Transforming Fields into Feet Tapping Dance Floors

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Around urban and suburban areas the landscape is rapidly transforming. Although the Revenue Code, Town and Country Planning Act, PDA regulations and orders of the Mumbai High Court prohibit diversion of the tenanted agricultural lands for non agricultural purposes, such prohibition does not seem to be applicable to dance floors. The paddy fields, close to major roads and highways have found a new alternative use - the creation of dance floors.

Although the Goa Highways Act, 1972, does not permit random puncturing of the State and National Highways to connect private properties, people are building such accesses, creating dangerous traffic hazards. Conversion of vast green paddy fields in a single parcel or incrementally into sprawling, leveled dance floors, make these flat structures the largest popular private non-residential mega projects in the state. Why are the village panchayats, municipal councils and gram sabhas turning a blind eye to this land use change and landscape transformation? The reason is simple. The stakeholders perceive dance floors as socially, culturally and economically beneficial - even if the ecological and environmental costs (such as damage to normal drainage profile, stagnation of water, noise pollution, effluents, solid waste generation), may turn out later to be prohibitive.

Chronological studies from 1990 on dance floors on the outskirts of Panaji have revealed an interesting sequence of events. These would help any new tenant cum entrepreneur interested in converting paddy fields into dance floors. The question of licensing, permissions and legalities is left to the competent authorities. Once the private developer selects an area with the potential of a dance floor, first a few coconut and banana saplings and other fruit trees are planted without filling and leveling the land.

After this horticultural stage setting, which actually acts as a temporary smoke screen, people think that a plantation is being raised in the paddy field. After a few months, the plants are buried in newly dumped soil. The soil is then leveled. The appearance is still of a typical plantation, but now the dance floor is actually taking shape.

More soil is dumped regularly and immediately leveled. Then a lawn is planted and irrigated. Within weeks a rough stone fencing is seen parallel to the nearest road. Then a road connecting the proposed dance floor to the highway is built without asphalting-so technically it becomes a foot track. After a few more days the fencing is made permanent. Landscaping and beautification activities are seen in full swing inside the pesudo-plantation. Permanent service structures slowly emerge. The reclaimed area gets illuminated.

This slow motion activity is not easily noticed by casual visitors. But regular visitors understand that the owner is aiming to create a dance floor. Then a hoarding may appear from nowhere to announce that a new open-air dance floor is commissioned.

In Tiswadi taluka on average, conversion of paddy fields to popular dance floors take anywhere between two to ten years, depending upon the level of political patronage, which the developer enjoys.

A major problem in Goa for owners of dance floors is parking space. If the place falls short of parking space then adjoining paddy fields are leveled. If the dance floor is close to a state or national highway then the shoulders of the road are freely used to park the vehicles bumper to bumper. Neither the PWD, nor the traffic police nor the Transport Department has any objection if hundreds of vehicles are parked in this fashion late at night.

Conversion of appropriately located paddy fields into open-air bars and dancing floors has lately become a big business in Goa. This is because of the lack of adequate space and facilities for event organisation and recreation. A simple middle class wedding reception costs not less than Rs one lakh. Very few people can afford the exorbitant prices of  larger private auditoriums. Dance floors in countryside are getting popular because there are few overheads for the owner. They can afford to offer competitive prices for their clients. Customers also prefer the cool, open-air environment, landscaping and electrical illumination. There are no hassles for locating parking space.

Considering the benefits of these open-air dance floors – the question emerges as to why anyone should be opposed to such employment generating activity? The reason is that the government has no policy to permit and regulate such dance floors by converting fertile agricultural lands. If the government declares such a policy then there would be virtual ‘gold rush’ to convert the nearest paddy fields into open-air bars and dance floors. No paddy field would be left around Panaji, Margao, Mapusa, Calangute, Candolim and Saligao. The government knows that such a policy would have wider implications. So it has apparently decided to turn a blind eye if tenants at their own risks and costs are slowly converting paddy fields into dance floors. When an agricultural officer, a talathi, a mamlatdar, a town planner, a village panchayat secretary or a PWD engineer notices plantation of banana plants and coconut saplings, in a paddy field, no questions are raised. Subsequently if the land gets filled also there are no inspections. This naturally emboldens the tenant developer who knows that if he persists and goes slow then he can convert the field.

There are specific cases where permanent residential constructions have been built over the original dance floors. But this may be the final goal  behind all dance floors - seek an intermediate way before the land could be developed into a real estate. If the owner of a dance floor suffers losses, then there is very little chance that he would revert it back to a paddy field. He would be interested in identifying a developer or he himself would make plots and construct buildings. The government and the media may be alarmed about demise of agriculture in Goa - but the alternative found by tenant owners is impressive. If one cannot cultivate any crop, at least welcome the happy dancing feet. The booming private dance floor culture also shows the confusion of the Goan masses over the conservation of the life support systems-unaltered hydrography, natural drainages and fertile ancestral land resources. Dancing is good as long as the floor underneath does not cry in silent anguish.