An Imagined Paradise

This invitation was part of an advertisement by Mumbai-based real estate company The House of Abhinandan Lodha, showcasing an idyllic setting for a proposed development in Goa. Over the large, bold letters, is an image of tourists frolicking in a jacuzzi next to a swimming pool, framed against the backdrop of a verdant valley.

But it seems that the self-appointed conquerors of Goa had overplayed their hand. The ad became the subject of heated discussion during the monsoon session of the Goa state assembly this year, and the government took action. On September 12, the state government directed the real estate company to withdraw it. “450 years of Portuguese rule in Goa came to an end in just 36 hours, as Portugal surrendered the territory to the Indian armed forces in 1961. Such obnoxious claims of conquering Goa tend to hurt the sentiments of proud residents of Goa,” the Chief Minister’s Office said, according to a report in the Times of India. The company has since apologised, blaming a partner agency for the wording, and said that the ad has been withdrawn.

This imperious ad began appearing online in early 2024, but similar ones for the same properties were also featured in the Bengaluru edition of The Times of India as recently as August 31, 2024. The caption in the newspaper ad claims: “Bengaluru, book your paradisiacal Goan land now or lose ₹11.34 lakhs." The project boasts a 130-acre development, complete with “a man-made sea and beach, [and] a lavish multi-tiered clubhouse", and promises “leisure, party, and recreation zones, including a discotheque”. It concludes with a nudge that sounds an ominous note: “This is Goa like you’ve never seen before. Make your move today.”

Such commercial messaging—appealing to a barely-disguised settler imagination of Goa—is not the exception. On the contrary, it is frequently visible when it comes to properties in the state.

The Aldeia de Goa gated development, envisioned by the Mumbai-based real estate company Dynamix Group, asserts on its website, “Claim a piece of Goa, reclaim your peace of mind.” Another ad from Tata Housing calls on those who want to “Discover Goa”, adding that the state is “conquered but yet to be explored!” In 2016, Tata Housing had put up a large billboard outside Goa’s Dabolim airport that read, “It’s time to claim your piece of Goa.”

While the Lodha development features contemporary-style villas, the Tata Housing one consists of mid-rise apartments. In contrast, Aldeia de Goa is a mixed development, with a resort at its centre, plotted developments, and apartments of varying sizes, all overlooking the River Zuari.

That these projects are promoted largely in metros such as Delhi and Bengaluru, in language that reeks of indifference towards the region, makes one thing quite clear: these houses have never been intended for Goans like me. The property market in Goa today caters to the desires of the upwardly—and physically—mobile Indian upper-middle class. A never-ending flurry of ads and brochures curated to the desires of this demographic seeks to lure them to Goa with picturesque visions of "second homes". On offer is a vacation home, a sanctuary from the bustling city in which they have built their lives and fortunes—replete with the allure of a favoured and exoticised holiday destination. The ad from The House of Abhinandan Lodha lifts the covers off how these companies—and perhaps their clients—view Goa: as land open to capture by the non-Goan Indian elite.

Looked at out of context, these ads could appear innocuous: why shouldn’t these companies sell beautiful homes in a beautiful location to people who can afford a luxurious life by the sea? But take a closer look and notice the blank spot in each of these ads. The scenic locales they feature are marked by the absence of any Goans. These are the people whose lives, livelihoods, and homes are being threatened by the current housing development trajectory, which promotes individual-owned “luxury” homes and ignores social housing. With prices as high as Rs 99 lakh for 1,500 square feet (a recent figure quoted by the Abhinandan Lodha project), these developments are far too expensive for most locals to afford. An analysis of online searches for property in Goa found that the Rs 1-3 crore range generates the most interest. Now that the new MOPA airport in north Goa is in use, the market value of the land around it, priced at Rs 6,700 per square foot in July 2023, is likely to rise at a rate of 27-30 percent every year, property consulting firm 360 Realtors has predicted. This, in a state where the average monthly income in 2024 is Rs 15,540—lower than most Indian states—according to Forbes Advisor India.

