From The Times
March 12, 2008
A murder in the Indian resort underlines the threat to hosts and tourists alike
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March 12, 2008
A murder in the Indian resort underlines the threat to hosts and tourists alike
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The belated admission by police in Goa that Scarlett Keeling, the 15-year-old British girl found dead on a beach last month, may have been murdered is as shocking in revealing local corruption as it is damaging to one of India's most popular tourist destinations. The police asserted initially that the girl had drowned after taking drugs. After a second autopsy, the arrest for rape of a suspect was challenged by her mother. The police are now attempting to delay matters further by ordering extra medical examinations to prove the girl's age. They are also seeking to deflect criticism of their work by blaming the mother for negligence, amid accusations of a cover-up, media reports of corruption and the mysterious disappearance of a man who claimed to have witnessed what happened.
The sordid affair has shone an unwelcome spotlight on the hinterland of this small state that has grown rich on a $465 million tourist industry, accounting for 15 per cent of its economy. The availability of drugs, the lack of proper regulation and the influx of predominantly young Western tourists - 60 per cent of them British - have attracted the unscrupulous and the opportunists hoping to profit from the tourists' naivety. Criminal elements appear to have formed a cosy relationship with the police. A blind eye has been turned too often to what has been happening near the golden beaches. Goa has got rich on a louche image. It now looks a lot less carefree than the tourist posters proclaim.
The problem for Goa is the same as the difficulty faced by other tourist destinations “discovered” by the young and the adventurous and trading on their fashionable, hippy associations. Ibiza, Bali, The Gambia and parts of Thailand are all places where the prevailing hedonism attracts a large number of free-spending tourists but runs counter to the more conservative views and mores of the host country. Entrepreneurs who have invested in the bars, clubs, pools and hotels that bring in the tourists are keen to encourage a lively reputation in the West. That same reputation, however, can cause resentment, disdain and confusion to the very people working in these resorts. A clash of assumptions can have dangerous consequences.
Such clashes have been increasing in Goa as the tourist numbers rise. The Indian media have reported 27 deaths of foreigners already this year, though police said many were from natural causes. The state government now needs to take an urgent look at regulation, the safety of women tourists, the rise in crime, availability of drugs and the impact, beyond the financial bonanza, of tourism on Goa's values and way of life.
There are other aspects of this tragedy that are disturbing, however, and have little to do with India. The question many must ask is why a 15-year-old, who had never been abroad before, was left in the company of strangers by a mother who then travelled with other school-age daughters to another state. It is not only tourist authorities who must exercise responsibility. But those going on holiday must also understand the dangers of what can happen when the law, especially on drugs, is not enforced. Countries such as India, and local authorities such as Goa, cannot afford to build their tourist image on a dubious reputation for laxity and permissiveness. It puts tourists at risk - and also the entire industry.
more
The sordid affair has shone an unwelcome spotlight on the hinterland of this small state that has grown rich on a $465 million tourist industry, accounting for 15 per cent of its economy. The availability of drugs, the lack of proper regulation and the influx of predominantly young Western tourists - 60 per cent of them British - have attracted the unscrupulous and the opportunists hoping to profit from the tourists' naivety. Criminal elements appear to have formed a cosy relationship with the police. A blind eye has been turned too often to what has been happening near the golden beaches. Goa has got rich on a louche image. It now looks a lot less carefree than the tourist posters proclaim.
The problem for Goa is the same as the difficulty faced by other tourist destinations “discovered” by the young and the adventurous and trading on their fashionable, hippy associations. Ibiza, Bali, The Gambia and parts of Thailand are all places where the prevailing hedonism attracts a large number of free-spending tourists but runs counter to the more conservative views and mores of the host country. Entrepreneurs who have invested in the bars, clubs, pools and hotels that bring in the tourists are keen to encourage a lively reputation in the West. That same reputation, however, can cause resentment, disdain and confusion to the very people working in these resorts. A clash of assumptions can have dangerous consequences.
