View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAVUDKw4AIk
When I started hammering the hill, people called me a lunatic but that steeled my resolve – Dashrath Manjhi
The 300 ft tall mountain the Gehlour hills near Gaya in Bihar, India, stood between the poor people of Gehlour Ganj village and civilization in Wazirganj. The mountain denied Gehlour basic facilities: a clean water supply, electricity, a school, and a medical center. After Phaguni, wife of an outcast, landless labourer Dashrath Manjhi, had an untimely death due to the lack of medical care, Manjhi sold his goats and bought a hammer, chisel, and crowbar. He climbed to the top of the hill, and started chipping away at the mountain.
Working day and night for 22 years, from 1960 to 1982, the ‘Mountain Man’ carved a path – 360-feet-long, 25-feet-deep, and 30-feet-wide – through the mountain so that his village could get medical aid in time. His feat reduced the distance between the Atri and Wazirganj blocks of the Gaya district from 80 km to 13 km, bringing doctors, jobs, and a school, that much closer to Manjhi’s village.
It, however, took the government 30 years more to tar the road. In 2006, the government rewarded his efforts with a plot of land. Manjhi donated it for the construction of a hospital. In 2007, the Government of Bihar gave him a state funeral.