nettime: Patrice Riemens/Internet in Goa

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Sender: patrice@xs4all.nl

INTERNET IN GOA
By Patrice Riemens

When Howard Rheingold wrote his "Digital Communities, Homesteading on the 
Electronic Frontier", the world wide web, that great leveller of the
Internet, had not arrived yet. It has still not arrived in Goa, India, and
this may, together with the very specific socio-cultural character of that
place, account for the remarkable on-line situation that obtains there.
It may be said that Goa lives very much in the Net, although technically
speaking, it is very much outside it.

Goa is the smallest (and youngest) State of the Indian Union (1.3m people,
3650 sq Km). It was a Portuguese territory for over four centuries,
pompously denominated the "Estado da India". India liberated (or invaded)
it in 1961, 16 years after her own independance from the British. Even in
Portuguese times, there was a lot of emigration from Goa, sailors and
settlers to the rest of the "Imperio", but also to Bombay & other big
Indian cities. The trend accelerated since the incorporation with India,
since the Goans superior education and skills make them welcome abroad,
nowadays mainly in the Gulf countries and in the West. Thus there is large
Goan 'diaspora' dispersed all over the globe...and its sea-lanes. (There
has been a parallel, and not altogether welcome, large influx of migrants
into Goa from the rest of India). The sense of Goan identity is very
strong.  It is informed by the "latin" tradition of the eartwhile colonial
power and by the Roman Catholic faith. Integration of Goans into the
dominant (Portuguese) culture went much further than was the case in
(British) India. 

The emigrants from Goa maintain manifold and extensive bonds with
the homeland. They keep well-informed of the developments back home,
and come over for important life events like marriages and deaths. Most of
them send substantial sums of money from abroad and make arrangements
(e.g. by buying or building houses) in order to retire in their place of
origin. All this makes for a lot of physical movement of people and even
more communication activities. The bulk of the latter goes over the
good (or rather: bad) old mail systems and over the telecom network.  But
now the electronic media are supplementing this, and Goa is even opening
up to multi-media exposure, albeit in a still very passive way. Here
follows an acount of my own ecounters with Goa's forays into cyberspace.

A true digital community: Goa-Net.

It is difficult to ascertain whether the world wide web has indeed killed
'geographical' digital communities by turning most of their (potential)
participants into couch potatoes. The Amsterdam digital city and a host of
other 'free-nets' seem to disprove that, yet my own contention is that
text-only based digital communities are nowadays mostly of a
common-interest, spatially dispersed nature, e.g. nettime. 
The Goa-Net community is per force spatially dispersed, since it is
a diaspora feature, but the link is unmistakably, excuse the word,
parochial, because it is solely based on a common Goan culture. 

Its digital mouthpiece, Goa-Net is a newsgroup/mailing-list started a
few years ago. It has around 800 subscribers, apparently living in the
West (aka the 'North')for the most part, with quite a few in the Gulf.It  
puts up a bulletin every 1-2 days, running over an average of 6-8 A4 pages
of print-out. Save for general announcements, most of the
contents seem to be come from the subscribers themselves, and appears to
be only very loosely moderated (but that, of course, is my own 
impression!). In the six weeks or so that I followed it before going to
real Goa (I discontinued it because it would clogg my mailbox), discussion
seemed to be mostly on the issue of "Goan Identity" and the  threats it
was facing, on the demographic, cultural, economic or linguistic front,
this on account of the ever increasing "Gleichschaltung" into the Indian
mainstream (remember that Goa is India's next approximation of the Cote
d'Azur, and that touristic "development", read concretisation, has spinned
totally out of control). There was also a lot of aimiable small talk,
recipes, familly news and the like, beside a lot of gossip, some of which
remarkably nasty, and akin to what Co$ afficionados would recognize as
"dead agenting"! This makes of course for a lot of liveliness, and also
grant outsiders a key-hole view into the affairs of the community (with an
instant course in Konkani language thrown in for good measure by the
supporters of that medium).  Whilke the coordinator seems to be in
London (and the listserv in the USA) there is an active, but very small
group of Goa-netters on locale, whose main role seem to be to act as relay
for news and information from and to opinion leaders in the community who
are not on-line. In this way Goa-Net makes a lot of digital mileage out of
the very poor Internet connectivity in Goa, to which we are turning next.
 
Goa's Internet connectivity: how to make do with no xs 

Internet connectivity came late to India for various reasons,
"underdevelopment" as such not being the principal one. Rather, a
all-powerfull, very illiberal and suspicious bureaucracy, which is also
corrupt to the bone and especially in its lower reaches, will never make a
move without taking its cut, is responsible for the dismal state of Indian
infrastructure in general, including electronic communication. On the map,
India seems to be fully Internet connected, but the actual situation 
is quite different, with only the (very) big cities and a few
technology islands being served, and that even, on a very limited basis.