Such clashes have been increasing in Goa as the tourist numbers rise. The Indian media have reported 27 deaths of foreigners already this year, though police said many were from natural causes. The state government now needs to take an urgent look at regulation, the safety of women tourists, the rise in crime, availability of drugs and the impact, beyond the financial bonanza, of tourism on Goa's values and way of life.
There are other aspects of this tragedy that are disturbing, however, and have little to do with India. The question many must ask is why a 15-year-old, who had never been abroad before, was left in the company of strangers by a mother who then travelled with other school-age daughters to another state. It is not only tourist authorities who must exercise responsibility. But those going on holiday must also understand the dangers of what can happen when the law, especially on drugs, is not enforced. Countries such as India, and local authorities such as Goa, cannot afford to build their tourist image on a dubious reputation for laxity and permissiveness. It puts tourists at risk - and also the entire industry.
more
Panaji: Goa is getting into the news for the wrong reasons, and a lot of residents are hot under the collar over the manner in which their state is being projected following the rape and murder of British teen Scarlett Keeling.
The 15-year-old's death on February 18 - after she was drugged and raped – has triggered an explosion of news coverage, and intense focus continues over the case nearly a month later.
Oscar Rebello, a prominent medico who has taken to social campaigns in recent years, angrily told IANS: "There's mass hysteria being generated by the press. Goa is being given the image of a place of seedy drug joints. It projects as if every Goan is waiting to have sex with any White female."Some like rock star Remo Fernandes have pointed out that the problem wasn't new. He quoted from the lyrics of a song pointing to the narcotics problem.
Police in Goa, which is visited by 2.4 million tourists each year, including some 300,000 from overseas, have been accused of trying to underplay the death and pass off the murder as a beachside drowning, and delaying news about the death.
After the intense publicity in the British press, followed by as much on Indian television and the mainstream media, police charged an employee of a beach shack with murder after having sex with the 15-year-old and another local for "drugging the girl with a cocktail of narcotics".
Goa police top brass, when asked, have pointedly denied that their belated action was due to intense media pressure, which could have an unsettling effect in the state's largest foreign-tourist market, Britain.
Following this sensational case, Goa has been repeatedly accused of poor policing and bad governance.
Goan author Maria Aurora Couto, whose husband has been a prominent official here and elsewhere, has charged those with promoting tourism here of sending out a "perverted image...one based on the colonial gaze" that attracts the wrong kind of tourists and attention.
For more news, analysis click here>> For more Science and Medicine news click here >>
A British woman tourist, who said she was a police officer back home, accused police of blatant corruption and bribe collection on the beachside.
But North Goa-based lawyer Filipe Cordeiro said: "The influence of tourism on Goan youth, the problem of drugs, is nothing new. In my class of 1975, we had quite a few of us who had problems with drugs. It's an on-going battle."
He noted that the nature of the drugs may have changed - from 'hash' and 'mandrax' to 'ecstasy' - but the problem was the same.
"Tourists will always behave irresponsibly, let's not forget the hippies of the 1970's and how 'responsible' they were! We have a more recent and pervasive phenomenon of young Indians coming to Goa, binge-drinking and then fighting losing battles with the sea, or worse with other vehicles on the road. How do we in Goa address this issue?" asked Cordeiro.
"If young Scarlett were to behave similarly, drink heavily, snort drugs, roam around alone late into the night, in any city in the UK, I'm not too sure she would be any safer than in Anjuna. What can we do to help our children recognise the dangers of the 'party' culture?"--
Full coverage: Scarlett murder casehttp://sify.com/news/fullcover.php?event_id=14623491
--------
Sun, Sand & Drugs
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/LEADER_ARTICLE_Sun_Sand__Drugs/articleshow/2888578.cms
22 Mar 2008
There's a kind of hush all over Goa these days. It all began a month ago, to be precise. First, a British teenage girl's body washes up in Anjuna, its most (in)famous beach and hippie hangout. Then, not surprisingly, the local police goof up, saying that she drowned in shallow water. A media outcry and public outrage from the mother later, the police order a second autopsy, and conclude that the girl was raped and left to die. Two men are arrested for allegedly plying the girl with drugs, sexually assaulting her, and leaving her to die.
