Norma Alvares - Session 01

(00:00:00) Early Life Born in Bombay on April 28th, 1951, Norma Alvares was the second of four children. Her mother was a teacher and ran a kindergarten school, while her father worked in clerical sales in a firm in Bombay. Alvares said she came from a middle-class family. In school, Alvares said that she was a very diligent worker and always stood ‘top of the class.’ She said even today her younger son teased her about her rank in school, calling Alvares ‘selfish,’ for not giving up her top spot to anyone else in her batch. Alvares was also part of many co-curricular activities. She sang and was also part of a pageant set up by a Christian group. Alvares recalled the time she played the role of baby Jesus in a play set up by this group. She talked about how she was selected for the role because she looked ‘Jewish.’ She also recounted how she was asked to cut her hair for this role, but refused. Alvares mentioned this anecdote specifically to emphasize how headstrong she was in her views, even as a child. Alvares also recalled how she was the only Christian girl in her Bharatanatyam dance group. She finished school in 1967. She was the head girl of her school in her final year. (00:05:25) College After school, Alvares undertook her undergraduate education from the Sofia College, Bombay. Alvares recalled how college was an ‘eye-opener,’ for her. She said it brought her a new sense of freedom that she had not previously experienced in high-school. Alvares added that while at school, she lived a very sheltered life. In college, however, she joined the Catholic Students’ Union and was exposed to a whole different world. She said she visited many villages and tribal areas while part of this students’ union. She also became very passionate about social issues and it was then that she began thinking about what to do with the kind of education she was receiving. She wanted to help alleviate poverty and address the various social issues she encountered through her work with the students’ union. Alvares noted how she had always wanted to become a teacher. At the undergraduate level, she studied History and Politics. At the Master’s level, she continued with the Arts, and specialized in Constitutional History. Alvares said that while in college, she did some part time teaching in another school in Mumbai. She was also given the opportunity to teach at Sofia College after completing her undergraduate studies there. However, Alvares was still committed to social work. She said she didn’t care too much at this point in time about making money. So, she, along with her husband, decided to move out into India’s rural areas and do some social work there. She met her future husband, Claude Alvares, while she was in college. (00:12:17) Initial Years in Goa Alvares then moved on to talk about her and her husband’s decision to move to Goa. In their initial years in Goa, Norma Alvares was also working on her doctorate research, she said. She was exploring 16th century Goa and its socio-economic landscape. She said she had to learn Portuguese to better read the historical material she was studying. Alvares recalled how at the time they moved to Goa, Goa was not the tourist destination it is today. Back then, it was a very underdeveloped part of the country, she said. Norma Alvares and her team began the Happy Learners School, to educate underprivileged children in Goa, but that project ran into financial difficulties, she said. Their second project was starting a farm in Goa’s interior regions. They bought some land and began working on a dairy farm. The farm had no phone access, no electricity and was very removed from the main city. Alvares contrasted her time at this lonely farm to the busy city of Mumbai, where she had spent much of her life till then. However, Alvares saw herself as an optimist. She always tried to make the best out of any situation, she said. She learnt to grow rice, identify diseases in plants and even learnt veterinary medicine while at the farm, she said. Alvares said that two years after her marriage to Claude Alvares (she got married on October 15th, 1977) Alvares gave birth to her first son, on this farm in Goa. She said she did not want to go back to Mumbai and since she had helped deliver calves on the farm, Alvares thought she could deliver her baby there, too. She said that because she was quite an active woman, the delivery and the labour went well. She also delivered her second child on the farm in 1982, but after that the farm ran into financial difficulties when their cattle contracted hoof and mouth disease. They then turned over their responsibilities on the farm to the workers there and moved closer to Panjim. Alvares and her husband sold their farm in 1985 and with the money they got, started the Goa Foundation (an organization that sought to protect Goa’s ecological landscape- interviewer notes) in 1986. This was the same year that the Environment Protection Act was drafted, said Alavares. Then, remembering she hadn’t talked much about her legal career yet, she moved on to talk about her interest in law. (00:21: 12) Law Education On being asked when she began her formal training in law, Alavares said that it was only after coming to Goa that she became interested in the subject. While working on the farm, Alvares could see that many villagers were often ‘cheated out of things.’ It was then that she decided to do law, in order to be able to represent these people. She registered with a college in Panjim, didn’t attend a single class and yet did well enough in the exams to obtain a law degree, she said. (00:26: 39) Work in Goa Alvares continued talking about her work in Goa. She talked about setting up the Third World Book Store Society. This Society ran the ‘Other India Book Store.’ The Society helped collect and disseminate within India, books that were produced in other “third world” countries. Alvares claimed that Indian people’s ideas were very much dominated by Western modes of thinking and even the kinds of literature that Indians had hitherto produced were not free of this Western influence. The Third World Book Store Society was hence a platform for writers from “third world” countries to share their work, produced in their specific socio-political contexts. The Goa Foundation, on the other hand, worked to preserve Goa’s environment. Whereas Indira Gandhi during her Prime Ministership had banned development along Goa’s coastlines, Rajiv Gandhi lifted this ban in 1987 and opened Goa up to tourism, explained Alvares. Alvares continued and said that many hotels that came up in the State during that time blatantly violated environmental laws. Alvares talked about filing her first Public Interest Litigation through the Goa Foundation with regards to this. She worked on the case under the guidance of the lawyer, Indira Jaising. Alvares thought that her teaching experience in Mumbai helped her in her legal career, too, in the way she had to explain and argue her cases with judges in court.