There is a peculiar contradiction in Goa today. On one hand, citizens are more vocal than ever, mobilising against environmental degradation, protesting unchecked construction and demanding accountability from those in power. The intent and passion is undeniable in the populace. Yet, despite this surge of civic energy, meaningful change remains frustratingly out of reach. Policies still favour a narrow set of objectives and priorities. The system, it seems, remains stubbornly indifferent to the very people it is meant to serve.
What explains this gap between intention and outcome?
The answer may lie not in the absence of democratic values, but in the slow erosion of the spaces where those values are practiced. Democracy, after all, is not just about elections or institutions - it is about the daily interactions that sustain it. And in Goa, as in much of the world, those interactions are fading. The village square, once the beating heart of public life, has been reduced to a relic - a place we pass through rather than inhabit.
In a recent lecture at the London School of Economics, political scholar Pratap Bhanu Mehta made a distinction that resonates deeply with Goa’s current predicament. Democracy, he argued, is often caught between two competing visions. The first treats it as a method - a way of resolving disputes or clashes of values. The second sees it as empowerment - a way for people to shape the world around them. As Mehta sees it, “democracy needs both values and empowerment”
Goa has no shortage of the former. We have procedures, committees, and laws. We have a civic minded populace looking out for the commons. But the latter - the sense that ordinary citizens can influence their own futures beyond the election cycle - has withered under the weight of bureaucracy and centralised decision-making. Seeing citizens come out and protest against government mishandling is a symptom of the deeper dissatisfaction that arises of feeling disempowered.
This is not a call to dismantle institutions, but to recognise that institutions alone are not enough. Democracy needs breathing room. It needs spaces where people can gather, debate and act without waiting for permission. Historically, the village square served this role. It was where news was shared, disputes were ironed out, and collective action was born. Today, those functions have been outsourced - to social media, to government offices, to the opaque machinery of governance. The result is a democracy that feels increasingly hollow.
The decline of the village square is part of the broader unraveling of community ties. Sociologists sometimes speak of the ‘middle ring’ of relationships - the layer between close family and distant acquaintances. These are the neighbours, the shopkeepers, the familiar faces of daily life. They are not intimate friends, but they are the glue that holds society together. The middle ring is key to social cohesion. The village square is our best arena for practicing productive disagreement and compromise. In other words, the space where a healthy democracy flourishes.
Goa’s middle ring is fraying. We know our intimate circles well, that is our families, our close friends. And thanks to technology, we are more connected than ever to like-minded strangers online. But the people next door? The ones who share our streets but not our social feeds? They are slipping into the background.
This matters because democracy is not just about big ideas; it is about the capacity to live alongside difference. The village square was where that capacity was nurtured—where disagreements were tempered by familiarity, where compromise was not an abstract ideal but a daily necessity. Without these spaces, politics becomes polarized, governance becomes distant, and civic energy dissipates into frustration.
The good news is that the village square is not lost. It doesn’t have to be a relic of the past, but seen as a necessity for the future. Across the world, cities and towns are recognising the value of vibrant public spaces - not just as amenities, but as critical infrastructure for democracy. From Barcelona’s ‘superblocks’ to Bogota’s ‘ciclovia’, the lesson is clear: when people have places to gather, they find ways to collaborate.
The village square is more than just a physical space. It is a particular kind of third space - one that exists neither in the privacy of homes nor the formality of workplaces, but in the shared ground between. Third spaces have distinct qualities. They are neutral ground, where hierarchies soften. They are accessible, requiring no membership or invitation. Most importantly, they foster unstructured interaction between different kinds of people. The village square, in its ideal form, embodies all of these. It is where political discussions happen naturally, where differing views are moderated by the simple fact of having to face one another day after day.
None of this happens by accident. If we are serious about reviving the village square, we must be equally serious about creating the conditions for it to thrive. This is where institutional imagination comes in.
The Chief Public Realm Officer, as proposed in these pages earlier, could be the first step in this direction. The role would not be about imposing top-down solutions, but about enabling communities to reclaim their shared spaces. A CPRO could streamline the bureaucratic hurdles that currently make even simple place-making efforts needlessly difficult. They could ensure that panchayats have the resources and guidance to transform underused public land into vibrant hubs. It would recognise that democracy is not just something that happens online, but in the streets where life unfolds.
The disappearance of the village square is not inevitable. It is the result of choices—choices to prioritise efficiency over engagement, to mistake governance for control, to forget that democracy depends as much on culture as it does on constitutions.
We do not need to romanticise the past to recognize what has been lost. The village square will not return in its old form, nor should it. But the need for spaces where people can come together, where differences can be aired and resolved, where democracy can be lived rather than just debated—that need remains as urgent as ever.
Goa does not need grand experiments. It needs to return to a simple principle that public spaces should serve the public. The village has always been central to its administrative functioning, perhaps it's time to reimagine the panchayat as the place for dialogue, not just ceremony. It means treating the village square not as an afterthought in planning, but as its starting point.
(The author is a strategy consultant and writer living in Goa)