So is Goa paradise lost - once again? Four decades after catapulting to the world's tourism map for its excellent climate, palm-fringed beaches, cheap alcohol, whitewashed churches, brown-tiled, low-slung homes, clean villages and easy availability of drugs, the place was - and remains - India Lite, as someone called it. Or, if you like, a place to escape the real India.
The hush is more pronounced in Anjuna these days. Famous for its grubby beach shacks, crescent-shaped beaches hemmed in by lush hills, crowded flea markets, drug-fuelled parties and seedy Ayurveda spas, the place is getting all the attention for all the wrong reasons. Discovered by hippie travellers in the 1960s, Anjuna is where Graham Greene, during an early visit, found it possible "to forget the poverty of Bombay, 400 miles away, the mutilated beggars, the lepers..." It is where, some four decades later, William Dalrymple spotted on the dunes by the shore what "appeared to be a topless six-a-side female football team - an odd sight anywhere in the world, but an astonishing one in India".
In the years between, hippies, punks, Rastafarians, devotees of new-age gurus all hung out in Anjuna, swapping drugs, music and sexual partners. Bob Dylan, John Lennon and The Who, according to legend, dropped in during the mid-1970s. The beach even birthed the Goa trance, a home-grown electronic dance music, before house and techno music invaded the scene in the early 1990s, and even spawned a 'world-famous' eponymous deejay. Tourists bent rules bribing a typically feckless police to take over parts of beaches, putting up
'Indians not allowed' signs to keep away the natives from the parties and raves and nude sunbathing. The place was seen by many as a secluded, whites-only haven for hippies, who according to a researcher, could "freely indulge in drugs, nude sunbathing and all-night full-moon parties".
In a strange way, Anjuna exemplifies what is right and wrong with foreign tourism in Goa today. Foreigners - hippie, white trash and otherwise - have lifted living standards in the area. Business at the weekend flea market hawking anything from tribal jewellery to Hindu charms to imported thongs and lager remains brisk. As at the shacks selling 'six-pack menus' - Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Organic, Thai - and everything else. Live bands with names like Kundalini Airport and Bindoo Babas draw in the audiences. Friendly locals rent out cheap rooms to foreigners.
The bad news is 17 of the 74 foreigners who have died in Goa in the past two years were in Anjuna, and 11 of them are suspected to have died of drug abuse. (Their viscera reports are still awaited because the samples have to be flown to overworked federal forensic laboratories in Hyderabad and Mumbai.)
Anjuna's only hospital, a 20-bed private operation, treats an increasing number of drug overdose cases. So does a neighbourhood alcohol and drugs rehab and detox centre. Young men drop out of school, hustling tourists and earning easy money. Goa eminences hate the place - designer Wendell Rodricks told me that it was a "dark spot" on the state. "I don't go there", he told me. "It is a place that is hung over from the 1960s, but sadly with more potent drugs than hashish".
In the end, Anjuna appears to have become a victim - as many parts of Goa - of its warped success. 'White trash', as locals scorn backpacking tourists, have lifted living standards of natives, but material progress has come at some cost. The government-licensed shacks are an eyesore and wouldn't be allowed anywhere in the developed world, as would be the easy availability of drugs.
But, obviously the girl's murder and the rising notoriety of beaches like Anjuna, is not going to slow down foreign tourism to Goa, thanks to its cheap and cheerful charms. And even if the foreigners went away, Goa would not have much to fear - Indian tourists regularly out-number their foreign counterparts by seven times every year and outspend them too. The place is no less safer from many other places frequented by hippies and freaks anywhere else in the world - Bali and Kathmandu, for example. Women are safe - in the past two years, there have been three cases of rape of foreign tourists, before the murder of the British teenager.
