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By:

Pearl Noronha

31 March 2025 at 3:13:45 pm

Selling Goa, Piece by Piece

What nature takes centuries to build can be destroyed in years and once lost, it is rarely recovered. If you think the battle for land belongs to history, think again. In ancient times, kingdoms and nations fought wars over territory because land meant power, survival, wealth and control. That struggle has not disappeared; it has simply changed form. In Goa, the fight for land continues without armies or swords. Today, paperwork, zoning changes, permissions, speculative deals and luxury...

Selling Goa, Piece by Piece

What nature takes centuries to build can be destroyed in years and once lost, it is rarely recovered. If you think the battle for land belongs to history, think again. In ancient times, kingdoms and nations fought wars over territory because land meant power, survival, wealth and control. That struggle has not disappeared; it has simply changed form. In Goa, the fight for land continues without armies or swords. Today, paperwork, zoning changes, permissions, speculative deals and luxury developments have become the new weapons. What was once seized by force is now often taken through approvals, conversions and concrete. Goa has long been both a magnet for conquerors and a refuge for those seeking peace. Across centuries, different cultures have called this land home, drawn not just by its strategic value but also by its seashores, green hills, rivers, flora and fauna. These are not empty stretches of land waiting to be turned into plots. They are part of what makes Goa what it is. At a time when climate stress is no longer a distant concern, such landscapes matter more than ever. Forests, fields, rivers and hills are not disposable spaces, but vital ecological assets that help protect against heat, flooding, erosion and environmental decline. Goa is not the holiday capital of India by accident. Its appeal lies in its small historic homes, low-rise residences, open spaces, green rolling hills and, above all, in the fact that it does not resemble the concrete-heavy urban landscapes many seek to escape. Goa’s charm lies in its difference. Yet that very difference is now under threat. In the name of development, the state is being pushed towards the same model of overbuilding that has diminished so many other places. This may be marketed as progress, but too often it looks more like destruction in slow motion. The real question is whether we are building for the needs of Goa’s people, or for a second-home market driven by wealth, prestige and speculation. Development in Goa should first serve the people who live there. But much of what is being built today seems aimed less at local housing needs and more at a second-home market driven by investment, prestige and short-term rental returns. Many of these homes stay shut for much of the year, existing more as assets than as part of a real community. The ecological cost, however, is constant: land is consumed, trees are cut, concrete spreads, and precious water is drawn into projects that add little to Goa’s daily life. A luxury home that remains locked for most of the year may flatter its owner, but it does not justify the burden it places on the land and resources around it. In recent years, Goa’s much-debated ‘16B conversions’ have come to represent a wider problem: land once valued for its ecological or agricultural role can be rapidly reclassified as real estate. For many residents of Goa, these are not abstract concerns but everyday realities: power cuts, water shortages and the steady inconvenience of weak civic planning. These are not rare disruptions but a routine part of life in far too many areas. Public transport remains sparse and unreliable, while pedestrian infrastructure is so neglected that pavements often feel like an afterthought. In many places, even a short walk can be unsafe, pushing households towards two-wheelers for the most basic errands. If the government is already struggling to provide essential services and safe mobility to existing residents, on what basis does it justify approving developments that place even greater strain on already stretched resources? The government should not treat Goa’s land as something to be sold off in the name of development. Its job is to protect what makes this state worth living in. We are only custodians of this land, not its permanent owners. What we erase in one generation may be impossible for the next to recover. Goa does need to grow and improve, but that growth must respect the limits of its water, its roads, its green spaces and the character that makes it unlike anywhere else. No one is asking for Goa to remain frozen in time. But it should not be turned into another overbuilt city that loses its soul in the process. Goa must become a better Goa, not a poorer version of the places people came here to escape.

Agriculture’s Blind Spot

The missing variable in India’s farm economics is the slow erosion of farmers’ bodies and minds.

