Vavurla Gets Connected After Decades of Isolation
Margao: Vavurla, a completely tribal hamlet with a population of around 300 people, is perched atop the forested hills of Quepem. For years, successive governments seemed to forget its existence. Now, finally, the village is connected to the world. After years of isolation that cost lives, the 3.5-kilometer road linking Vavurla to Kude is complete and motorable. For the first time in the village's history, a vehicle can drive in and drive out, carrying the sick, the elderly, or a woman in labor, without requiring four neighbors to strain under a chair that doubled as a stretcher.
The Times of India was the first to highlight the plight of the village in May 2015. Since then, the newspaper relentlessly stressed the need to mainstream its tribal residents year after year, through governments that came and went and promises that evaporated.
Human Cost of Delay
The human cost of that stalling was real. On August 15, 2019, Independence Day, Govind Velip suffered a cardiac arrest in the village. Four neighbors carried him 3.5 kilometers down the forest path on a makeshift stretcher to the nearest motorable road, then 15 kilometers to the primary health center at Canacona, and onwards to Goa Medical College in Bambolim. He did not survive. His death certificate recorded cardiac arrest, but Vavurla knew what had really killed him. Velip was not the first. For years, chairs were pressed into service as stretchers. Students threaded their way through thick forest each morning to reach school. Pregnant women were carried down slopes in the dark.
Political Reaction
Quepem MLA Altone D'Costa, in whose constituency Vavurla falls, called the completion a milestone long overdue. "This is a big achievement and a big relief for the people of Vavurla. The doors are now wide open — to healthcare, to education, to everything the rest of us take for granted. For the first time, Vavurla has access to the world," he said. "I am glad that happened on my watch."
Construction Challenges
Launched on December 27, 2023, and awarded at over Rs 2 crore following a single-tender bid, the road construction project stalled repeatedly for various reasons. Forest department objections, landslides undoing completed stretches, and cost overruns pushed deadlines beyond the original one-year window. A public grievance filed by Margao resident Sanjay Dessai, routed through the Prime Minister's Office to Goa's Public Works Department hierarchy, returned with a single line from the assistant engineer's office in Canacona: "Road passes through forest land and no NOC is available from the forest department." The file made a full circle, and Vavurla had not moved an inch.
Finally, a Road
Now, finally, Vavurla has got the road. "An ambulance can come here now," said Vavurla resident Manju Velip, relief writ large on his face. "The sick no longer have to be carried out on makeshift stretchers. That is all that we were waiting for." Dessai said: "Development should be people-centric. Permissions for tree-felling for mining are granted readily, land is reclaimed openly for jetty construction — but when it comes to providing basic facilities for a few voiceless people, every objection under the sun surfaces. This simply shouldn't happen."