No wonder Goa has been consistently getting over two million tourists annually for the past five years. To talk about making the place more pricey and expensive to mop up more tourist dollars, as many have been saying, is plain silly: a mix of growing domestic tourism and budget, backpacker, and high-end foreign tourism possibly suits Goa and its people the best. Clean up the beaches of the detritus, drugs, ugly shacks and cheap thrills, and the place will get its groove back. The ageing remnants of the flower children - "fossiled relic of Haight-Ashbury", as Dalrymple describes them - may complain feebly, but who cares?---
(The writer is India editor of an international news website.)
.
Posted by the radman at 9:09 PM
The 15-year-old's death on February 18 - after she was drugged and raped – has triggered an explosion of news coverage, and intense focus continues over the case nearly a month later.
Oscar Rebello, a prominent medico who has taken to social campaigns in recent years, angrily told IANS: "There's mass hysteria being generated by the press. Goa is being given the image of a place of seedy drug joints. It projects as if every Goan is waiting to have sex with any White female."Some like rock star Remo Fernandes have pointed out that the problem wasn't new. He quoted from the lyrics of a song pointing to the narcotics problem.
Police in Goa, which is visited by 2.4 million tourists each year, including some 300,000 from overseas, have been accused of trying to underplay the death and pass off the murder as a beachside drowning, and delaying news about the death.
After the intense publicity in the British press, followed by as much on Indian television and the mainstream media, police charged an employee of a beach shack with murder after having sex with the 15-year-old and another local for "drugging the girl with a cocktail of narcotics".
Goa police top brass, when asked, have pointedly denied that their belated action was due to intense media pressure, which could have an unsettling effect in the state's largest foreign-tourist market, Britain.
Following this sensational case, Goa has been repeatedly accused of poor policing and bad governance.
Goan author Maria Aurora Couto, whose husband has been a prominent official here and elsewhere, has charged those with promoting tourism here of sending out a "perverted image...one based on the colonial gaze" that attracts the wrong kind of tourists and attention.
For more news, analysis click here>> For more Science and Medicine news click here >>
A British woman tourist, who said she was a police officer back home, accused police of blatant corruption and bribe collection on the beachside.
But North Goa-based lawyer Filipe Cordeiro said: "The influence of tourism on Goan youth, the problem of drugs, is nothing new. In my class of 1975, we had quite a few of us who had problems with drugs. It's an on-going battle."
He noted that the nature of the drugs may have changed - from 'hash' and 'mandrax' to 'ecstasy' - but the problem was the same.
"Tourists will always behave irresponsibly, let's not forget the hippies of the 1970's and how 'responsible' they were! We have a more recent and pervasive phenomenon of young Indians coming to Goa, binge-drinking and then fighting losing battles with the sea, or worse with other vehicles on the road. How do we in Goa address this issue?" asked Cordeiro.
"If young Scarlett were to behave similarly, drink heavily, snort drugs, roam around alone late into the night, in any city in the UK, I'm not too sure she would be any safer than in Anjuna. What can we do to help our children recognise the dangers of the 'party' culture?"--
Full coverage: Scarlett murder casehttp://sify.com/news/fullcover.php?event_id=14623491
--------
Sun, Sand & Drugs
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/LEADER_ARTICLE_Sun_Sand__Drugs/articleshow/2888578.cms
22 Mar 2008
There's a kind of hush all over Goa these days. It all began a month ago, to be precise. First, a British teenage girl's body washes up in Anjuna, its most (in)famous beach and hippie hangout. Then, not surprisingly, the local police goof up, saying that she drowned in shallow water. A media outcry and public outrage from the mother later, the police order a second autopsy, and conclude that the girl was raped and left to die. Two men are arrested for allegedly plying the girl with drugs, sexually assaulting her, and leaving her to die.
So is Goa paradise lost - once again? Four decades after catapulting to the world's tourism map for its excellent climate, palm-fringed beaches, cheap alcohol, whitewashed churches, brown-tiled, low-slung homes, clean villages and easy availability of drugs, the place was - and remains - India Lite, as someone called it. Or, if you like, a place to escape the real India.
