Thread by @smitagnair

1.Two threads down, let’s now talk of Goa’s youngest regional party,  #RevolutionaryGoans (RG), a group that has effectively funnelled the anxieties of the youth — in a state with dwindling job opportunities — to create an “enemy" out of the outsider.

https://twitter.com/smitagnair/status/1489494041440157698

2.While it’s too early to gauge the journey RG and its 40 candidates will take post #GoaElections2022, the damage its nativism poll plank can do to the vote-share of competing parties cannot be ignored. 

Let’s look at the political vacuum in which RG’s journeys began.

3. In March 2017, days after Goa had voted, seven young men took to scrubbing the walls of Panjim municipal market to erase tobacco stains off a Mario Miranda-inspired mural. They identified themselves as "Revolutionary Goans”, scrubbing to “safeguard Goan culture”.

4.The most enterprising among them, Manoj Parab, had joined politics after reading Arvind Kejriwal’s Swaraj. Parab left AAP before the 2017 ballots were counted, saying he was “disillusioned ” with the party.

5.Unlike political parties that emerge from a split in an existing party or a large people's movement, RG did not come out of any existing movement. It grew organically, supporting other local movements and later starting its own.

6. RG’s support base comes from a forgotten constituency: unemployed youth disillusioned with a collapsing economy. RG claims to be the only party with a narrative:‘empowerment of youth to secure Goa’s future’. ‘Uzzo’, Konkani for fire, is its call sign among ‘Revolutionaries’.

7. In five years RG has bootstrapped its way — in terms of personnel and resources —using guerrilla marketing to grow its base. RG has invested in hashtags in social media — against TMC and AAP’s hoardings — utilising the reach of internet to the fullest.

8. ‘Uzzo’ has also gained acceptance among youngsters across the state who can be heard shouting the word to each other, whether or not they support the party. Any political post on Goan forums — even if it is not about RG—now has multiple fire emojis in the comments.

9. In the 2022 polls, RG is the only party apart from BJP to contest all 40 seats without an ally. Its founder Manoj Parab, a post-graduate in Geology and Earth Sciences, is the lone candidate to contest two constituencies — Tivim and Valpoi, both in North Goa.

10. Parab says he is playing the “big game” with “people’s minds, not money”. If in 2017, RG started with 7 young men, this January its supporters filled a maidan in Panjim on a rainy day, having succeeded in making “inroads into Goan youth’s imagination”.

11. Goa Forward Party (GF) too debuted in 2017 elections on a “Goa for Goans” plank. RG is going a step ahead with a stubborn demand: Define who is a Goan.
 
GF’s Vijai Sardesai has dismissed RG calling it a “desperate army of mercenaries resorting to violence and fear”.

12. The People of Goan Origin (POGO) Bill proposed by RG defines a Goan as anyone whose ancestors lived in Goa before 20 December 1961 – a day after Goa’s liberation.
 
In case anyone lacks the documents, their Gram Sabha can attest to their ‘Goanness’, says the bill.

13. For the past four years, RG has been trying to garner support for the bill from the public and elected representatives. While the party’s rallies draw large crowds, no party or MLA seems to have taken its demand seriously.

14. In the past, Parab has implored locals to unite to fight the “outsiders who are in Goa to take away jobs and land”. Legal experts point to several aspects of the demand as “unconstitutional”. RG now identifies “illegal migrants” as people with multiple voter cards.

15. In the run up to elections, there is speculation that RG’s funding comes from a political source which wants to benefit from a ‘distraction’ , an allegation that Parab has repeatedly denied.

16. Political parties and intellectuals have dismissed RG “as a bunch of jobless youth making noise”. But they admit that the extent of RG’s final vote share would help policy makers to study the undercurrents around the economic flux in Goa.

17. Parab claims RG is not in the fray to break votes, but to bring about a revolution. If RG manages to cross AAP’s debut electoral vote-share of 6%, despite a much smaller resource-pool, it would say a lot about the dissatisfaction towards ‘outsiders’ brewing among Goans.

18. Parab tells me he has a far bigger goal. After years of petitioning MLAs to table the POGO Bill, he now hopes to take it to the floor of the house himself. He is willing to sit in the opposition, but table the bill he will, he says.

cont..

19. Girish Kuber, Editor of Loksatta tells me the entire argument of the “outsider taking the local’s job” is fundamentally flawed and is based on a parochial attitude and a sense of insecurity.

Cont..

20. In December, RG finally got the election symbol it had asked for: a football.

Parab says it can’t get more Goan than that!

21.Too much politics?

Let’s end the thread for today and read an old story about an adorable football player?

indianexpress.com/article/india/…

Another poll thread soon.

@threadreaderapp please unroll