“Weddings, by contrast, are easy targets. They are finite events with identifiable organisers, fixed venues, and little political backing. A family celebrating a once-in-a-lifetime occasion is far less likely to challenge a notice or approach the courts than a powerful tourism lobby. Cracking down on weddings while allowing beaches to throb through the night reinforces the belief that the law is strict only where resistance is weakest.
There is also a cultural blind spot at play. Goa’s social life is inseparable from music, whether in religious feasts, village festas, or family celebrations. Treating wedding music as a public nuisance while branding nightlife noise as economic activity reveals a skewed set of priorities.”
The Goa State Pollution Control Board’s decision to clamp down on music at weddings would be easier to accept if it did not sit so uneasily with what the state tolerates every single night along its coastline. From Baga to Anjuna, from beach shacks to nightclubs, loud music routinely blares well past midnight. It is not an occasional violation. It is the soundscape of coastal Goa. Against this backdrop, banning or severely restricting music at weddings looks less like principled environmental regulation and more like selective enforcement.
The timing makes the contradiction sharper. The Board’s statement comes soon after the chief minister told the Assembly that the government was considering relaxations for weddings. That assurance acknowledged a simple social reality. Weddings are not commercial parties. They are deeply rooted community events, often held after months of planning and considerable expense. Music is not an indulgence but an integral part of the celebration. When the government signals flexibility and the regulator moves in the opposite direction, it creates confusion and fuels the perception of arbitrariness.
No one disputes that noise pollution is a real problem in Goa. Residents, particularly the elderly, children, and those living near busy roads or tourist hubs, have long complained about sleepless nights and deteriorating quality of life. The law exists for a reason. Decibel limits and time restrictions are meant to protect public health. The issue is not whether regulation is necessary, but whether it is applied fairly and consistently.
Here, the disparity is hard to ignore. Coastal belts, which are among the most densely populated during the tourist season, appear to enjoy a de facto exemption. Loud music is often justified in the name of tourism, livelihoods, and the state’s image as a party destination. Complaints are brushed aside or acted upon selectively. Raids, when they do happen, are sporadic and short-lived. The music resumes the very next night. Over time, this tolerance has normalised excess and weakened the credibility of enforcement elsewhere.
Weddings, by contrast, are easy targets. They are finite events with identifiable organisers, fixed venues, and little political backing. A family celebrating a once-in-a-lifetime occasion is far less likely to challenge a notice or approach the courts than a powerful tourism lobby. Cracking down on weddings while allowing beaches to throb through the night reinforces the belief that the law is strict only where resistance is weakest.
There is also a cultural blind spot at play. Goa’s social life is inseparable from music, whether in religious feasts, village festas, or family celebrations. Treating wedding music as a public nuisance while branding nightlife noise as economic activity reveals a skewed set of priorities. It privileges the visitor over the resident, commerce over community, and revenue over lived experience.
The Pollution Control Board will argue that it is bound by court orders and statutory norms. That may be true. But regulators are not machines. They exercise discretion daily, deciding where to inspect, when to issue warnings, and when to prosecute. If discretion can be stretched to accommodate all-night beach parties, it can certainly be used to frame reasonable, clearly defined relaxations for weddings. Stricter decibel monitoring, limits on speaker orientation, or modest extensions of timing on specific days could strike a fair balance.
What Goa urgently needs is not a patchwork of bans and indulgences, but a coherent noise policy applied uniformly across sectors. Either the rules matter, or they do not. If loud music after a certain hour is harmful, it should be curtailed everywhere, including along the coast. If the state believes some activities deserve flexibility, that flexibility must be transparent and equitable.
Until that happens, the ban on wedding music will continue to rankle. It will be seen not as environmental responsibility, but as yet another instance of a government willing to inconvenience its own people while turning a deaf ear to the noise that truly defines Goa’s nights.