While the developers are out to ensure their projects are as profitable as possible, their ads make no pretence of viewing Goa as anything less than a settler-colony. For years now, Goans have acknowledged and articulated the intent behind these advertisements, and what they reveal about the projects they're trying to sell. For instance, anthropologist Jason Keith Fernandes reacted like this to the Tata Housing hoarding in a column for the local newspaper, O Heraldo on January 21, 2016:

“One is welcome to purchase property in Goa, but when this act of purchasing is converted into an act of claiming or conquest, and opens the path for the consequent disregard of the existing social fabric, it is transformed from a possibly quotidian act to one of colonial violence.”

But can “claiming or conquest” be differentiated from simply purchasing property in the state? To understand why the purchase of property has become analogous to a modern-day conquest in Goa is to understand the fraught reality that most locals have witnessed: their land is the object of endless fantasy; and their lives are incidental to the project of occupying—or conquering—that land.

From the 1990s, as India was shaping itself as a neoliberal economy, this shift was effecting itself in Goa too. The real estate market was the most visible marker of this change; over the next few decades, construction sites were springing up at a rapid pace, and homeowners saw a spike in interest in their properties in the state. For example, Pamela D’Mello wrote in 2010 that in the north Goan village of Saligao, “several old Indo-Portuguese colonial houses have shifted hands from Goan Catholic owners to Western settlers, or people from Delhi, Mumbai [Bombay] and other parts of North India, with pockets deep enough to afford its [sic] costly upkeep”.

Often, these large houses may maintain the external appearance of the homes they once were. But their internal structures are usually modified to fit the desires of a more modern populace: independent swimming pools, well-manicured gardens, snazzy fixtures. They function as islands within the villages in which they're located, marked by high compound walls that seem to be erected as much for the resident's privacy as they are with the purpose of keeping locals out. This is how a pleasure periphery in India is meant to operate: as a cocooned party paradise where Goans themselves are uninvited.

The second homes being bought in Goa aren’t meant for everyday living; most often, they are vacation homes that lie empty for large parts of the year. Only in a few situations do people move their entire lives here, and even when they do, it is often for just a few years before they pack up and leave again, off to the next destination their wealth gives them access to. The 2011 Census showed a growth in the number of unoccupied houses in Goa to 125,503 from 77,284 in 2001—a 62.39 percent jump in those ten years. The 2011 Census counted 5,76,582 houses in the state, 20 percent (4.58 lakh) of which were unoccupied. The national average that year was much lower; the same Census found only 7.5 percent of all homes across the country to be unoccupied.

While current Census figures are unavailable (what was supposed to have been the 2021 Census is yet to be conducted), property development has only mushroomed since 2011, and sellers are catering to the vacation home market rather than those already living and working in the state. The number of empty homes today, then, is likely to be even higher than the numbers we can access. A survey released earlier this year by India Sotheby’s International Realty, a real estate firm, found that a staggering 83% of the Indian elite own multiple luxury properties. Of the people surveyed, 35% said Goa was at the top of their list of where to buy holiday homes.

Talking about why people buy vacation homes, sociologist Anthony King argued in 1980 that the capitalist economy produces not only a surplus of wealth, but also, for a sizeable minority, a surplus of time. The motivation to spend some of that surplus wealth on vacation homes, according to him, comes from the desire to seek compensation for city living—escaping overcrowding, noise, traffic congestion, air pollution, and the pressures of city life. Goa fits that bill; its landscape is scenic, diverse, and non-urban, with beaches, forests, mountains, rivers, and waterfalls. That, coupled with a culture seen as more European than found in the rest of India, makes it a cosmopolitan destination for elite Indians.

Today, those buying property in Goa don’t only see it as a place they can escape to. It’s also an opportunity to earn profits. Over time, many second home properties have been listed on short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb or Hirevilla. The rental returns on luxury properties are currently higher in Goa than in the metros. “People from metros consider Goa as an alternative option as properties are expensive in main cities and rental returns [are] in single digit[s], while Goa can offer double digit return[s] on investment,” Manik Sabharwal, the director of Sabh Infrastructure, a Delhi-based company that has built apartments and villas for sale across north Goa, told Economic Times in August last year. Re-sale of properties is also lucrative. Savills India, a real estate consulting firm, found that in the 2023-24 financial year, villas in popular parts of north Goa like Candolim, Calangute, Baga, Anjuna and Arpora saw a 22 percent rise in market value.