The hush is more pronounced in Anjuna these days. Famous for its grubby beach shacks, crescent-shaped beaches hemmed in by lush hills, crowded flea markets, drug-fuelled parties and seedy Ayurveda spas, the place is getting all the attention for all the wrong reasons. Discovered by hippie travellers in the 1960s, Anjuna is where Graham Greene, during an early visit, found it possible "to forget the poverty of Bombay, 400 miles away, the mutilated beggars, the lepers..." It is where, some four decades later, William Dalrymple spotted on the dunes by the shore what "appeared to be a topless six-a-side female football team - an odd sight anywhere in the world, but an astonishing one in India".
In the years between, hippies, punks, Rastafarians, devotees of new-age gurus all hung out in Anjuna, swapping drugs, music and sexual partners. Bob Dylan, John Lennon and The Who, according to legend, dropped in during the mid-1970s. The beach even birthed the Goa trance, a home-grown electronic dance music, before house and techno music invaded the scene in the early 1990s, and even spawned a 'world-famous' eponymous deejay. Tourists bent rules bribing a typically feckless police to take over parts of beaches, putting up
'Indians not allowed' signs to keep away the natives from the parties and raves and nude sunbathing. The place was seen by many as a secluded, whites-only haven for hippies, who according to a researcher, could "freely indulge in drugs, nude sunbathing and all-night full-moon parties".
In a strange way, Anjuna exemplifies what is right and wrong with foreign tourism in Goa today. Foreigners - hippie, white trash and otherwise - have lifted living standards in the area. Business at the weekend flea market hawking anything from tribal jewellery to Hindu charms to imported thongs and lager remains brisk. As at the shacks selling 'six-pack menus' - Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Organic, Thai - and everything else. Live bands with names like Kundalini Airport and Bindoo Babas draw in the audiences. Friendly locals rent out cheap rooms to foreigners.
The bad news is 17 of the 74 foreigners who have died in Goa in the past two years were in Anjuna, and 11 of them are suspected to have died of drug abuse. (Their viscera reports are still awaited because the samples have to be flown to overworked federal forensic laboratories in Hyderabad and Mumbai.)
Anjuna's only hospital, a 20-bed private operation, treats an increasing number of drug overdose cases. So does a neighbourhood alcohol and drugs rehab and detox centre. Young men drop out of school, hustling tourists and earning easy money. Goa eminences hate the place - designer Wendell Rodricks told me that it was a "dark spot" on the state. "I don't go there", he told me. "It is a place that is hung over from the 1960s, but sadly with more potent drugs than hashish".
In the end, Anjuna appears to have become a victim - as many parts of Goa - of its warped success. 'White trash', as locals scorn backpacking tourists, have lifted living standards of natives, but material progress has come at some cost. The government-licensed shacks are an eyesore and wouldn't be allowed anywhere in the developed world, as would be the easy availability of drugs.
But, obviously the girl's murder and the rising notoriety of beaches like Anjuna, is not going to slow down foreign tourism to Goa, thanks to its cheap and cheerful charms. And even if the foreigners went away, Goa would not have much to fear - Indian tourists regularly out-number their foreign counterparts by seven times every year and outspend them too. The place is no less safer from many other places frequented by hippies and freaks anywhere else in the world - Bali and Kathmandu, for example. Women are safe - in the past two years, there have been three cases of rape of foreign tourists, before the murder of the British teenager.
No wonder Goa has been consistently getting over two million tourists annually for the past five years. To talk about making the place more pricey and expensive to mop up more tourist dollars, as many have been saying, is plain silly: a mix of growing domestic tourism and budget, backpacker, and high-end foreign tourism possibly suits Goa and its people the best. Clean up the beaches of the detritus, drugs, ugly shacks and cheap thrills, and the place will get its groove back. The ageing remnants of the flower children - "fossiled relic of Haight-Ashbury", as Dalrymple describes them - may complain feebly, but who cares?---
(The writer is India editor of an international news website.)
.
Posted by the radman at 9:09 PM
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