Chandor Ganv Vhodd Zaum!

In an earlier post, I had written about how villagers in Chandor (Goa) have put together a proposal on how the village should develop over the next few years. It is considered to be the first such initiative in Goa.

The plan titled Chandor Ganv Vhodd Zaum! is now available online. Click to read the comprehensive plan.

Virtual Tour of World Heritage Sites

WHTour.org creates and maintains a documentary image bank with panoramic pictures and interactive virtual reality movies for some sites registered as World Heritage by UNESCO.

You just need QuickTime on your computer to view the excellent 360 degree images of the heritage sites.

For example, have a look at the world heritage monuments (churches) of Old Goa.

Community-Driven Village Development

Say "community-driven village development" and what immediately comes to mind is Anna Hazare's hugely successful initiative in Ralegaon Siddhi.

Now, in what is considered to be a first in Goa, villagers from Chandor (my native place) have put together a "Five Year People’s Plan for the Sustainable Development of Chandor (2007-2012)."

The development plan is a comprehensive document (titled Chandor ganv vhodd zaum) that lays down a proposal on how the village of Chandor should develop over the next few years. The plan was put together "with the active participation of all the people for whom it is intended."

Being the first such substantive community-driven initiative in Goa, it has got a fair amount of media coverage in Goa:

• Chandor villagers present development plan to panchayat
• Chandor sets new precedent in Goa
• Chandor's way
• Amcho ganv, amcho jiv, salvar koria

After going through the plan, it is obvious that a lot of thought and effort has gone into putting together the plan (unfortunately, the plan is not yet available online).

The Chandor team that led the development plan movement deserve unqualified kudos!

Keep it up folks! I feel proud to be a Chandorkar!

More on Nike's Cricket Ad

This is a follow-up to my earlier post on Nike's cricket ad that's currently shown on Indian television.

Agnello Dias, Senior Vice President and Executive Creative Director, J Walter Thompson, is the creative mind behind the ad. The Goan music and Konkani lyrics were also his idea. It looks like Agnello is a Goan.

The song in the ad is rendered by Ella Castellino (another Goan?). The lyrics of the song (translated into English) are:

Wait, partner, wait
First let me play
If you don't play, I'll keep chasing you all day
Our game is like this only
Where we have no time to think
It is the game of cat and mouse
That I have begun to love
And in the falling running breaking
My destiny is entwined

Rediff has a story containing the above nuggets and other details on how the ad was made.

Quotes on Goa

In a recent post on Goanet, FN pieced together some quotable quotes on Goa. Here are the quotes...


This town was very large, with goodly edifices and handsome streets and squares, surrounded by walls and towers. There is a very good fortress in it, and in the environs many gardens and orchards of fine trees and fruits, and many pools of good water.

- Duarte Barbosa describing Goa, centuries ago.

Goans are a tolerant, informal people, team-oriented and people-oriented and supportive of one another's work. They are both individually and socially responsive.

- Fr Romualdo R De Souza, founder, Goa Institute of Management and former Director of Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur. Also founder-director of Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar.

Goa has achieved a remarkable level of social cohesion since its liberation in 1961. It is relatively free of the communal and caste tensions which have vitiated (the) investment climate elsewhere.... A sense of relaxation which every visitor feels in Goa is a product of its life-style, which is in consonance with mother nature, and a sense of fulfillment which the people of Goa exhibit in their day-to-day life.

- V. A. Pai Panandiker, economist, earlier director of Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

Most of us are aware of 450 years of European dominance and the institutional, religious and legal imperatives resulting from it. Some of us are aware of a change-over in the last thirty years from a predominantly Christian to a symbiotic Hindu-Christian society, where the Hindu element has supplanted the Christian in numerical terms. Very few of us are conscious about the impact that the overlay of a globalised-homogenised dominant culture has and continues to have upon the manifestation of an indigenous culture.

- Cho Padamsee, former principal, Goa College of Architecture.

Before the 16th century, Goa was a languid Elysium, a remote province on the periphery of large kingdoms, ensconced in the wooded foothills of the Western Ghats. In the 16th century, it was suddenly elevated to the status of being the eastern metropolis of the Portuguese empire, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It then became the seat of a Christian imperialism whose influence, in the east, encompassed the area between the Cape of Good Hope and the Sea of Japan.

- Jose Pereira, Professor Emeritus of Theology, Fordham University, New York.

[Goa's] metropolitan dignity was embodied in structures of an appropriate grandeur during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Then, as the Portuguese empire decayed, Goa sank into political insignificance, becoming again a soporific paradise, but retaining a sense of the former grandeur in its edifices, now enveloped by the land's idyllic landscape.

- Jose Pereira, Professor Emeritus of Theology, Fordham University, New York.