31 May,2011 08:40 AM IST | | Pamela D'Mello
Pensioners and overseas visitors who want to make Goa their home are being stifled by strict visa regulations curtailing long stays. This May could be the last month in for several of these foreigners
Dave (64) and Penny (58) Sanders (name changed) are a typical English couple who came to Goa one winter on a two-week charter holiday four years ago. Charmed by the region, they booked a further two-week stay and the very next year decided they would like to spend six months of the year in Goa, and six months in Spain where they run a small business. The Sanders purchased a leasehold apartment in Siolim, north Goa and settled into their six-months-a-year life in Goa. Life is good when they come down. Internet connectivity helps them monitor their business in Spain while they are here. The exchange rate makes it extremely easy on the pocket. With their friendly disposition, the Sanders' rapidly made friends, they quickly plugged into the vibrant Goan social circuit, and their Goan friends invited them over to premiers, concerts and family occasions. Dave's skill with the guitar led to him playing gigs with local musicians at the many live music venues around the touristy coastal area.
Relax: Tourists at Calangute Beach in Goa pic/AFP
Pitfalls
The Sanders took the usual precautions, avoiding the pitfalls of buying any ownership property in Goa that had earlier got many purchases who did so while on tourist visas, into deep trouble with the Enforcement Directorate. "We were quite happy to buy a leasehold apartment," they say. "But just when you get used to one rule, they throw another at you," Dave complains. He is referring to the new visa restrictions that the Government of India notified in 2008, but whose effects are slowly beginning to blow away the carefully laid plans of the Sanders and hundreds of other mainly British retirees who live in Goa to avoid the harsh European winter. The new rules have all but stopped the five-year multiple entry visa for India. Now only three-month tourist visas are being issued, with visitors expected to stay out of India for a two-month cooling period before re-entering or applying for a fresh visa. "We would have liked to settle down here, but with the two-month cooling off rule, we have to reconsider our plans," says Dave. They are now considering a move to Sri Lanka, where pensioners are allowed to stay on if they can prove a known source of income.
Bottoms up tou00a0Goa: But is the magic fading? British nationals at a
restaurantu00a0 pics/Arvind Tengse
Discourage
Unknown to the Sanders, internal circulars of the Union Home ministry and external affairs ministry aim to discourage the practice of part-time residentship in India. Resultantly, consulates have been weeding out five-year multiple entry visas and even six-month tourist visas in favour of the three-month tourist visa. The unofficial policy change and visa rules have similarly dashed the hopes of Marjorie and Sondra Myles (names changed) who planned on running a small guesthouse business in Goa. While the ambiguities and irregular application of laws have meant that several British run tourism businesses do flourish in Goa, the Myles count themselves among the unlucky lot who have run into a series of brick walls in this pursuit, quite possibly from no fault in their paperwork. They were understandably upset while relating their story.
Home: Britons enjoy Goa's good life but things are becoming tougher
Savings
Visiting India and Goa over 15 years before the former university employee decided that Goa might be a good option for a retirement base, Marjorie (76) sunk her savings into purchasing freehold apartments in a complex in South Goa. She planned on converting the six-bedroom double apartment into a guesthouse, she would run with her daughter Sondra (50) and 19-year-old granddaughter. The Myles have been particularly unlucky, hit by a triple whammy. They purchased their properties in 2004 in the initial euphoric years after the new FEMA legislation led people to believe the law on immovable property purchase had opened up,u00a0-- only to see a complete rollback when the Enforcement Directorate began investigating 400 foreigner-made purchases in Goa alone. The Myles now find themselves in a quandary. "Our dream has become a nightmare," Marjorie said. "We've not been able to process any permissions to start the business and we are now staying in a house we apparently do not own, despite consulting a conveyancing advocate at the time."
