Impacting Communities With Nothing but a Big Heart

In 1959, Dashrath Manjhi lived with his wife, Falguni, and son, Bhagirath, in Gehlaur village.

Dashrath Manjhi

At that time, Gehlaur was one of the poorest villages in India. It did not have roads, schools, or hospitals. Even clean drinking water was scarce. Women had to hike a 300-ft mountain that separated their village from the nearest river to fetch water.

One day, Falguni was returning home from fetching water; but she tripped and broke her leg. Dashrath found her writhing in pain, and he and his son carried her home. The nearest hospital was 15 kilometres over the mountain, so carrying her on his shoulders would not have been possible. Luckily, a neighbour donated his donkey cart to take her to the hospital.

The shortest route by a donkey cart was a cattle track that meandered around the mountain range. On this route, the hospital was 70 km away.

They got hospital five hours later, but she died on arrival. Doctors said she had suffered internal bleeding, and a blood clot had interfered with the flow of oxygen to her brain. They told Dashrath that if he had brought her 30 minutes earlier, they could have saved her life.

Heartbroken, Dashrath did not want anyone else to suffer a similar fate, so he built a pass through a nearby mountain that made his village more accessible. The pass was 110 metres long, 8 metres deep, and 9 metres wide, but all he had was his hands, a chisel, and a hammer.

When, in 1960, he started digging, people laughed at him because they thought he had gone mad. They whispered that the death of his wife had caused him depression. Even government officials tried to stop him.

However, after 22 years of hammering and chiselling, he came face-to-face with his dream: the other side of the mountain. When he completed it in 1982, he became known as the Mountain Man.

His work shortened the distance from his village of Gehlaur to the hospital from 70 kilometres to just 15 kilometres. It also opened access to water, schools, and hospital to residents of 32 villages on his side of the mountain.

Asked about it, he said: "I was angry that it hurt my wife. If I didn't do it, no one could have done it."

The chief minister of Bihar state heard about what Dashrath had done, and he gave him 5 acres of land as a reward. However, Dashrath donated it to his village; and he asked the government to build a hospital.

He died of cancer in 2007. Five years later, in 2012, the government built a modern road to his area and paved the one he had made.

He was given a state funeral.

NB: The original story appeared in several Indian news sources. I re-wrote it for use as a case study in my training