Intermission and refreshments

For your amusement I give you the most popular Indian dance, the corruption dance. Based on numerous reports Gokarna feels at times to be in the midst of a corrupt police feeding frenzy. I give you a composite summary of these tales, with as much accuracy as a non-practising engineer can muster.

Cannabis is illegal in India, legal in India for religious uses, legal and sold by the government when called bhang, grows wild in India, and is of course strictly illegal. Generally speaking it's a crime for most people to possess, and you very much do not want to go to court. I have heard that you can expect 6 months imprisonment and a large fine. The police know this, the tourists know this, many tourists smoke charas (indian hash), many police are corrupt. Does this sound like a recipe for extortion?

Those elements of the society most prone to corrupt behaviour, known as the police force, have learned when tourists who are likely to be carrying drugs arrive into Gokarna and lie in wait. The rickshaws from the Goa train and the tourist bus are then intercepted, and the occupants searched. When some drugs are found, or a mime of finding some drugs is performed in the case of Israeli passport holders who will afterwards tell you they know it wasn't real because the drugs were in the other pocket, the extortion begins. The typical story is of an initial demand of Rs25,000 or Rs50,000, which is a vast sum of money. This is probably at least 2 months wages for any police officer, and 5 months wages for most Indians! Thankfully this is normally negotiated down to the much lower level of all the cash that the tourist is carrying. The distribution of sums I have heard of is Rs1000, Rs8000, Rs9000, Rs10000x3, Rs16,000. This is still a considerable sum of money (around 100 GBP).

The sites of searching and extortion are as you might imagine out of view of too many people who might know better. Even if the search is somewhere semi-public the negotiations are often described as slightly removed. The rickshaws are stopped between the station and town, and the tourist connecting bus from Ankola also at a convenient checkpoint. There have also been many reports of police, often non-uniformed except for the distinctive moustache, lurking in the forest paths between the beaches or sitting openly on Paradise beach. They have even ventured into the guest houses on Om Beach, a curiously public approach, where they sit in wait for a tourist who rolls a suspicious smoke. The smokers have already revealed themselves, but in other cases men and bags are searched carefully. Note that as to women, accusations of sexual harassment is something that even corrupt police don't want to touch with a barge-pole following India's sudden national recognition that this problem exists and has existed for a long time.

For me, I'm torn. The drugs are illegal, and these are the laws set by a democratic government of the country. Even if the policy on cannabis makes very little sense, it is as it is and the reason these police have not been challenged is that they stick to people who are breaking the law. On the other hand, this form of revenue collection is illegal and detrimental to tourism (a number of tourists feeling that the searches are a rather fascist action). While no tourist fancies time in jail it's not going to change fast.

Of course for a long time the alternative revenue collection force of India, with their fine bamboo canes, have had their finger in another Indian pie. Many of the businesses on the beach sell alcohol without a license, as the licensing laws of India are highly restrictive (places which sell alcohol are by law required to have a minimum level of seedy atmosphere). Not that I suggest otherwise, Goa has more liberal licensing and I can't say that the results are entirely pleasant. This is a problem for tourism in India, tourists want to drink, but the restaurants can't legally sell them beer.

The Engineer in India has the following thoughts, the corruption is facilitated by strict regulation and laws. Tourism is important to India, it's the third largest export, if you accept the arbitrary categories used by the source I used to research this, behind petroleum products and gems and minerals. While it shouldn't be a case of changing the customs of the country, small changes affecting foreigners remove some of the opportunities for corruption. For example, permitting the sale of beer to foreign passport holders (as in Gujurat), and replacing the custodial penalty for possession of charas with a fine and deportation.

But I can't see things changing too quickly. Corruption.

I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member

The problem on the beach, has to do with the right people. The concept of 'the right people' seems familiar, isn't it reasonable to define types of people you don't want to be around. But it is a concept which is familiar from the world of Jane Austen's fiction, and just as in her stories I fear that those who hold this prejudice stand to be shown as fools. This fits my theme so far this year to try and condense situations and behaviours to their real nature, even if this is something abhorrent that society prefers to leave unsaid. I fear the hidden prejudice more than the outspoken one.

On the beach it certainly appears that the right people are not Indian. Such a racist definition is troubling and a cause for deep reflection. It is often summarised on the beach by the statement 'no room'. Sometimes by the time the local tourists reach the last lodge on the beach, where I stay, they have figured this out. 'No room for Indians eh'. This is an uncomfortable moment for white guilt, but isn't entirely what it seems. The definition through nationality hides the real causes of this rule on the beach.

The first clue comes from the exceptions, it is not all Indians who are unwelcome on the beach. Richer, younger, mixed groups of Indian tourists from Bangalore are far more accepted on the beach. They come for their own holiday in much the same way as the foreigners, drink moderately and behave well by standard western social rules. The behaviour is the distinction, and not all visitors to the beach behave by the same standards. The problem comes from certain groups of local tourists, and the indicator is that these groups are almost always men. While small single-sex groups of foreigners may sometimes arrive, this criteria largely separates the two groups without any national definition. Why is this group entirely men, or alternatively trailing their subordinate women who hang around separated at the end of the beach.

