In the year 2025, as India surges forward with technological advancements, AI integration, and smart infrastructure, a village in Goa—Keri, located within the Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary—is being electrified for the very first time. This might sound like a line from a history book about the early 20th century, but unfortunately, it is a headline from this very week. While officials gathered to celebrate the foundation-laying ceremony of an underground electricity cable, we must confront an unsettling truth: that parts of one of India’s most developed states are only now being connected to the power grid.
The project, which involves laying a 3.5-kilometer underground low-tension line and installing a transformer on the Keri plateau, is being touted as a landmark development. It is certainly no small task—negotiating dense forest terrain, avoiding disruption to local flora and fauna, and working through narrow forest paths with limited access. Assistant Engineer Govind Bhat rightly described it as one of the most technically demanding projects in the region. However, the more important question we should be asking is—why has it taken this long?
Goa is often held up as a model state. With one of the highest literacy rates in the country, robust tourism revenues, and extensive infrastructure, it is easy to assume that basic necessities such as electricity are a given. But the reality in Keri challenges this narrative. Here is a village where generations have grown up without electric lights, where students have studied under kerosene lamps, and where families have cooked meals and gone about their lives disconnected from the grid, long after electrification reached nearly every corner of the country.
The delay in connecting Keri to electricity cannot simply be dismissed as an unfortunate oversight. It is a reflection of a broader systemic failure to prioritize the needs of remote and marginalized communities. The very idea that residents of a village in Goa, in 2025, still lacked access to power until this week, speaks volumes about our governance priorities. It lays bare the rural-urban divide and the bureaucratic inertia that often overlooks communities living in environmentally sensitive or geographically challenging areas.
The involvement of multiple dignitaries, from the Speaker of the Goa Assembly and local panchayat leaders to engineers and forest department officials, underscores the significance being attributed to this development. Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar, while acknowledging the difficulty of the terrain, also highlighted other recent infrastructural improvements in Khotigao village. Yet, the tone of celebration must be tempered with introspection. Is providing basic infrastructure decades late truly an accomplishment, or is it the correction of a long-standing injustice?
Of course, the effort to bring electricity to Keri now must be appreciated, especially considering the complex permissions required within a wildlife sanctuary. It is also encouraging that officials are taking wildlife concerns seriously and opting for underground cabling to minimize ecological disruption. That said, these considerations should not become excuses for decades of delay.
Furthermore, the promise of additional infrastructure—the proposed road to Nadkem and a future bridge—signals a growing recognition of the region’s needs. But once again, we must ask: why now? Why was this not done years earlier, before families were compelled to leave in search of better living conditions, and before students fell behind due to the lack of basic educational infrastructure?
Progress is not measured merely by ribbon-cutting ceremonies and announcements of new projects. True development is consistent, inclusive, and timely. It ensures that no citizen, regardless of where they live, is left behind. In that sense, Keri’s electrification is both a victory and an indictment. A victory of will, effort, and finally, delivery—but also an indictment of decades of neglect.
As we bring light to the homes of Keri, let this serve as a reminder that development should not be reactive—it should be anticipatory. And most importantly, it should be just. For in a state as prosperous and progressive as Goa, no village should have remained in darkness for this long.