Agriculture is usually narrated as a story of soil, seeds and rain. In policy papers and production models, land is measured in acres, fertiliser in kilograms and water in cubic metres. Labour appears, if at all, as a residual cost. What is almost never counted is the condition of the person doing the work. Yet on India’s farms, especially those growing labour-intensive crops, the health of the farmer is not a side issue. It is a core input into production, as decisive as irrigation or fertiliser, and far more fragile.


Spend time on sugarcane, cotton or paddy farms and this becomes obvious. Crops such as sugarcane, rice, wheat, mango, cashew, vegetables and cotton generate high gross returns, but they demand relentless physical effort. Bending, cutting, carrying, spraying and harvesting over months leaves bodies worn and minds frayed. The economic system records the output, but not the erosion of the person producing it.


Uncounted Costs

Take sugarcane, a flagship crop in much of western and southern India. On a single acre, a farmer may put in around 80 full labour days in a year, in addition to buying seeds, fertiliser and irrigation. According to the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) Cost of Cultivation Report for 2024–25, these visible inputs add up to roughly Rs. 70,000 per acre. That is what the books show. But when one factors in what can be called ‘Farmer Health Capital depreciation’ – which is the cumulative physical and mental strain of repetitive, exhausting work - the true cost rises by about Rs. 16,000 more. This estimate draws on the NSSO daily wage of Rs. 350 and on occupational-strain research (Bharati et al., 2019; Ramesh et al., 2021). In other words, nearly a fifth of the real cost of growing sugarcane is being silently absorbed by the farmer’s body.


Cotton tells a similar story. Pest management, weeding and manual harvesting demand sustained, often back-breaking effort. In regions such as Vidarbha, where smallholders dominate, a single acre can exhaust an entire household over the season. If cultivation costs are adjusted for health loss, they rise by 15–20 percent, even if gross income remains unchanged. Traditional farm accounting, which focuses on cash outlays and ignores bodily wear and tear, simply misses this hidden burden.


Bringing health into the production function changes the way agricultural economics looks. Farmer Health Capital is best thought of as a stock—like soil fertility—that diminishes with intensive use. Health in the production function is a flow, influencing how much effective labour a farmer can supply at any moment. A fatigued, injured or depressed farmer produces less, just as surely as a field with depleted nutrients yields less grain.


Formally, output can be written as Y = f (S, F, W, L × H), where S is seed, F fertiliser, W water, L labour and H the health-adjustment factor, which lies between 0 and 1 (P. J. Patil, 2026). When H falls because of chronic pain, illness or mental strain, effective labour falls with it. This makes health not a soft social variable but a measurable economic input, one that can be priced into the true cost of cultivation.


Uncomfortable Implications

The implications for India’s minimum support prices (MSP) are uncomfortable. MSP calculations today account for paid-out costs and imputed family labour, but not for health depreciation. If sugarcane and cotton were priced with this in mind, MSPs would need to rise by perhaps 15–25 percent to reflect the real value of farmers’ effort. That would not merely be a fiscal transfer. By making exhausting crops more expensive, it would nudge farmers and governments towards mechanisation, crop diversification and techniques that reduce physical strain.


India’s chronic agrarian distress and high rates of farmer suicide cannot be understood only through income statements. Many farmers keep going under extreme strain even when earnings look adequate on paper. By ignoring health deterioration, policymakers miss what might be called ‘silent distress’ or the slow accumulation of pain, fatigue and anxiety that can precede chronic illness or mental-health crises (NCRB, 2023; ICSSR, 2021). Tracking Farmer Health Capital could therefore act as an early-warning system, flagging households and regions where intervention is needed before tragedy strikes.


None of this requires mystical new economics. It requires acknowledging what is already visible in the fields: that farming is not just an interaction between land and technology, but between human bodies and unforgiving tasks. Counting the invisible cost of health is not an academic flourish. It is a prerequisite for making Indian agriculture sustainable and humane.


(The writer is a member of Maharashtra Agriculture Price Commission. Views personal)

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