India

Sport: Football is perhaps the most popular sport in Goa and is embedded in Goan culture. Its origins in the state are traced back to 1883 when the visiting Irish priest Fr. William Robert Lyons established the sport as part of a "Christian education". On 22 December 1959 the Associação de Futebol de Goa was formed, which continues to administer the game in the state under the new name, Goa Football Association.

Goa, along with West Bengal and Kerala. is the locus of football in the country and is home to many football club in India’s National Football League, including three of the ten Premier Division teams. The state’s football powerhouses include Salgaocar, Dempo, Churchill Brothers, Vasco Sports Club and Sporting Clube de Goa. The state’s main football stadium, Fatroda (or Nehru stadium), is located at Margao and also hosts cricket matches.

A number of Goans have represented India in football, and four of them, namely Brahmanand Sankhwalkar, Bruno Coutinho, Mauricio Afonso, and Roberto Fernandes have all captained the national team at one time or another.

In recent decades, a growing influence of cricket is visible, in large part fuelled by the massive coverage this sport gets on national television, thus making an impact even in a part of South Asia which hardly had any contact with the British Empire. Goa now has its own cricket team. Swapnil Asnodkar played an important role in helping the Rajasthan Royals win the inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League in 2008 and Shadab Jakati fron Vasco made an immediate impact for the Chennai Superkings in IPL 2009 in South Africa. That said, Dilip Sardesai remains the only Goan till date to play international cricket for India.

Government and Politics: In the Parliament of India, Goa has two seats in the Lok Sabha, one representing each district, and one seat in the Rajya Sabha. Goa’s capital is Panaji, known as Panjim in English and earlier called Pangim in Portuguese times, and known in the local language as Ponnje is the administrative capital of Goa lying on the left bank of the Mandovi near Panaji. Goa’s legislative assembly building is located in Porvorim – the seat of the Goa assembly, which lies across the Mandovi River. The state’s judicial hierarchy relates to Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay, which is the capital of Goa’s neighbouring Maharashtra state), as the state comes under the Bombay High Court.

A bench of the High Court is present in Panaji. Unlike other states, which follow the British Indian model of civil laws framed for individual religions, the Portuguese Uniform Civil Code, based on the Napoleonic code, has been retained by the Goa government. Goa has a unicameral legislature consisting of a forty member Legislative Assembly, headed by a Chief Minister who wields the executive power. The present Chief Minister of Goa is Mr. Digambar Kamat and the Leader of Opposition is Mr. Manohar Parrikar. The ruling government consists of the party or coalition garnering the most seats in the state elections and enjoying the support of a simple majority of the House. The governor is appointed by the President of India.

The governor’s role is largely ceremonial, but plays a crucial role when it comes to deciding who should form the next government or in suspending the legislature as has happened in the recent past. After having stable governance for nearly thirty years up to 1990, Goa is now notorious for its political instability having seen fourteen governments in the span of the fifteen years between 1990 and 2005. In March 2005 the assembly was dissolved by the governor and President’s Rule was declared, which suspended the legislature. A by-election in June 2005 saw the Congress coming back to power after winning three of the five seats that went to polls. The Congress party and the BJP are the two largest parties in the state. In the assembly pole of 2007, Congress-led coalition won and started ruling the state. Other parties include the United Goans Democratic Party, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party.

Media and Communication: Goa is served by almost all television channels available in India. Channels are received through cable in most parts of Goa. In the interior regions, channels are received via satellite dishes. Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster, has two free terrestrial channels on air.

DTH (Direct To Home) TV services are available from Dish TV, Tata Sky & DD Direct Plus. The All India Radio is the only radio channel in the state, broadcasting in both FM and AM bands. Two AM channels are broadcast, the primary channel at 1287 kHz and the Vividh Bharati channel at 1539 kHz. AIR’s FM channel is called FM Rainbow and is broadcast at 105.4 MHz. Private FM radio channels available are Big FM at 92.7 MHz, Radio Mirchi at 98.3 MHz, and Radio Indigo at 91.9 MHz. There is also an educational radio channel, Gyan Vani, run by IGNOU broadcast from Panaji at 107.8 MHz. In 2006, St Xavier’s College, Mapusa, became the first college in the state to launch a campus community radio station ‘Voice of Xavier’s’.

Major cellular service operators include Reliance Infocomm, Tata Indicom, Vodafone (previously Hutch), Bharti Airtel, BSNL and Idea cellular.

Local newspaper publications include the English language The Herald (Goa’s oldest, once a Portuguese language paper known as O Heraldo), the Gomantak Times and the Navhind Times. In addition to these, The Times of India and the Indian Express are also received from Bombay and Bangalore in the urban areas. The Times of India has recently started publication from Goa itself serving the local population news directly from the state capital. Among the list of officially-accredited newspapers are Sunaparant in Konkani(Devanagari script), The Navhind Times, The Herald Times and The Gomantak Times in English; and Gomantak, Tarun Bharat, Navprabha, Goa Times, Sanatan Prabhat, Govadoot (all in Marathi). All are dailies. Other publications in the state include Goa Today (English-language, monthly), Goan Observer (English, weekly), Vavraddeancho Ixtt (Roman-script Konkani, weekly) Goa Messenger, Gulab (Konkani, monthly), Bimb (Devanagiri-script Konkani) .

Education: According to the 2001 census, Goa has a literacy rate of 82% with 89% of males and 76% of females being literate. Each taluka is made up of villages, each having a school run by the government. Due to the low levels of corruption and the quality of the government schools, private schools are less in demand, compared to the rest of the country. All schools come under the state SSC whose syllabus is prescribed by the state Education department. There are also a few schools run by the all-India ICSE board. Most students in Goa complete their high school using English as the medium of instruction. Primary schools, on the other hand are largely run in Konkani and marathi (in private, but government-aided schools). As is the case in most of India, enrollment for vernacular media has seen a fall in numbers in favour of English medium education. As per a report published in the times of India, 84 % of Goan schools run without an administrative head.

After ten years of schooling, students join a Higher Secondary school, which offers courses in popular streams such as Science, Arts, Law and Commerce.A student may also opt for a course in vocational studies. Additionally, many join three year diploma courses. Two years of college is followed by a professional degree. Goa University is the sole university in the state located in Taleigao and all Goan colleges are affiliated to it. There are four engineering colleges and one medical college in the state. The Goa Engineering College and Goa Medical College are run by the state whereas the other three engineering colleges are run by private organisations.

Top schools in Goa are Almeida high school, People’s high school, Manovikas, Mushtifund high school etc.

Top colleges in Goa include G.V.M’s S.N.J.A higher secondary school,D.M’s college,St Xavier’s College, Carmel College, Chowgule College, Dhempe College, Damodar College, MES College, etc.

The private engineering colleges are Shree Rayeshwar Institute of Engineering and Information Technology, Shiroda, and Padre Conceicao College of Engineering, Verna. There are also colleges offering pharmacy, architecture and dentistry along with numerous private colleges offering law, arts, commerce and science. There is also two National Oceanographic Science related centres, NCAOR and the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in Vasco and Panjim. In 2004, BITS Pilani university started its first Indian satellite, BITS Pilani Goa Campus near Dabolim.

Many residents, however, choose to take up courses in other states as the demand for a course in Goa is more than that available. Goa is also well-known in India for courses in marine engineering, fisheries, hotel management and cuisine. The State also hosts a business school - the Goa Institute of Management which is autonomous and was founded in 1993 by Romuald D’Souza. Portuguese is taught as a part of the school curriculum, often as a third language in some schools. The Goa University also offers Bachelors and Masters degrees in Portuguese.

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[Edited with additions from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa]