I didn't quite put it right. Goa IS a trade company province, so it should be forbidden to westernize off it if you conquer it FROM portugal. The problem is that the nations there can westernize themselves off that core, without Portugal ever being present there in the past, because the core magically appears in a province that Portugal never owned. Thats why I suggested to give colonizers only a core there based on a mission, after they capture an Indian province for real.
As of now, the entire Goa event allows for gamey westernising strategies for ROTW nations, and I don't think that was intended.
If it WAS intended, then I don't get the reason.
Free cores handed like candy out-of-context are way more gamey than westernization has ever been. Stuff like Castile/England/PLC freebies or BI can give so many free cores that they yield 1000's of ADM worth, all for 0 AE, and all low LA. In contrast, to westernize you're paying points, not getting them for free.
The poster who said the Portuguese event is a drop in the bucket by comparison is correct. This event is annoying because it's neither dynamic nor historical, but in terms of its impact on gameplay it's nowhere near the worst of its kind. A mission would work, but how is that materially different from the generic "get a presence in India" mission that the AI wrecks its alliances over?
In past versions of the game, you could westernize by around 1600 in India without exploration. In fact, in my Orissa game I did it just after 1600 opening religious first. You could westernize well before 1540-1550 if you took it first. That has been unchanged in 1.11. You can still westernize faster by exploration rushing than waiting, but this event narrows the time between the two (in practice, you just need to declare on someone allied to Portugal or Portugal directly, but you could easily get a new world colony done before 1520 also if you needed to do it).
If the "problem" is that India is putting up too much of a fight for rookie players because it's westernizing, there's no sympathy. If the "problem" is "immersion", I mock the bias of westernization killing immersion, but not the historical context of the event itself being completely ignored (including the part where they had to actually fight for the province). If the "problem" is that good players can westernize sooner, the claim is false outright, and the optimal timing of it is debatable anyway.
TL;DR this event nor the fact that it allows "fast" (lol) westernization is NOTHING compared to crap like Burgundian Inheritance, but is bad for exactly the same reason that event is.