L26: Occupations in Transition

Good morning, class! Welcome back. I hope the craft market visit was illuminating — several of you sent me photographs, which I appreciated. Today is Lecture 26: Occupations in Transition. Quick recap: Lectures 23, 24, and 25 took us through the major traditional trades and crafts of Goa — fishing, agriculture, toddy tapping, mining, pottery, weaving, wood carving, and boat building. We established that these are not just economic activities but knowledge systems, community structures, and cultural heritage. Today we ask: what happens when these occupations change or disappear? [INTRODUCTION — 0 to 10 minutes] I want to open with a story. A few years ago, I visited a village in Sanguem — interior South Goa — where iron ore mining had been the primary employer for thirty years. The mines were now closed because of the Supreme Court order. I spoke to a group of men in their thirties and forties who had driven ore trucks for a decade. They had been earning good wages — five to seven thousand rupees a month, which for a village family in the 1990s and 2000s was respectable money. Now the mines were closed, the trucks were parked, and they had no idea what to do next. One of them told me something that has stayed with me. He said: "My father was a farmer. When I left farming to drive a truck, I lost his knowledge — I don't know how to work the khazan, I don't know the rice varieties, I don't know the tides. Now I can't go back to farming and I can't go forward with mining. I am in the middle of the river and both banks are far away." That image — in the middle of the river, both banks far away — is the experience of occupational transition in Goa. And it is the subject of today's lecture. [CORE CONTENT — 10 to 40 minutes] Let us first establish the scale of occupational change in Goa. Goa's economy has transformed dramatically since liberation in 1961. In 1961, the majority of Goans were engaged in agriculture, fishing, and artisanal trades. By 2001, the majority were in services — tourism, hospitality, retail, government employment, and construction. This is a complete economic transformation within two generations. Two generations is not a long time in the life of a society, and cultures do not adapt to economic transformation that fast. The forces driving occupational transition in Goa are multiple. Tourism — which emerged as Goa's dominant industry from the 1970s onward — created enormous demand for service sector workers: hotel staff, restaurant workers, taxi drivers, tour guides, travel agents, souvenir vendors. The income from tourism employment was often higher and more reliable than from traditional agriculture or fishing. Young people moved toward tourism employment in large numbers. Mining — as we discussed — employed people from interior communities but has now contracted sharply. Government employment — in the Goa state government, in the central government, in public sector enterprises — absorbed the educated middle class. The private sector, including IT services, retail, and financial services, has grown. And remittance income from the Goan diaspora in the Gulf and in Europe has replaced agricultural income for many families. What happens to the knowledge carried by traditional occupations when those occupations are abandoned? This is a question that economists do not usually ask, but cultural heritage scholars must ask it. When a Kharvi fisherman's son becomes a hotel receptionist, several things happen. The positive things: he gets a regular salary, he works in a safe environment, he has social mobility. But here is what is lost. He no longer knows how to read the sea. He cannot identify fish species by sight, or judge the quality of a catch. He does not know which months bring which fish, or how to maintain a fishing boat. He does not speak the technical vocabulary of fishing — the names of different nets, the different fishing grounds, the weather signs. And his children will know even less. Within two or three generations, the fishing knowledge of a community that spent centuries accumulating it is essentially gone. This knowledge loss is what the anthropologist Paul Connerton calls "connective tissue" — the practical knowledge that holds a community's relationship with its environment together. When it goes, the community becomes dependent on purchased goods and services rather than on their own skill and environment. They become consumers rather than producers. And they become vulnerable — if the hotel job disappears, they have no fallback. The case of the Kunbi community is instructive. The Kunbi are one of Goa's most numerous OBC communities, traditionally rice cultivators and weavers. As agricultural income declined and tourist employment grew, many Kunbi families in coastal talukas — Bardez, Salcette — left farming for tourism employment. They became waiters, cooks, cleaners, taxi drivers. Their agricultural land, if it was in the coastal zone, dramatically increased in value and was either sold to developers or rented to tourist operators. Their traditional Kunbi saree is now a festival costume rather than everyday wear. Their folk dance — the Kunbi dance — is performed at cultural festivals and tourism events. Their rice fields are either built over or growing scrub. Is this a tragedy? It is complicated. The Kunbi family that sold a coastal plot for thirty lakh rupees in 1995 is economically better off than their grandparents were. Their children have better educational opportunities. They are not dependent on monsoon rainfall for their food. But they are also disconnected from the ecological knowledge, the physical skills, and the community structures that gave the Kunbi their specific cultural identity. Gender and occupational transition interact in complex ways. Women in traditional Goan agricultural communities had specific occupational roles: transplanting and harvesting rice, gathering vegetables, making rice preparations, weaving. These roles gave women economic contribution and social standing within the household. As agriculture