“If crime among migrants is rising, the question should not only be who commits it but why. Goa’s economy depends heavily on informal labour. Contractors often employ workers without verifying their identities, providing proper housing, or ensuring fair wages. Workers live in makeshift colonies with little sanitation or security. Police verification is rare, and landlords frequently rent out rooms without knowing who their tenants are. These are not isolated failures—they are systemic gaps that create the conditions where crime can flourish.
The government’s proposed remedy is to tighten verification. Every migrant labourer, Sawant says, must have a labour card, and every landlord must register tenants with local police. In theory, such measures sound practical.”
Goa’s Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s recent assertion that most crimes in the state are committed by migrant labourers has sparked an uneasy conversation. It is not the first time such a claim has surfaced, but the intensity of the statement and the public response it drew point to a deeper discomfort—about law, identity, and the politics of belonging.
Sawant’s remark that “85 to 90 per cent of crimes are committed by migrants” may resonate with local anxieties, especially amid visible demographic changes in Goa’s towns and industrial belts. Yet, such sweeping numbers demand careful scrutiny. Migrants form the backbone of the state’s workforce, from construction and hospitality to waste management and domestic help. To frame them primarily through a lens of criminality risks not only alienating a large section of residents but also undermining a rational debate about safety and governance.
The concern about crime is genuine. Petty thefts, assaults, and drug-related cases have risen in certain areas. Police records do show that many accused persons are non-Goans. But correlation does not mean causation. Migrants are a floating population, often poor, unregistered, and invisible to state systems. That makes them easy to blame and, at times, easy to exploit. Without accurate data on the total migrant population, employment patterns, and living conditions, such statistics can mislead more than they illuminate.
If crime among migrants is rising, the question should not only be who commits it but why. Goa’s economy depends heavily on informal labour. Contractors often employ workers without verifying their identities, providing proper housing, or ensuring fair wages. Workers live in makeshift colonies with little sanitation or security. Police verification is rare, and landlords frequently rent out rooms without knowing who their tenants are. These are not isolated failures—they are systemic gaps that create the conditions where crime can flourish.
The government’s proposed remedy is to tighten verification. Every migrant labourer, Sawant says, must have a labour card, and every landlord must register tenants with local police. In theory, such measures sound practical. A proper database of workers, linked with their employers, would help authorities track movement, deter criminal activity, and improve accountability. But the success of such a system depends entirely on fair and consistent implementation.
India’s experience with identification drives has often been mixed. Bureaucratic systems tend to punish the poor first. A migrant worker without documents could find themselves harassed by police or denied work. Employers might avoid hiring to escape paperwork. Without transparency and safeguards, the labour card could become another layer of red tape, not a shield for safety.
Community policing and landlord accountability offer another layer of remedy. Local police stations can build databases of tenants and labourers, hold regular meetings with residents, and encourage neighbourhood vigilance. But this too requires sensitivity. Turning every citizen into an informal enforcer risks breeding suspicion and profiling. Goa’s cosmopolitan ethos—built on coexistence and hospitality—cannot survive an atmosphere of constant distrust between locals and outsiders.
The broader issue here is social integration. Migrants do not just bring labour; they bring cultures, languages, and aspirations. They live in Goa but often remain outsiders in every sense—excluded from local networks, community support, and sometimes even basic respect. When crime occurs, the entire group is blamed, not the individual. Integration programmes, awareness drives, and community outreach can help bridge this gap. Law enforcement works best when it has the trust of both locals and migrants.
There is also a moral dimension to this debate. Crime must be punished, yes. But justice cannot rest on prejudice. The right to live and work anywhere in India is a constitutional guarantee. The duty of the state is to maintain law and order without turning that right into a privilege for a few. Goa must protect its people without closing its doors to those who come seeking livelihood.
If Sawant’s government truly wants to curb crime, it must move beyond rhetoric. Strengthen policing, modernise data systems, ensure humane living conditions for workers, and hold employers and landlords accountable. But resist the temptation to divide people into “locals” and “migrants.” Crime is not a caste or a category. It is an outcome—of neglect, inequality, and lack of oversight.
Goa’s challenge is to secure its peace without sacrificing its pluralism. Safety and inclusivity are not opposing values; they are two sides of the same good governance. The state can either police its people—or serve them. The choice will define Goa’s future far more than any statistic about who commits a crime.
