The Seraphim

• Shoestring budgets mean tourists running out of money and turning to crime to extend "the holiday"
  
• Goa has become a major transit point for the international drug trade
  
• Teenage couriers being used by the international drug mafia to ship drugs out of Goa
  
• Crimes linked to foreigners now include drug trafficking, prostitution and paedophile rackets
  
• Underworld gangs openly operating with political patronage

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The state has also become a transit point for drug shipments, young 'couriers' landing in chartered flights for a bit of cheap fun, and shipping out heroin as well as locally procured party drugs like ketamine. The drugs trail now winds through Goa, then loops back to crisscross Europe and Israel. Says an NCB official in Mumbai: "Earlier, Goa was just a place where you could get illegal drugs. Now it's become an active point from where narcotics and psychotropic substances are shipped out. The fact that about 800 chartered flights land at Dabolim airport in a season makes it difficult to monitor couriers. And in the past, we never had to keep tabs on minors...."

The profile of the Goa tourist too has changed over the years. While there were always backpackers headed to the beaches, there's now a fair share of those who flit between merely abusing their dole to actually making a quick buck on holiday. Many stretched their dole creatively (Fiona Mackeown and her eight kids had been here since November), even Scarlett notes in her diary that she was trading sex with Julio Lobo, a local tourist guide, for food and accommodation. Jan Bostock, a Britisher who runs 'Indian Tribes' in Candolim along with wife Aarthi, says, "Everyone is entitled to the dole for a period in Britain. But there are some who abuse the system."

It's tourists like these that home minister Ravi Naik wants to keep out for "they are unscrupulous and get involved in illegalities". Naik's comment will have to be taken at face value. A recent TV sting had a DSP accusing him and his son of having links with the drugs trade. Chief minister Digambar Kamat, who has spent the last few weeks defending "Goa's reputation", has responded saying, "I have to ascertain the facts before coming to any conclusion." So much for state propriety.

There are other significant changes too. It's not the dollars, but the rupees, stupid. The Indians are the big spenders in Goa. Obviously, westerners who respect the local culture and party sensibly are welcome. But take the typical example of a "poor" white tourist. The Danish woman who lives in a small flat in Calangute beach gives excellent advice on where to get cheap joints. She'll never be found at a shack where the rates are higher for firangs. She also knows every bargain price deal to be had in Goa. She is after all adapted to stay long for next to nothing.

From the time when the first busload of German charter tourists were greeted by dung-throwing activists in the mid-'80s, tourism has been something of a love-hate thing for the average peace-loving Goan. They have viewed it with suspicion, more so now because it has brought in the drug culture and crime. "The same foreigners who criticise corruption in the police are the ones who come here because they know they can do drugs and no one will touch them...," says an activist.

The resentment works both ways. Long-serving Goaphiles feel the media has generalised them as "riff-raff" and drug-takers. They say the Goan considers even "Manmohan Singh a foreigner". Some say they've even been accosted with "whitey, go home" chants and threatening calls. Dave Van Stratten, an ex-fire officer from London, and wife Sandra, who gave up a job in the European Commission to relocate five years ago, are understandably distraught. "We invested into the Goan lifestyle. We're not part of some expat enclave," they say.

Everyone agrees that Goa has profited immensely from its tourism industry, but there's little agreement on the way forward from the spot the state is in now. Knee-jerk reactions like all bars closed at 11 pm will not help anyhow. Some constant, quiet policing would be a good start though. The crackdown has to be on the criminal gangs which operate with the patronage of politicians. The tourist 'lighting up' is hardly the bugbear Goa should be after.