declined, these women's roles declined too. The alternative — tourism sector employment — is available to women in some capacities (housekeeping, laundry, kitchen work) but often in conditions of lower wages and less security than for men. The transition has not been gender-neutral. At the same time, some women have benefited from occupational transition. The opening of government jobs, NGO employment, and service sector positions to educated women from traditional communities is a genuine social advance. A Kumbhar woman who becomes a schoolteacher is not living a worse life than her grandmother who made pots. The question is not whether change happens — change always happens — but whether the transition is managed in a way that preserves cultural heritage knowledge alongside improving material conditions. Let me say something about the role of the tourism industry specifically. Goa's tourism sector has paradoxically both destroyed and exploited traditional culture. It has destroyed it by drawing people away from traditional occupations, by converting agricultural land, by bringing in cultural influences that displace local practices. It has exploited it by selling cultural experiences — folk dance shows, Goan food tours, heritage walks, feni tasting sessions — as tourist products. The irony is that as tourism helps dismantle living cultural practices, it simultaneously commodifies them as tourist attractions. The toddy tapper demonstration at a heritage resort is possible precisely because the actual toddy tapping economy has declined. This is not unique to Goa — it is the global pattern of heritage tourism. But it is particularly visible here. The Kunbi dance performance at the five-star resort in Cavelossim is not the same as the Kunbi dance at a village wedding. The feni tasting at the airport duty-free shop is not the same as drinking feni with a fisherman at the end of the day. The heritage product and the living heritage are different things. What policies could manage occupational transition better? Several ideas are on the table in Goa. Heritage craft stipends — paying artisan practitioners a monthly stipend to continue practising and teaching their craft, regardless of commercial income. This exists in small form through the master craftsman award scheme but at insufficient scale. Craft apprenticeship programmes — pairing young people with master practitioners for formal apprenticeships, with government funding. Documentation and intellectual property protection — ensuring that community knowledge is documented and that the communities hold rights to it, preventing others from commercialising it without benefit to the community. Integration of traditional knowledge into formal education — bringing fishing communities' ecological knowledge, khazan management knowledge, and agricultural knowledge into school curricula, so that young people value it and some are motivated to continue it. [ACTIVITY AND DISCUSSION — 40 to 55 minutes] Case study exercise. I will read you a scenario and I want each group of three to develop a policy response. Scenario: The village of Betul in Canacona taluka has been a traditional fishing village for generations. The Ramponkar community here practises beach seine fishing. Over the past decade, younger men have largely stopped fishing — they work in the hotels and restaurants of the nearby tourist area. The older fishermen are aging. Three of the four beach seine boats have been sold. The community's knowledge of seasonal fish behaviour, weather signs, and traditional Konkani fishing vocabulary is held mainly by men over 60. What policy interventions would you recommend to the Goa Department of Fisheries and the Department of Culture to address this situation? Take eight minutes. Develop three concrete policy recommendations. Then present. [pause and presentations] [After presentations:] I notice that all groups proposed some form of financial incentive and documentation. One group also proposed that the fishing knowledge be incorporated into the local school curriculum — which I think is particularly creative. The idea that Betul Primary School students learn to identify local fish species and know the tide tables as part of their science and geography curriculum — that is genuinely practical heritage conservation. Discussion Question 1: The truck driver in Sanguem said he was in the middle of the river with both banks far away. Is it government's responsibility to build a bridge — i.e., actively support occupational transition and knowledge retention? Or is this a matter for communities and individuals to manage themselves? Discussion Question 2: Can traditional occupational knowledge be preserved without preserving the occupational community that generated it? In other words, can documentation in an archive substitute for a living community of practitioners? [SUMMARY AND ASSIGNMENT — 55 to 60 minutes] Today we examined occupational transition in Goa — the scale of the shift from traditional trades to service sector employment, the cultural knowledge loss that accompanies this transition, the specific cases of fishing communities, Kunbi cultivators, and mining-dependent interior communities. We looked at the complex role of tourism — both as driver of cultural displacement and as exploiter of displaced culture. And we discussed policy options. Assignment: Find one person in your family or community who has made a significant occupational transition — from a traditional trade to a modern job. Interview them about the knowledge they feel they have gained and the knowledge they feel they have lost. Write a 400-word reflection. Next lecture — Lecture 27 — we look at Local Markets and Trade Routes. Markets are not just commercial spaces — they are cultural spaces where social exchange, heritage knowledge, and community identity are performed every week. We will look at the famous Mapusa Friday Market, the Anjuna Wednesday Market, and the older network of weekly rural markets — bazaars — and the role they play in transmitting heritage. See you Thursday!