Word: goa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Despite Indian assertions that the Goan people were delighted with their "liberation," Indian troops elsewhere in Goa were received with similar muted enthusiasm. No welcoming arches or banners were strung over the streets, and the few Jai Hind (Hail India) slogans painted on official buildings had mostly been slapped on by the Indians themselves, not by an exuberant citizenry. Fraternization between the Indians and the Goans was almost nonexistent. Armed Indian infantrymen, their weapons slung over their shoulders, went sightseeing on near-deserted streets...
Into the vacuum left by the exit of the Portuguese have swept five boisterous, brawling political parties, each hopeful of attracting Indian favors by horror stories of subjugation under the Portuguese. One political leader, J. M. D'Souza of Goa's National Union Party, claims that the Portuguese civil authorities kept a collection of whipping canes, allowed their prisoners to pick the cane with which they were to be beaten. The Portuguese sometimes administered the beatings themselves, he said, but sometimes they were given by native Goans disguised in black masks against the wrath of their victims...
Lipstick & Minesweepers. Whatever the local politicians might eventually accomplish in Goa, the immediate problems were economic. Goa's virtually duty-free status sent swarms of Indian soldiers into shops stocked with inexpensive foreign luxury items seldom seen in India because of the government's stringent import restrictions. Shopkeepers did a brisk business in transistor radios, cameras, electric appliances, cosmetics, perfumes, wines. In one Pangim shop alone, Indian soldiers bought 1,400 Max Factor lipsticks. Truckloads of refrigerators were purchased by army officers for shipment home. But the days of the modest boom are numbered. High on the agenda...
Already considerable progress has been made in getting Goa's administration back into working order. Finance Ministry officials are drafting a new budget that will bring the former colony under the economic supervision of the central government, and the State Bank of India has taken over Goa's Banco Nacional Ultramarino. Goan policemen, who had vanished when the Indian troops first appeared, were back on the job wearing their Portuguese uniforms. An Indian postal official arrived in Goa with $3,000 worth of Indian stamps, and Indian telegraph and telephone authorities wrestled with the problem of replacing Goa...
Indian navy minesweepers carefully swept Mormugão harbor, India's richest prize from the invasion and the finest natural harbor on the Indian subcontinent. Biggest economic boon of union with India for agriculturally impoverished Goa will be the availability of cheaper food. After India placed a trade embargo on Goa in 1954, the Goans were forced to import most of their food and vegetables from as far away as The Netherlands. The trade ban will soon be lifted...