Goa, despite being a relatively rich State is no different. Permanent
net-access is only available at two sites: the university, and the
National Institute of Oceanography (!), both in (the outskirts of) the
capital Panjim. The university is the local node for ERNET, the
government-run academic & scientific network, whereas NIO relies on
NICNET, also governemnt-owned, but meant mainly for general
administration. Capacity is extremely modest, NIO's link is a mere 2400bd,
which is moreover often down. Being official institutions, their
facilities are hardly accessible to 'outsiders' (the university
does report an average of 3-5 "telnet-tourists" a month). And at both
places, the systems very existence appears to hinge on their enthusistic
initiators, whose internet activities fall mostly outside the purview of
their tenure.

Private parties and NGOs have to turn to the monopoly commercial access
provider VSNL, whose nearest node is in Mumbai/Bombay. This results in
high connection costs by telephone (Rs 300/600/1200 per hour, depending
on the time of the day - Rs35=$1), on top of VSNL's rather steep
subscription charges (Rs 5000 a year for e-mail only, Rs 15000 for
Slip/IPP). This of course puts net-use as we understand it totally out of
reach of even wealthy individuals. VSNL is pushing for more than a year
for a license to open a full node in Goa, but neither the DoT (India's
dreaded Department of Communication) nor the State government are
forthcoming. Rumours has it that, besides the usual haggling about the
kickbacks, a lot of pressure is exercised against it by the operators of
'classical' telecommunication services, whose extremely profitable
"STD/ISD/FAX"-boths litterally litter the Goan landscape. So far, VSNL has
not been able to overcome these "obstacles", either by winning over the
local politicos to their side, or by securing an order from "above" (i.e.
the central government in New Delhi). When it will be so far, one of the
first 'novities' on the cards is the coming to Goa of cybercafes, of
which quite a few are planned in...5 stars hotels. This peculiar
interpretation of public access is quite symptomatic for the situation
prevailing with regard to the world wide web in Goa, to which we may
presently turn.

Presence without connection: the web's virtual Goas.

Fire your favourite search engine and you will be surprised at the number
of hits on Goa. Most sites, however, are concerned with a popular variant
of... techno/trance dance music. This looks mildly comical or even totally
triffling de prime abord, but is not. Goa dance did originate in Goa,
albeit as the creation of foreigners (half) living there. Raves would be
held on the beaches during full moon nights, and thousands of young
(white) tourists would participate. While the genre was re-exported to the
North in order to rise and vanish there the way all genres do, it was
snuffed out of existence on locale by the influx of voyeuristic Indians
and the ministrations of the Goa Police Force. It should be noted that
(foreign) tourism in Goa is totally disconnected to the place itself,
since it is mostly predicated upon a number of features commonly found
in the tropics, viz. lots of sun, sand, sea and coconut-palms, cheap
accomodation, plentiful booze, easy life, affordable access. All things
being equal, Goa could be anywhere under 30 o L.N., and its tourism will
surely move on, since the place, victim of its own success, is fast
destroying its environment, while pricing itself out the market.

The other face of Goa on the web is the Goa-com site, a commercial
venture which has also strong associations with the tourism trade, as show
window of various hotels and tour operators, besides being a digital
dump for the booming real estate market. Warehousing loads of passive
information on 5 star hotels and condos targetted at a public outside 
the State indeed seems the prevalent interpretation of the web's
functionnality, a logical outcome of the medium not being readlly
accessible in Goa itself. It does however, bode ill for future
development, since it sets a consumerist, non-interective format as
generally accepted usage even before the medium has become available.
Already, the plans to open cybercafes, probably equipped with NTs only (at
a fee of Rs 600-800 p/hour!) follows this trend. Though Goa-com does give
some room to non-profit initiatives (it even advertises Goa-Net), it
is not likely to ever grant them more than a very token presence.

Conclusion

Thus, the state of Internet connectivity in Goa is far beneath its
potential, and quite unlikely to change for the better in the (near)
future.  This makes the liveliness of Goa-net, and its relative influence
in the local media-landscape the more remarkable, even
though only a tiny minority of local inhabitants participate in it 
directly, i.e. by being on-line themselves. The answer of course, is that
there are many more off-line participants who rely on the "old media" to
link-up with the electronic network. They relay back and forth a lot of
information which they obtain or disseminate making use of more classic
technologies, with word-of-mouth as the bottom line. Goa-net is thus a
fine example of the old and new media continuum, even though this may
happen per force. As such it may even provide an example for us in the
case we may be tempted to increasingly restrict our communication and
circle of acquaintances to people and organisations that are also on line.

Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>
Andheri (W)/ Mumbai-Bombay, 28 Nov 1997
 
 




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