“Goa is associated with free sensuality,” psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar told a Bloomberg journalist in 2007, four years after he moved to the state. “That I think is a very big attraction—and the keeping up with the Joneses. It’s a party place, a place to let go of your inhibitions.”

Kakar’s articulation is easily recognisable in popular imagination; Goa is often desired for its image as a European enclave within the Indian Union. Property businesses too are selling this image: most of the new housing developments around Goa bear Portuguese names, even though the companies naming and building them have little connection to the state and its history. These names—such as ‘Aldeia de Goa’ (Village of Goa) by Dynamix Group in Bambolim, ‘Rio de Goa’ (River of Goa) by Tata Housing Company Limited in Dabolim, and ‘Adora de Goa’ (Adoration of Goa) by Provident Housing Limited in the village of Chicalim—fit with what the developers are trying to sell: a version of Goa’s culture that evokes a Portuguese colonial past while instantiating an idyllic present. However, it is crucial to recognise that while Goa bears European influences, these influences were localised and have become an integral part of the region's identity, not something foreign. Goa—and all its cultures—are created and shaped by its own people.

But the ads used by real-estate developers create the image that this land is unpeopled. As the website for Aldeia de Goa, a mixed development comprising both villas and apartments along Bambolim beach, puts it, “Don’t just own a piece of Goa – shape it with your own imagination.”

Addressing the potential non-Goan buyer, the first-person text in the Aldeia de Goa website states the following:

“I know what you’re thinking. You’d rather build the villa your own way. How very Goan of you! Anyway, that’s why they have Villa Plots. One side of these 340+ square metre plots greets the sea and on the other side is a landscaped garden. You have the choice of customizing your villa down to the tiniest detail. As long as it fits the Indo–Portuguese style ambience, of course.”

What this is suggesting is that now any non-Goan can become Goan simply by moving to Goa. All you need to do is buy a house—and these companies will even build you one that looks Goan (if only from the outside).

The sales pitch for different types of apartments within Aldeia de Goa is also noteworthy:

“What villas, men! For a change, it’s not just the name that’s Portuguese. These 3, 4 and 5 BHK [Bedroom-Hall-Kitchen] villas have actually been built in the Indo-Portuguese style of architecture.”

The casual language (‘what … men?’) evokes Goan colloquialisms—another nod to supposed authenticity. But that no traditional ‘Indo-Portuguese’-era house was ever a multi-unit apartment of the kind being built today is glossed over. Architectural historians such as Paulo Varela Gomes and Helder Carita use the term ‘Indo-Portuguese’ only to refer to the architecture of churches, civic buildings, and palatial and residential houses. Apartment buildings find no mention simply because this typology of built form did not exist in that period.

In today’s real estate market, though, adding apartments to the mix increases the pool of potential investors. Buyers of different economic means—those who can afford a villa and those who can afford an apartment—are being catered to all at once, and two very different forms of buildings too are being conflated simply by being brought under the ambiguous ‘Indo-Portuguese’ umbrella. The mansions are customisable as long as they adhere to some code of ‘the Indo-Portuguese style ambience’, but the prefabricated, smaller homes that cannot be altered are also somehow claimed to be ‘Indo-Portuguese’.

While the notion of Indo-Portugueseness (and thereby Goanness) is flexible, it is also never actually defined. What it means to be ‘Goan’—whether for a house or a person—is then open to manipulation and fictionalisation; it can mean whatever you want it to mean, these commercial websites suggest.

