Gazetteer of India, Union Territory: Goa, Daman and Diu

An official publication of the Government of Goa, published in 1979, and containing a lot of background information about the region of Goa, its past and present.

About the book

It hardbound book was published in three parts—I, II, and III—and priced, when published, at Rs 53. Part I alone, which deals with Goa, is 1023 pages thick. (The other parts deal with the now-delinked-from-Goa overland territories of Daman and Diu. Goa, Daman and Diu—all former Portuguese colonies—were part of a 'union territory' from 1961 till 1987, when Goa was granted statehood and delinked from it.)

This book's editor was Dr V.T. Gune, the then Director of Archives, Archaeology and the Executive Editor and Member Secretary of the Goa Gazetteer editorial board. This publication came from the Government of the Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu's Gazetteer Department. It was printed by the Government Central Press of Bombay (now Mumbai).

It has not been updated since its publication, and no new volume of its kind has been put out yet.

Contents

Its 19 chapters of Part I has exhaustive information—though from an official perspective—about Goa, dating back to the late 1970s, or just earlier. Following is the scheme of the chapters (of Part I, dealing with Goa):

• Chapter 1: General
• Chapter 2: History
• Chapter 3: People
• Chapter 4: Agriculture and Irrigation
• Chapter 5: Industries (large-scale, cottage, labour organisations)
• Chapter 6: Banking, Trade and Commerce
• Chapter 7: Communications
• Chapter 8: Miscellaneous Occupations
• Chapter 9: Economic Trends
• Chapter 10: General Administration (historical background, collectorate)
• Chapter 11: Revenue Administration
• Chapter 12: Law, Order and Justice
• Chapter 13: Other Departments
• Chapter 14: Local Self Government
• Chapter 15: Education and Culture
• Chapter 16: Medical and Public Health Services
• Chapter 17: Other Social Services
• Chapter 18: Public Life and Voluntary Social Service Organisations
• Chapter 19: Places of Interest

At the end of the text are the appendices, and a useful directoryof villages and towns (including the different spellings used for place names).

This book was published less than two decades after Portuguese colonial rule ended. This probably gets reflected in the attempt to be extra-critical of Portuguese rule, while play-up the positive changes brought in post-1961.

From the Wikipedia page on Gazetteers, it is clear that gazetteers became popular in Britain in the 19th Century, with publishers such as Fullarton, Mackenzie, Chambers and W & A.K. Johnston, many of whom were Scottish, meeting public demand for information on an expanding Empire. In India, the tradition probably traces its roots to the needs of an often-changing colonial administration to understand the alien land it governed, as indicated by the choice of themes of the above gazetteer, and the focus on the history, culture and administration of the region studied.