Woes
To add to their woes, their visa durations have shrunk over the years, making living here untenable. Their applications for a business visa was rejected, authorities granted them an X visa initially; these were further reduced to a one year visa and more recently to six month visas. "It has come as rather a shock to us. The new visa rule has crippled usu00a0 financially," says Sondra. It would be impossible to go back to the UK every six months, stay two months in a hotel in the UK and return to Goa, she points out.
Seething
Erstwhile Goan fishermen, toddy tappers and farmers who have been evicted from beach and farm land to make way for hotels, are increasingly asking government to protect their new livelihoods in the small guesthouse and restaurant trade they opted for, even as newer entrepreneurs from outside the state and abroad ramp up the competition. All this has rendered the bustling tourism arena into a seething cauldron of social tension and conflict, despite the overt bonhomie on show for the visitor. The Myles have had their brush with intimidation, while aggrieved western long staying tourists often vent their frustrations at being turfed out, in the letters column of local dailies.u00a0 Sources in the bureaucracy say it is for precisely this reason that the home ministry is hoping to curtail potential cultural and diplomatic tensions by restricting the numbers of western "residents" who have homed in on Goa as a preferable region to spend their retirement years, some setting up small businesses to supplement their pensions.
Bogmalo
By the time the Indian bureaucracy woke up to this trend and began taking dissuasive measures, it was already too late for many western retirees who had invested life savings into homes in Goa. Among the badly hit are an elderly British couple who constructed a bungalow in the beach village of Bogmalo. They now have to fly back to the UK every 180 days, and since they have no home there, spend two months in the UK in a caravan in their daughter's driveway. They are currently holding out, hoping to make a reasonably priced sale on their Goa home, instead of taking the route of the hundreds of "distress sales" that were made by foreigners when the clampdown began. Visa rules have not just hit wintering Europeans, who have had to rethink their long-term plans in Goa. It has impacted short-term holidayers to Goa and alongside it, the entire tourist industry.
Single
"At least 30 to 40 per cent of vacationers from Britain take repeat holidays in a single season, coming back twice and sometimes thrice on a six-month visa. Many visit neighbouring Thailand, Cambodia or elsewhere and return. Reduced visa terms and the cooling off period has meant that many have cancelled holidays and are down to a single vacation to Goa in a year," says Guitry Velho who runs the Heritage Village Club. His business has taken a hit, as the hotel mainly caters to the UK segment. "Clients of mine who'd come in pre-Christmas, then go back to celebrate the holiday season with family in the UK and return in February -- are now just coming in February for a single holiday."
Downstream
Smaller establishments downstream that survive from tourism are similarly affected. "It has been a bad season. A lot of tourists who had returned in January and February after the Christmas rush have simply not done so, and we've lost this business," says Roy Barreto, who runs Betty's Place restaurant and a cruise operation on the River Sal in South Goa. Western European visitors to his eateries are down to a trickle, while his overheads on staff have remained the same. Goa's tourism trade body the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) is naturally sore over the visa rules. "Working over 40 years, hundreds of thousands of Goans at all levels of the tourism industry have built a unique record of 40 per cent repeat clientele from western European markets, especially the UK. Until the recent visa revisions, they returned year after year, because of Goa's branding as a long haul winter destination. They are now leaving Goa permanently,"rues TTAG spokesman hotelier, Ralph de Souza.
Regime
"Since the new visa regime, long stayers and return holidayers from Nordic, Scandinavian and the UK region has fallen by 30 per cent," de Souza says. The TTAG estimates the loss to be in the region of Rs 900 crore. Long-term visitors are estimated to spend in a year Rs 10 lakh each across a range of services from tourist taxis, two-wheeler pilots, beach shacks, cafes, restaurants and super markets. It's a big economic hit, and the TTAG is currently lobbying with the state and central governments to consider alternatives, such as granting visa on arrival at the Goa airport, building data bases on regular visitors and granting exemptions to traditional long stayers. While discussions are on, there has been no change yet, and this May might well be their last month in Goa for many visitors.
