From the roof of the Our Girl of the Mount Chapel in Previous Goa, one can see a very great distance. In a single sweeping look, one can comply with the Mandovi river from the salt pans of Ribandar to the historic church buildings of Previous Goa—the primary Portuguese settlement within the area. Alongside the best way, one would additionally spot the expanse of the Kadamba plateau, the idyllic islands of Divar and St Estevam. As soon as lush and inexperienced, this panorama is now pockmarked by quickly increasing patches of concrete.
When contrasted with historic satellite tv for pc imagery and the reminiscences of long-time residents, this panorama tells a stark story about Goa’s tryst with the twenty first century. It’s the story of a terrain as soon as outlined by huge paddy fields, dense forests, and innumerable water our bodies, now steadily being remodeled right into a trustworthy recreation of the suburbia in India’s metro cities, replete with gated communities, garbage-lined roads, visitors jams, water shortages, and polluted air.
Over the previous twenty years, growth—largely within the type of an actual property increase—has change into a seemingly unstoppable power in India’s smallest State. And but, in some ways, it additionally seems inexplicable. Based on the 2011 Census, Goa had an enormous housing surplus: about 1.25 lakh houses have been unoccupied on the time. Since then, the State’s inhabitants has solely grown by 1.38 lakh, in accordance with its newest Financial Survey. In different phrases, even at the moment, Goa doesn’t have sufficient individuals to fill the homes that already existed 15 years in the past.
However, beginning in 2017, the State authorities has championed a sequence of authorized provisions by way of which it has tried to transform an estimated 66 lakh sq. metres of ecologically delicate land, beforehand off-limits to building, into settlement land. That’s roughly half the realm of Mapusa, Goa’s fourth-largest metropolis.
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These efforts have primarily taken the form of three successive amendments to the City and Nation Planning (TCP) Act, which governs land use in Goa. With residents’ teams and environmental activists opposing every of those measures—and the courts siding with them—a cat-and-mouse sport has ensued. Part 16B, enacted in 2017, was challenged in court docket in 2018. A 2019 interim order prevented the federal government from finalising any proposed conversions. In 2023, Part 17(2) was handed. This modification, too, was challenged and in the end stayed by the courts in April 2025. Part 39A, which was added in 2024, is the topic of an ongoing PIL petition.
All these amendments primarily serve the identical function: they allow the state to transform protected land into actual property alternatives. The federal government claims that these measures are meant to appropriate inadvertent errors in Goa’s grasp plan for land use. Activists allege that they allow rampant corruption—a rot so deep-rooted and profitable that it performs a big position in deciding who will get to rule Goa.
Shedding forested patches
Previous Goa is commonly described as town of seven hills. Our Girl of the Mount, as its title suggests, sits atop one among them. Instantly adjoining to it’s one other hill that’s maybe the final main forested patch within the space, which stays largely untouched by growth. Glen Cabral, a businessman and activist primarily based in Previous Goa, recollects recognizing hornbills in its cover not too long ago. These majestic birds was a typical sight in Goa however have gotten more and more elusive attributable to habitat loss.
Our Girl of The Mount Chapel sits on one of many seven hills of Goa.
| Picture Credit score:
Visvak
This patch of forest, too, could not final for much longer. In December 2024, the TCP Division accredited an utility by Enigma Properties Pvt. Ltd, a Delhi-based firm, to transform a big part of the hill into settlement land. The property spans 1.6 lakh sq m, roughly the dimensions of 23 soccer fields.
Cabral, together with over 500 Previous Goa residents, filed a letter with the TCP Division objecting to the conversion on a number of grounds: elements of the property lie inside the legally mandated 100 m buffer zone across the chapel, which is a protected monument; the property lies inside the affect zone of Carambolim Lake, a protected wetland; the property comprises slopes which are thought-about restricted growth zones; and a railway tunnel passes beneath.
“They’ve unobstructed views of the Mandovi from right here. They will construct a business or residential constructing and make some huge cash,” stated Cabral. “However setting up on this hill poses a severe danger of inflicting landslides. The railway tunnel already cracked as soon as, in 2021, attributable to heavy rain. When you hinder the circulation of water downhill, it might occur once more. And it’ll have an effect on the water ranges within the Carambolim Lake as properly.”
The dimensions of Enigma’s property magnifies the risk its conversion poses to heritage buildings, biodiversity, and public infrastructure. However this isn’t an remoted case, removed from it. Villages throughout Goa are witnessing a surge of land conversions that threaten to overwhelm present methods of life.