How far can you stretch the rhetoric that any house, really, can be brought under the flexible “Goan” umbrella? Provident Housing Limited, headquartered in Bengaluru, appears to be trying to find out. The developers of Adora de Goa in central Goa’s Dabolim not only use the region’s Portuguese colonial past to market the architecture of their flats and apartments, they also throw a new ingredient into the mix: Manhattan. The complex, according to its website, has a series of 16 high-rise buildings radiating out of a relatively narrow central circular plaza, containing a resort, coffee shops and a shopping area.

Buyers are offered different kinds of apartments in these high-rise towers, advertised as “Manhattan homes”, which “provide luxury in compact format”. The apartments are small—starting from just 350 square feet carpeted area and going up to 970 square feet—but how can you complain about that when you’re being sold the “premium” New York high-society life? Real estate prices in Manhattan, New York are exorbitantly high, and therefore, the apartment sizes tend to be very small—around 740 square feet, on average. If you live there, you’re paying for the location more than anything else—a similar apartment even in other parts of the city would not cost nearly as much. But build a “Manhattan home” outside of Manhattan, and what you’re really getting is a very small and yet expensive (for its size) apartment, and no Manhattan outside the window.

The prices of these apartments, starting from about Rs 50 lakh and going up to Rs 1.5 crore, are still lower than a traditional Goan village home, which would be sized at more than 3,000 square feet, cost upwards of Rs 1.7 crore, and have all the elements of Goan architecture, including a courtyard. New villas coming up are also smaller today, as the pressures on land increase. Savills India, a real estate consulting firm, found in early 2024 that the average size of villas being built had dropped by about half between 2018 and 2023—from more than 5,000 square feet to the 2,500-3,000 square feet range.

Lead architect of the Provident Housing project Nejeeb Khan said in a 2022 brochure, “Adora de Goa is a perfect blend of Portuguese architecture and Indian emotions”; the developers promise that the architecture is “Goan Outside, Modern Inside”. What is Goan, they appear to believe, cannot be modern; the two are distinct categories. Under “Goan”, the project lists details such as Portuguese style windows, hand-painted door number plates, and a Goan style balcony railing; the “modern” features include a digital lock and a rain shower in the master bathroom. Their formulation makes clear that the Goan architectural style of the buildings is only on the surface. The developers convoluted claims continue:

“The entire elevation and landscape of Adora de Goa stems from the idea of fusion. At Adora de Goa you’ll find the true spirit of Goa, that’s vintage yet modern in outlook. The bright coloured facade, the Piazza, Baroque statues, hand painted tiles and such other thoughtful fixtures will evoke the grandeur of [the] bygone Portuguese era…”

When such ideas of what ‘Goan’ architecture is circulate again and again, this restyled form comes to define the aesthetic. One day, it might indeed replace the original.

Projects such as Adora de Goa have become eyesores in the state’s landscapes. In fact, Provident Housing-type high-rise structures are similar to those that crop up in urban metros, quite unlike what Goans have been used to. Such high-rise structures built in close proximity to each other—visible now in and around Panjim and Dabolim, for instance—are a big divergence from the density of architecture seen before, as most villages are made up of smaller, low-rise houses in medium-density neighbourhoods. As more people set out to build and buy houses in Goa, though, high-rises have become unavoidable—it is the only way for the demand to not outpace supply given the limited availability of land.

Typically, Goan settlements are nestled at the base of hills, with low-lying fields on one side and a hill on the other. These settlements are geo-morphic—they follow the natural contours of the land. Historically, houses were rarely built on plateaus due to the lack of access to water, and these elevated areas were used primarily as grazing grounds or held as village commons.

However, with increasing pressures on land, Goa's plateaus too have been being targeted by builders since the 1990s. Developments such as Tata Housing Company’s Rio de Goa on the Chicalim plateau and Adora de Goa on the Sancoale plateau are prime examples. These multi-storied buildings look to cater to a large number of people, often exceeding the population of neighbouring villages. As a result, such projects can alter the local demographics dramatically, threatening the traditional character of these settlements.

