Forget war, Goans gulp a toast to heady polls

War clouds brewing over India? Maybe, but as far as Goa is concerned the only thing still brewing is beer. It’s carnival time in the st...

War clouds brewing over India? Maybe, but as far as Goa is concerned the only thing still brewing is beer. It’s carnival time in the state. It’s really election time but in this land of the sea and sun — where on May 30 Goans will come out and cast their votes for the 40 state assembly seats — the lines are blurred.

Since constituencies are small — each tinier than a municipal ward in Mumbai or New Delhi — candidates prefer door-to-door canvassing. Then there is the pub-to-pub canvassing, when a candidate just walks into a bar, chats up the manager, tells the guzzlers the drinks are on him, they’re all ears and he begins to talk votes.

Goa’s new faces

PANAJI: There are nearly 109 new faces among the 210 candidates in the fray for the Goa Assembly mid-term elections on May 30 to elect 40 representatives. Among them, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party has fielded 15, BJP 12, Congress nine, Nationalist Congress Party 10, Shiv Sena eight and others including independents 51. (Agencies)

Walk into an election meeting. There’s wine and song and dance and somewhere — in a little footnote — there’s party propaganda. But poor turn-outs at election meetings are still a worrying factor. Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s rally in April and Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s last week drew huge crowds but that’s about it.

So now candidates have switched tack — they’ve got specially composed spoofs on well-known Marathi and Konkani songs, traditional dance-music is blared from atop vehicles, candidates give away T-shirts with their mugshots boldly printed, traditional dramatists called Tiatrists are making a quick buck composing skits for candidates and updating them daily on the basis on news reports. And, then, finally, there’s the beer factor.

Monte Cruz, a candidate from the smaller United Goans Democratic Party, plies his workers and electorate with beer at every meeting. It helps that he owns the brewery that makes Belo beer. Union Minister Pramod Mahajan was harangued by a man who demanded ‘‘liquor money’’ for attending his meeting. Mahajan shooed him away but Sharad Kulkarni, BJP Maharashtra leader in charge of Goa, admitted liquor has become a part of electioneering here.

This is all part of the Goan bottomline: they must have a good time, come what may. ‘‘For some of us, there’s a disconnect because in Delhi and Mumbai, we are glued to our mobiles and TV sets for the next piece of news from Kashmir or Vajpayee’s next statement but here in Goa, it’s a different world. Elections are an excuse to have fun,’’ says a Mumbai BJP leader, here for the polls.