Village layouts beneath risk
The village of Chopdem lies sandwiched between a river and a densely forested hill. Its 1,000-odd residents have, over generations, occupied about 2.8 lakh sq m of land. Up to now two years alone, the TCP Division has sought to create 3.4 lakh sq m of extra settlement land within the village utilizing Part 17(2).
In Mandrem, a preferred vacationer vacation spot, there’s a proposal to transform over 3.15 lakh sq m of land beneath Part 17(2) and Part 39A. In each villages, it’s the forested hills which are primarily beneath risk of conversion.
“There’s a pure logic to how the areas in Goa’s villages have been organized,” stated Tahir Noronha, an architect and concrete planner who’s doing his doctoral analysis on the politics of land in Goa on the College of California, Berkeley. Villages are sometimes strategically located between hills and low-lying fields so as to defend them from the heavy monsoons. When it rains, the vegetation on the hill slopes traps among the water, whereas the remainder flows into the fields by way of the village. “I worry that these insurance policies will erode that pure logic. When you construct on the hilly slopes or the low-lying fields, you danger landslides and floods.”
The Delhi-based Enigma Properties Pvt. Ltd has bought Goa’s TCP Division approval to transform this patch outlined in pink, measuring 1.6 lakh sq. metres and situated on one of many seven hills of Goa, into settlement land.
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Visvak
The massive tracts of recent settlement lands are largely created to feed the actual property trade, which serves rich traders from India’s metro cities. “There is no such thing as a want, no demand from native individuals for all this building. They’re constructing for luxurious’s sake, as second houses,” stated Cabral. “Individuals are coming right here from Delhi as a result of the air is unhealthy there. However they don’t realise Goa can be turning into like that due to all this building.”
The extra burden created by these settlements on Goa’s already stretched public companies is prone to immediately affect the standard of life. “The federal government wants to contemplate the carrying capability of a village earlier than approving new settlements,” stated Vinit Sawant, a resident of Mandrem who has been opposing land conversions in his village. “Goa is a small State. How a lot will you fill it? If we feature on like this, no matter is particular about Goa will likely be gone. Will probably be like another place in India.”
Sawant recollects climbing the forested hill that towers over Mandrem when he was a toddler. Now, the hill is being encroached by a sequence of villas and flats. “We used to play within the jungle, acquire fruits,” he stated. “The Goa I grew up in, it got here from my grandfather to my father, and from my father to me. My son is 4 years previous. I need to maintain that Goa alive for his era additionally. Growth is required, however within the title of growth, you can not minimize all of the hills and the jungles and develop each single nook.”
First State to have plan for land use
In 1986, Goa turned the primary Indian State to undertake a statewide plan for land use. This plan categorised each inch of the State into a wide range of zones: forest, orchard, agriculture, trade, settlements.
“The distinctive panorama of Goa has so much to do with zoning,” stated Solano Da Silva, Assistant Professor of Growth Research and Politics at BITS Pilani, Goa, who has been concerned in analysis and activism on land in Goa for near twenty years. “While you do zoning, you might be opening up some space to growth, and also you are also demarcating no-go areas.”
Carambolim Lake, a protected wetland, seen from Our Girl of the Mount Chapel. Development on the hill, on which Enigma Properties has purchased a plot, can have an effect on water ranges within the lake by obstructing the circulation of water downhill.
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Visvak
The primary regional plan, notified in 1986, lacked precision. Nevertheless, in 1988, beneath the pretext of rectifying errors within the plan, the TCP Division launched the system of “spot zoning”, which allowed people to request modifications to the zoning of particular properties. In Da Silva’s view, this observe gave “huge discretionary energy” to the TCP Division, and because of this the TCP Ministry emerged as “a profitable portfolio”.
Between 1988 and 2005, the TCP Division transformed 1.2 crore sq m of eco-sensitive inexperienced cowl to settlement. The observe resulted in 2005 when Goa was beneath President’s Rule. The then TCP Secretary, Jayshree Raghuraman, warned that the observe had led to “haphazard growth” and ought to be stopped. However the scrapping of spot zoning in 2005 would show to be a quick second of calm earlier than a raging storm: this was roughly when, for the primary time, curiosity in Goa’s actual property started to essentially warmth up.
“India’s financial system was liberalised in 1991. It took round 10 years for the owner castes to pivot into actual property, and it was within the early to mid-2000s when the trade began to peak,” defined Noronha, citing the analysis of his thesis adviser, Sai Balakrishnan, who’s Affiliate Professor of Metropolis and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley.
