Goa Diary

Far more than in previous elections, all 40 seats in the Goa state elections on March 3 are being tightly contested to the end.

This is in large part because the Congress-led ruling coalition that held power for five years has rewarded its loyalists with an extraordinary bouquet of tickets that leaves five families—the Ranes, Alemaos, Naiks, Madkaikars and Monserrates— completely in charge of the party’s future in the state.

It is a risky gambit to consolidate that has the opposition smelling blood. Led by the wily veteran Manohar Parrikar, the BJP-led main alternative is manoeuvring hard to regain control of the legislature. With just a few days left before polls, this scenario seems increasingly likely, with independents playing a disproportionately important role.

So, just like almost every other seat in 2012, the riverfront constituency of Cumbharjua is palpably tense with politicking and intrigue, and even veteran observers are completely uncertain about who is going to emerge victorious.

On the one hand is the incumbent, Pandurang Madkaikar, whose brother Dhaku also has the Congress imprimatur in his race for the seat at Priol. On the other is another veteran politician of the state, and former Congress stalwart, Nirmala Sawant, who is running as an independent supported by the BJP, and a slate of regional parties.

In 2007, these two tussled right to the final votes counted. In an electorate that consists of barely more than 22,000 registered voters even in 2012, they somehow tallied almost 20,000 between them—Madkaikar nosing ahead by just controversial 517 votes.

This year the two veterans are both publicly nervous about the unexpected, deeply unconventional campaign being run by Bismarque Dias, the activist priest with deep roots in this constituency encompassing the oldest parts of the ancient Estado da India that survived here from 1510 all the way to 1961.

Sawant and Madkaikar are ostensibly opponents, but the maverick Dias has increasingly successfully managed to portray them both as partners, and equally complicit in the waves of reckless real estate development and mining that threatens the ecological balance of the territory, recently opening up a seemingly endless pipeline of migrants that has been making the locals increasingly jittery and paranoid about demographic displacement.

“Pandurang Madkaikar has only one strategy for this election, and that is to spread around money that is backed with intimidation,” Marvin Fernandes tells me.” Meanwhile, he says Sawant “has been telling people that Bismarque is with me, but don’t vote for him because it will split the vote— and then Madkaikar will be back again with a license to finish us off.”

Fernandes himself represents something new for Goan politics. He was born in Mumbai, and studied and worked abroad for some years before returning to live in his ancestral Goa. Like so many others who have known the territory in the past, he quickly became distressed by the rampant destruction that has been visited on the state in recent years in the name of development. “But I had no intention of entering politics in any active way until I ran across Bismarque’s ideas and activism.”

Fernandes—who now describes himself as Chief Kindness Officer of the Bismarque Dias campaign—has a background of creative thinking and brand development. He managed the roll-out of the Tata DoCoMo brand in India, and the creation of the pioneering desi cartoon character, Chota Birbal. Within days of their meeting, the Dias election team had an impressive web presence, a popular presence on Facebook, and beautifully designed material in multiple languages that detailed the campaign’s Gandhian manifesto.

“I see this election in Cumbharjua as a problem that requires really creative thinking,” Fernandes tells me in his airy living room in Panjim, as we go over some of the strategic insights he’s arrived at after analysing the electoral rolls, and spending every day on the campaign trail.

He notes the electorate’s anxiety about the future, and recounts many conversations with voters who are deeply unhappy with the way things have gone for the past five years under Madkaikar. In addition, he notes that most of the electorate is completely aware of how similar Sawant is to her ostensible opponent—after all, the two families are long-standing business partners.

“Still, it is surprisingly difficult to translate all the dissatisfaction in the electorate to positive votes for a different candidate,” he tells me.

In order to achieve that result, Fernandes has devised an unconventional strategy that builds on Bismarque’s years of activism for environmental and social justice. It is based on the candidate’s long-standing declaration that “my only religion is kindness,” and is meant to be, “an infinite campaign” that will continue long after 2012.

With three serious candidates—two of them independent—everyone is now aware that the Cumbharjua race is likely to come down to a few hundred votes, and the locals already expect trouble of one kind or another.

The stakes are high. There are huge commercial interests backing both conventional candidates; Madkaikar’s declared assets alone doubled to nearly 12 crores in the past 5 years. Meanwhile, Sawant’s net worth is many times that figure, both veterans have clearly benefited greatly in recent years. With all that at risk, there is no surprise that allegations about election-fixing are already rampant. Earlier this month, Sawant filed an official complaint with the chief elections commissioner of India that the incumbent had engineered the addition of more than 1000 votes with the collusion of, among others, the North Goa collector.

If true (and that inflated 2007 tally gives plenty of cause to suspect that it is) those phantom 1000 votes will probably decide the election.

This is because Cumbharjua houses just 22,916 voters, (15,045 Hindus, 7,171 Catholics)—who seem evenly poised between the three main candidates.

Fernandes says that Madkaikar, Sawant and Dias each has around 4000 votes locked up at this point. “The one who gets to 7000 is going to win” he tells me, a tally that is significantly lower than either main contender tallied in 2007.

Pointing to data sets displayed on post-its on his wall, Fernandes shows me how he thinks Bismarque is going to steal this election from right under the noses of his established rivals. The upstart needs just 25% of Hindus to vote for him, and a seemingly achievable 70% of Christians. And there is crucial set of numbers that pertains to the storied island of Divar, right across the Mandovi from the looming churches of Old Goa— where we’ve made plans to meet the next day—that is prominently highlighted.This is the crucial battleground, Fernandes says. “If Bismarque gets 1200 Catholic votes in Divar, he is the next MLA for Cumbharjua.”