In another article this month, Alexandre Moniz Barboza, journalist and editor of O Herald, writes, “In December 1961, the territory was largely underdeveloped. Only roads connecting major towns had a coat of tarmac. The main industries were mining and cashew nut processing. Schools existed, higher education was limited to medicine, pharmacy, teacher training and some technical courses. That had to change and it did.”But long-term planning was markedly absent, he laments, and points to crisscrossing of bridges over the River Zuari, or three bridges all within kiss-blowing distance of each other over the River Mandovi.Writer and educationist Dr. Maria Aurora Couto observes, “In Goa we have had had problems of discovering and establishing an identity…the various strands and complexities can only be understood by a sense of experience and emotion rooted in one’s own family experience and in the experience of other families that have lived through the times recaptured in individual and family memories,” she says.Goa at 60 continues to be a complex mix of languages, cultures and identity, a seamless blend of the East and the West, steeped in the past and thriving in the present. Would it rather have retained its Portuguese identity? Perhaps not; because Goans have the best of both worlds.(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday.)
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