Contribution short abstract:

The influx of capital into Goa has fuelled conflicts over land use, access and rights. Examining contested real estate projects and the decline of coastal commons, this paper analyses the potential of commoning practices in shifting regimes of dispossession and market expansion.

Contribution long abstract:

The recent influx of capital into Goa, a state in West India, as a sprawling site for “second-homes”, digital nomads and slow travel tourism, has brought the state’s history of land rights and access to the fore. Increasingly, illegal constructions and pseudo-legal reclassifications of land categories have facilitated rapid infrastructure development, prompting citizen-led resistance through demonstrations and movements like Amche Mollem and Goa Bachao Abhiyan (Save Goa movement). This paper examines two key moments of contestation to explore evolving imaginaries of the commons in Goa.

The first centres instances of land filling and hill cutting for real estate development which are vehemently opposed by local NGOs, activists and citizen-led efforts across villages. The second investigates Goa’s khazan lands—low-lying marshy fields reclaimed from the sea and historically managed as commons—where traditional systems of cultivation and collective landholding face threats from private acquisition and neglect. By analysing these heritage systems and the resistance to their erosion, the paper highlights the tension between social practices of managing coastal commons and the economic valuation of these ecosystems.

Drawing on Harvey’s (2009) critique of the binary between private property and state intervention, I argue that these tensions open up new ways of conceptualising collectivisation within market regimes. Goa’s vibrant history of environmental activism and advocacy for equitable land and resource use continues to inform the possibilities for coastal transformation. This paper contributes to a broader understanding of the politics of property transfers and the potential for commoning practices to challenge forces of dispossession.