And that’s not the only threat. These high-density developments also pose environmental risks to villages on lower slopes. Sewage leaks contaminate groundwater, and greywater runoff pollutes paddy fields. Goa’s sewage infrastructure is far less developed than the national average; in 2023, it had 16 percent sewerage coverage against a national average of 24 percent. The large new property developments are supposed to create their own sewage treatment infrastructure, but often fail to do so. Villagers in Taleigao, for instance, found in 2019 that their fields had become the release ground for sewage from nearby housing complexes. Villages are also ill-equipped to handle the increased solid waste, leading to tensions over local garbage taxes and anger against those leaving public spaces littered. In north Goa’s Moira, residents passed a substantial increase in the garbage tax in June this year, while also accusing visitors of creating a nuisance. Ultimately, such large-scale projects strain the state's infrastructure because of the sudden increases in demand for electricity, water, and waste disposal apparatus.

Despite that being the case, acquiring a green building certification has become another fad for promoting luxury second homes in Goa. This certification is based on building materials, energy and water consumption, and the indoor environment of a property. Real-estate projects are invariably profit-driven, but there seems to be a rise in conscientious consumers—buyers want to believe they are not negatively impacting society or the environment. The problem with so-called green second homes, though, is that they are not socially and culturally sustainable, especially in the context of a small state like Goa, where land is a scarce resource and cannot even adequately cater to the needs of locals.

Take the case of Nivim Goa, a “country house” named for the part of Aldona in which it is located. It claimed to be the “first green certified home in Goa”. Constructed in 2013 by the Goa-based company Build Grounded, its website tries to impress upon the reader that the team is invested in sustainable practices. Highlighting the architectural features of the property, the website states that “Nivim is an expansive country home meant to rediscover the quiet luxury found in nature”.

Even if the building boasts of features such as “use of [a] 3-star energy efficient refrigerator (40% less energy use) and 5-star rated air-conditioners (25% less energy use)”, the project remains socially unsustainable; resources used by the kind of people who can afford to live in Nivim are undoubtedly higher than what most locals in the area would use. Most local Goan homes are not fitted with air-conditioners, and so are probably much more energy efficient than even the greenest of luxury developments. But green certification programmes assume standards that are applicable to elites.

Several scholars have pointed out how green certification programmes, like the one under which the “gold” or highest green rating was awarded to Nivim by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), come replete with issues. As urbanist Vanessa Quirk wrote in a 2012 article in architectural platform ArchDaily, the fatal flaw of such certifications is that “no matter the un-sustainability of the context (the middle of a desert, for example), no matter its purpose (even a structure for parking), if a building adheres to the requirements, a fundamentally unsustainable building could still attain LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] certification”. LEED, the ratings system Quirk was writing about, is the most commonly used across the world; the IGBC also bases its ratings on the same system.

Nivim now functions as a villa for hire, proudly announcing its green certification to those willing to spend upwards of Rs 20,000 per night. The company that built it moved on to its next projects, including another “beautiful contemporary [second] home that retains the charm of a traditional Goan-Portuguese courtyard home” that received “platinum” certification from the IGBC. While these labels may greenwash the ugly world of luxury consumerism, local housing needs are marginalised as luxury projects drive up the cost of land.

As one of the smallest states in India, Goa has a limited pool of land available for development. With 3,702 square kilometres of area in total, only about 300 square kilometres is available for building, largely because the state is a part of the Western Ghats, which is a UNESCO world heritage site for biodiversity.

Given that reality, single-family luxury homes that come up as detached houses cannot make for a sustainable, equitable future. Such homes, especially in gated communities, require large investment in public infrastructure such as road, water, sewage, and communication networks, but serve only a small and usually elite population. Multi-family dwellings units are a way to get around that. This does not have to go the Manhattan way; instead, it could be done by adopting a healthy density of low-rise buildings of not more than four storeys each. This demands a different type of approach to urban planning in Goa—one that sets out to foster sustainable development.

In September 2019, hundreds of locals marched from Chicalim to Sancoale plateau to protest a mega housing project that was in the works—Provident Housing’s Adora de Goa. As they gathered outside the then-under-construction buildings, they talked about the water and power scarcity villages in the area were already facing. A new construction that would be able to house thousands of additional people—and promised them state-of-the-art amenities—would only make things worse.