As a background to the situation of this one beach: There are many beautiful beaches in the area, many less spoiled than Om Beach, Gokarna. But this beach had the questionable distinction of being marketed by the state as a destination for tourism after it had already become popular with westerners, and the recipients of this marketing are mostly local. It is also known, by word of mouth and it's internet equivalents as a place where you can go and see foreign women wearing very little. So this beach is the beach chosen for the holiday, and the groups of men arrive. It's a day out, and that means splashing in the sea, lying in the surf, screaming, shrieking, burying each other in the sand (A very popular game among adult Indian men). But it also means drinking, fighting, staring at white girls, covertly or overtly taking photos of white girls, attempting to touch white girls, or even forming a silent circle around the occasional girl who made the mistake of resting alone on the beach. What else would a frustrated Indian man, not that this frustration is without justification, do with his bottle than smash it somewhere, and give me the pleasant occupation of removing bits of glass from the path I walk barefoot at night.

This is the problem, the people who choose to visit the beach from the local area are not 'the right people' as far as foreign tourists are concerned. While it's only a minority that get involved in causing problems, the quiet beach is replaced by constant screaming, and the noise of the speed boat towing the inflatable pontoon which is popular with the Indian tourists. The Western tourists would prefer a quiet beach... in short they prefer their own company. Other countries, and I have heard tales that Sri Lanka is among them, have formalised this and in the name of international tourism simply exclude local people from certain tourist locations. On Om Beach this exclusion is instead operated by the lodge owners, in front of you, and the accessibility of beach creates the conflict.

While it feels like it has reached the point of a definition based on nationality, with it's exception for Indian tourists from the more developed areas, it isn't a unique phenomenon. The business owners are merely bouncers selecting the right clientele as practised worldwide. They have learned that for Bangalore tourists the guests can be trusted sufficiently not to harass the foreign guests as many of the lodges have had experience with before. The two parallels, which explain this behaviour in significantly less racist terms, if the substitution of genderism or classism for racism is indeed an improvement. The first of these is very much at home in the UK. This is the nightclub with the 'no single-sex groups' policy. A carefully vague implementation that is used to avoid what is known as a 'cockfest' in the most choice venues when too many of the guests are men. You see this in Goa, with different pricing for men and women in the same resort. This situation comes about due to pressure from large numbers of men... in itself a problem with a far reaching stench I will dwell on later. In the most extreme case the most popular Goa nightclub is said to charge Rs5000 (2 weeks pay for a government bus driver, or at the demanded but not implemented minimum wage level) per head for men, half for men with a partner, and nothing for women. The male-female balance is simply a bigger issue in India, due to the far lower freedoms of most women in the society. The no-single-sex groups rule is almost universal among the trendy bars of Conaught Place, New Delhi.

The second rule is class. It's something I have considered on this blog before, freshly visible when entering a country as a foreigner. Why pay Rs5000 per night for a hotel when a good quality room is available for Rs1000 (the cheapest are around Rs300). You definitely do not buy five times the luxury, comfort or convenience. What you buy is submission, as a valued guest, status, and company. People pay more to escape the company of people they don't want to be around. Whether you consider this distinction 'class', or simply a direct function of wealth 'poorer', its powerful and greatly in effect. This prejudice exists to varying extents in all countries. I'm shortening the argument greatly because it's not central, and dipping into the past for a suitable throwaway comparison, but there are many rungs between the Ritz and the working men's club. This becomes a problem on Om Beach due to the curious budgeting of long stay travellers. Having already paid hundreds of pounds to travel from Europe, North America or Australia/NZ/Japan they have already separated themselves from (and a painful thought), the poor of their own countries, and especially India where 2 dollars a day is a wage. But having spent so much money they now spend very little (comparable to mid range local prices) on food and accommodation. This is affordable by far more than the Indian middle class, and after all the beach is public property. Part of the discord in the mixing is the vastly different ease of access to the beach.

If I was to turn apologist again for this classist sentiment, I would comment on the different mix of traveler. One has left his own country to explore the world, the other has not. Even when Indians come from Bangalore the mixing is difficult, and uneasy. There just isn't the ground in common between those who are here for a weekend and those who have come for weeks, months or years. In many cases there isn't a full understanding of the freedom most of these half-way-over-the-world travelers have, there is awe, but not understanding. This isn't somewhere where the local culture is quaint because the most educated Indians are, for better or worse, less identifiably unique. Whether it's right or wrong, there is a blurring of what it constitutes to be a national of a country in all other countries. Foreign tourists from North America, South America, Europe, Israel and Australia differ far less in culture (possibly explicable... empires).

In the end, I have failed to really get to grips with the problem of the original statement. Because one group was easy to separate and due to the uneasiness in my mind had already received much thought. Sometimes the foreign tourists are not 'the right people' either. Desire to choose our company goes further. These distinctions become ever more delicate, mixed with my sympathies and fears as one who has before now felt himself to be one of the unwanted. Ultimately the hatred which flares when I hear the sound of broken glass is mixed with a gnawing inside, of empathy with the unwanted. For the second part, the more difficult look at why 'English people' are not universally popular on the beach. At least not the right ones.