage projects that are unsuitable for Goa’s own human resources. And at the same time, it has failed to adapt the existing educational infrastructure to meet the needs of companies that are already operating out of Goa. This model of economic development ignores the needs and interests of citizens, while relying on migrant workers, many of whom are vulnerable – many of them to experience worse working and living conditions in other states. Later reach Goa.

expat experience

It is clear that this set-up was unsustainable for many years, but the extent of the damage was exposed for the first time since the first nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Back in May 2020, an astonishing 71,000 signed up in the first 48 hours after Goa joined other states by opening registrations for migrant workers to return home to their families.

When this came to light, Manoj Kakulo, president of the state’s 111-year-old Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said on Facebook: “This so-called migrant journey is going for the Goa industry…they took advantage of all our benefits and when we Need to start work so want to quit? Some may understand…but mass exodus??? Bad for Goa’s economy!!!!!”

The next day, Caculo sent another punch to the chief minister. “Many of these migrant workers were provided shelter and food and wages during the entire period of the lockdown and were not really stranded in the true sense of the word. However, now that they are getting free rides to their home states, many of these workers have left their employers high and dry. “We fear that if they leave now, they will take a long time or others will return and this will affect the functioning of many of the areas mentioned above.”

However, first-generation entrepreneur Blaise Costabir was thinking very differently. In an earlier interview, the president of the Varna Industries Association, which spans hundreds of corporations employing at least 12,000 workers (he left that position), said: “There is probably a silver lining. Many locals depend on renting illegal rooms around industrial estates. Others are employed abroad, including on cruise liners. They will reach home soon and will have no chance to go back for a while. So, at least theoretically, there may be people who are looking for work.”

It was an optimistic estimate, but things didn’t turn out that way. Employment in the state only started to tick straight down.

An unlikely real estate boom has now begun, as wealthy Indian urbanites flock to Goa to escape the strictures of their home states. This has rekindled old concerns about demographic displacement, another major factor promoting revolutionary Goa as well as its immediate predecessor, the Goa Forward Party, in nationalist-leaning politics – they called “Goa, Goa and made a show of “Goenkarpon” (Konkani). The word means Goan-ness).

When I was talking to Borde and Kostabir about this complex, multi-layered issue, it became clear that the three of us are fathers of teenagers who intend to leave Goa to study alongside the overwhelming majority of their peers. keep. But none of us can figure out a particularly plausible scenario that would bring them back mainly for professional reasons.

Borde said, “This is because industrial and educational policies are not in sync. Thus, graduate students do not find viable options here. Goa has largely reduced to a business state where only entry-level jobs are available. which can be done by any graduate or even class 12 pass.”

Kostabir’s outlook was more optimistic. “Isn’t it true that we see many people from outside come to Goa, settle here, and make a good living for themselves, while our own sons and daughters are moving out because they feel they have No opportunity?” He asked .

“This thinking has to change. The truth is that opportunities are not sitting on the sidewalk, waiting to be picked up. They are here, even in our current circumstances. But they have to be mined with hard work and resilience. Only then will they flourish.”