Their fears were not unfounded. According to the 2016 Environmental Impact Assessment of the project submitted to the Goa State Environmental Impact Assessment Authority, once operational, the development would need 2,285.33 cubic metres of water per day. That is equivalent, according to researchers at data research agency Land Conflict Watch, to the daily water requirements of two or three (depending on size) entire villages in Goa.

This protest was not an isolated one. Over the years, locals have gathered time and again to talk about the environmental, social, and economic consequences of large real estate developments, especially those coming up in villages. Political representatives too have pointed out how land prices are skyrocketing above the reach of ordinary locals. Aldona MLA Carlos Alvares Ferreira, for instance, said in May that the “indiscriminate” sale of Goan land to builders had to stop, and large corporations should no longer be granted easy access to the state’s natural resources.

The fact that housing in Goa is becoming unaffordable for Goans was recognised by the state’s former chief town planner, S.T. Puttaraju. He told The Times of India in 2016 (while he was still in office) that housing in Goa is beyond the reach of even middle-income Goans. “Goa doesn’t require more housing statistically speaking,” he said, adding that houses exist but just aren’t affordable, since “there is no housing facility catering to those from the middle and lower income group categories”.

Despite the remarks made by certain politicians and public officials, the state facilitates and encourages the private sector to meet the housing demands of the wealthy, ignoring both the needs of less affluent local people and environmental concerns.

Changes made to land laws have been criticised by environmental experts and activists for promoting haphazard, chaotic infrastructure development. In March 2023, for instance, the Town and Country Planning Ministry amended a law to say that landowners could just simply fill a form to say there had been an “error” in the classification of their land as ecologically sensitive, and it was in fact meant to be “settlement” land, where residential or commercial structures can be built. These applications are then to be reviewed and accepted or rejected by the chief town planner’s office, and activists have argued that this will make the changes prone to corruption or quid pro quo arrangements between the government authorities and those who can afford to bribe them. Land that was bought while classified as an eco-sensitive zone, they believe, can then easily be transformed into areas where profitable enterprises can be built, no matter the cost to the environment.

Just four months into this amendment, according to a report in Frontline magazine, “1.82 lakh square metres of Goa’s natural cover has been converted into settlement land on the pretext of corrections”. An investigation by The Indian Express published in September 2024 has revealed that two state ministers—including the environment minister—as well as politicians from across party lines and a number of real-estate companies used this amendment to convert green zones they owned into settlements.

With news about politicians profiting from changes in land use grabbing eyes, Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant announced the same month that his government would provide affordable housing for locals, building 50-100 flats in every taluka that would be sold at Rs 15 lakh exclusively to Goans. Simultaneously, the state cabinet increased the minimum land price for commercial properties and residential plots above 500 square metres in the Bardez and Pernem talukas—both of which have been seeing rapid construction—by about 130 percent. This change was intended to increase state revenues and also curb the pace of building in these areas.

Soon after these two changes were announced, Goa-based architectural historian Amita Kanekar wrote in O Heraldo that while the latter decision—aimed at increasing government revenue—was perfectly understandable, Goans were having trouble taking the affordable housing promise seriously. But even if one were to believe the chief minister, Kanekar wrote, it would lead to little hope for the people of Goa:

“The point is that offering mass transport, or mass housing, within the same unchanged and very rotten context is guaranteed to fail. You cannot have successful public transport without restricting private transport, just like you cannot have successful mass housing without restricting the opposite kinds of housing. Mass housing has to go hand in hand with a ban on luxurious, wasteful, environmentally-destructive, and hardly-used housing, which also keep house prices high and out of the reach of most Goans. Just adding cheap mass housing to the tsunami of luxury-apartment, gated-villa, individual-swimming-pools and private-golf-courses already ravaging Goa is going to worsen things.”

