Paradise Contested: Tropical Tourism, Eco-landscapes, and Cultural Resistance in Goa and Kerala

This article examines the paradox of “paradise” in India’s tropics through the cases of Goa and Kerala. These regions are central to India’s tourism identity; Goa as a coastal space of leisure, festivals, and nightlife, and Kerala as a spiritual and ecological sanctuary. However, they also face growing environmental stress, cultural commodification, and social contestation. Drawing on Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, postcolonial tourism theory, and the concept of tropicality, the study extends Said’s critique of the exotic gaze to tropical landscapes, foregrounding nature–culture entanglements and environmental imaginaries. Lévi-Strauss’s reflections on the Amazon provide a historical lens for understanding how long, steady processes of tourism reshape tropical regions globally. Empirical case studies trace how colonial imaginaries persist in neoliberal branding, digital tourism promotion, and wellness commodification. In Goa, coastal erosion, waste accumulation, nightlife economies, and fisher displacement expose the costs of pleasure-oriented tourism. In Kerala, backwater pollution, houseboat expansion, and the commercialization of Ayurveda complicate the image of “God’s Own Country.” Recent cases from 2023–2025 highlight grassroots mobilizations, fisher protests, Responsible Tourism initiatives, and emerging debates on ecological limits and degrowth. By reframing India’s tropics as contested rather than idyllic, this article contributes to critical tourism studies, tropical scholarship, and political ecology. It positions Goa and Kerala within global patterns of tropical tourism, emphasizing how power, ecology, and culture intersect across regions shaped by similar histories of extraction and mobility.