Wholesale modifications to masterplan
Over the subsequent decade, spot zoning took a again seat as successive governments led by the BJP and the Congress tried to answer the growing demand for settlement land by immediately making wholesale modifications to the grasp plan. Consequently, Goa ended up with the Regional Plan 2021, the grasp plan that continues to be in place to this point, which added a staggering 8 crore sq m of settlement land over the 1986 plan. That’s roughly equal to the mixed space occupied by Goa’s two largest cities, Panaji and Vasco da Gama.
The regional plan was enacted in 2011. And regardless of the huge improve in settlement land, the demand continued to rise. By 2017, spot zoning had returned with the arrival of Part 16B. When the courts blocked its utilization, Part 17(2) adopted. And even earlier than the authorized problem to Part 17(2) could possibly be resolved, Part 39A was launched.
Row Villas in Mandrem in Goa. Such properties don’t fulfill any actual want for housing within the tiny State, which nonetheless has unoccupied houses. They’re constructed as luxurious second houses for the super-rich.
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Visvak
On August 5, 2024, TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane stated within the Meeting that “there isn’t any query of low-lying fields or no growth slopes [NDS] being touched beneath 39A”. But, an evaluation of the 270 conversions that the federal government has accredited thus far reveals that 23 per cent of them have been initially zoned as NDS and round 15 per cent have been low-lying agricultural land.
“These legal guidelines present a route by way of which individuals with loads of energy and affect can do no matter they need,” stated Noronha. “It’s all accomplished in a really shady method. We don’t see minutes of the conferences; we don’t see correct reasoning given for why these properties are allowed to be transformed.”
Noronha alleged that there’s rampant corruption concerned in these land conversions. “The federal government collects large charges for changing a property, which is the white cash charge. I’ve been knowledgeable by a number of people who there’s an extra black cash charge, which is greater than double that,” he stated.
In his view, actual property builders are prepared to pay each the official charges and bribes as a result of the potential earnings are huge. Basically, they purchase low cost agricultural or forested land, convert it, and promote it as premium actual property.
Contemplate this hanging instance: a plot in Anjuna, largely zoned as orchard land, was purchased in December 2022 for Rs.74 lakh. It was transformed beneath Part 17(2) in March 2023 and bought to a Delhi agency in June for Rs.6.8 crore—fetching over 800 per cent return on funding in simply 4 months.
Political class and advantages of conversions
Noronha alleged that Goa’s political class, throughout get together traces, advantages from this technique of conversions. In September 2024, Vijai Sardesai, former TCP Minister and head of the Goa Ahead Social gathering, bought a property he owned within the village of Seraulim to Pallavi Dempo, the BJP’s candidate for South Goa within the 2024 basic election. The property, which had been initially zoned as agricultural land, was transformed six months earlier than the sale. Going by the federal government’s base charge for agricultural land, the property would have been value Rs.63 lakh earlier than conversion. The ultimate buy, after rezoning to settlement land, was billed at Rs.29.42 crore.
Frontline reached out to Rane for his tackle the allegations of corruption in land conversions, however he declined to remark.
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Based on Da Silva, the money-making potential of the TCP Ministry is so big that the query of which get together will get to control Goa is commonly linked to who will get to change into TCP Minister. “As a result of Goa has zoning, and the demand for land from actual property and tourism is excessive, the one that can present exemption from zoning could make thousands and thousands, and so can the get together or coalition in energy,” he stated. Consequently, politicians with the facility to make or break governments, are inclined to covet the TCP Ministry.
Goan politics has, for a very long time, been characterised by unstable governments and defections. However of late, political events have used “land ministries—these empowered to change zoning—to poach MLAs, engineer defections, reward defectors, and cement political coalitions”, stated Da Silva.
“Each TCP Minister within the latest previous, going again to 2017, has been a defector and has been an important coalition associate,” he stated. “He won’t ever ditch your authorities so long as he’s allowed a free hand to rezone. And for those who take away him from the TCP, your authorities will collapse. The consequence has been disastrous for Goa’s ecology and has derailed hopes for an financial system that’s oriented in the direction of odd residents of the State.”
Visvak is a author and editor, largely of narrative non-fiction. They’re co-founder of India Ink, a public historical past undertaking that seeks to make educational information about Indian historical past extra accessible @indiainkhistory