Only rarely are the consequences of the changes in Goa’s property market able to grab national attention. A recent case from Assagao provided one such situation, proving that not only are Goans unable to secure proper housing, non-Goan property seekers, backed by the state and private enforcers, are literally bulldozing ordinary Goans out of their own homes. A house occupied by a Goan family was partially demolished in June 2024 without the right paperwork or legal clearance while they were still in it, after the landlord allegedly went behind their back and sold the plot to a woman from Mumbai who is married to a senior intelligence officer. The police have been accused of being entirely complicit in this illegality, with the director general of police allegedly “bullying” local police to aid in the demolition.

Assagao, the village where this happened, has become a haven for non-Goans in the last decade. This has driven up the prices of residential properties exponentially, with plots smaller than 2,100 square feet now costing over Rs 1 crore. News reports suggest that over 50 percent of the 2,500-odd sale deeds executed in Assagao between 2020 and 2024 involved non-Goan buyers. Expensive restaurants serving food from different corners of the world have sprung up to cater to the tastes of the new elite. The once quiet village is now a hub of activity, where the prices of everyday living have been driven up by high-end buyers—including several celebrities—who insist on maintaining their original lifestyles and privileges when they come to stay, while also enjoying the tranquillity that Goan land offers. Or used to offer, at least.

Some sort of reckoning appears to be underway. Those who once embraced a life in Goa, and both contributed to and benefited from the misadventures of big real estate giants and a supportive state, are coming to realise that the changes they bring aren’t all positive. Take, for example, the recent declaration by Deepti Kapoor in her article, ‘An Idyll no more: Why I’m Leaving Goa’. “My husband and I moved to north Goa eight years ago,” she wrote, but now “the beautiful, laid-back Goa of old is disappearing amid pollution, over-development and fears over personal safety.” So, she declared, “we have decided to leave, to look toward Europe or Latin America.”

While the second-home-buying elite may have the choice to abandon Goa, partly because of a disaster of their own making, locals are left to fend for themselves and pick up the pieces. Kapoor's perspective would suggest that those who buy homes in Goa and move to the state are not usually here to sustain a life. Instead, they consume an idea of the state, and move on to greener pastures once it no longer meets that idea.

Responding to her article, Goan scholar R. Benedito Ferrão wrote in The Goan:

“For Kapoor, the inconveniences she lists are something she can escape. Yet this is not the luxury available to the people of Goa…While others have the luxury of leaving when they find Goa is no longer pristine, it is Goans who have to continue to bear the consequences of a deteriorating environment.”  

When the late architect Charles Correa was appointed vice-chairman of the Steering Committee for the Regional Plan Goa 2021, he recommended in 2008 that “unoccupied second homes in Goa should be taxed in order to deter people from buying such properties purely from an investment perspective”. That idea never received enough support to see the light of day, but would mere taxation resolve the issue? Similar moves elsewhere have failed.

For instance, the British government increased taxation on second homes starting April 2016, with the government saying this would help those who were first-time buyers. But as Clive Aslet, a second-home owner, argued in an article for The Telegraph, such moves were unlikely to solve the basic housing issues of the poor. If the British government is not doing enough to supply homes for first-time owners, methods such as taxation for second-home owners only deflect from the real issue. Since the rich invest in vacation second homes for luxury and status, mere taxes may not deter them. Even worse, if the second home is bought to rent out, owners are likely to transfer the additional cost onto their tenants, thus defeating its purpose.

Switzerland is another place that suffers from a proliferation of second-home buyers, essentially elites from urban areas in Europe who occasionally want to live with nature. Not surprisingly, on March 11, 2012, in a popular referendum, the Swiss population approved an initiative proposed by ecologist Franz Weber and supported by the Green and Left parties calling for a halt on the construction of new second homes in districts where such homes already exceeded a threshold of 20 percent of total housing stock. A similar initiative is required in Goa, for which the first step would be a detailed survey to identify unoccupied homes and vacation homes that lie empty for large parts of the year.

But as things stand, Goa’s second-home-ownership pull—and the race between developers to flood the market with available properties—continues unabated, even gaining speed. Questions around this trend, and the settler-colonial attitude driving it, are more complex than about the mere appropriation of land. Goans and their agency in the making of Goan culture are being erased. This amounts to an erasure of all that is really Goan.