Few are aware that the Portuguese ruled Goa for 450 years (1510-1961) and yet had a poor economy. Portugal was a ‘pioneer in expansionism’, motivating other sea faring, ship building neighbours to explore, conquer, loot and plunder. Yet, it was one of the backward countries in western Europe in terms of GDP and per capita income. This was mainly due to short-sighted economic policies when it failed to outgrow its initial mercantile objectives of extracting maximum profits with minimal investment.
Agriculture, mining, infrastructure, industry, and higher education stayed quite static during their rule in Goa. Literacy remained at very low levels (11-13%) even after hundreds of years of an uninterrupted rule. Trade, commerce, tariffs, and other dues remained its major source of revenue with poor investment in production. Lotteries and excise duty generated great income. There was a silent encouragement of smuggling and illegal sales of Indian goods to generate the much-needed Indian currency. Banco Nacional Ultamarino, the only bank, had the dubious distinction of accepting deposits but offering no interest and advancing loans at what was probably the highest rate of interest in the world. In 1939, around 20-25% of total income consisted of excise tariffs, second to customs as the greatest source of state revenues. Portuguese India hence gained the dubious distinction of being the ‘most intoxicated’ country in the world. Portugal did not know unfortunately how to exploit the way the Britishers could.
The Portuguese should now be happy that many states are following their economic model where excise taxes form a major part of their revenue. We are now allowing the bars to remain open the whole night too without worrying about the risk of collateral damage to innocent citizens because of late night drunken driving. It is sad that Excise becomes an important part of revenue and the governments apply targets to achieve. Apparently, the department becomes jittery on the ‘no drink’ days as it makes exceptions for a few places to sell liquor. On the other hand, there are the hypocrisies of ‘prohibition states’ where liquor flows in equal amounts as any other state but the revenue goes into personal pockets.
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