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Regular-article-logo Sunday, 13 July 2025

Tree cheers for Napo bridge - Villagers build from scratch arterial link of logs

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VISHVENDU JAIPURIAR Published 25.07.13, 12:00 AM

Barkagaon (Hazaribagh), July 24: Where there’s will, there’s a bridge.

Since the past four monsoons, Napo, a rain-fed river, cut off around 5,000 villagers of Napo panchayat, Barkagaon block, 53km from Hazaribagh district headquarters. Reason — the bridge had collapsed and no one came forward to repair it.

This monsoon, five villages of the panchayat — Lurunga, Madhuiadhab, Chunatari, Barwania and Napo — decided enough was enough. They assembled to meet and see what could be done, collected money — around Rs 45,000 in all — and embarked on a bridge building project.

With tree logs and bamboo sticks, in eight days flat, they constructed a 15ft high and 30ft long bridge. Since June-end, the bridge that’s supported vertically and horizontally with tree logs and bolstered with a carpet of densely packed bamboo sticks, is not just used by pedestrians, but bikes as well.

Everyday, around 40 villagers, by rotation, worked from 9am to 5pm with a sense of purpose that would have made an MGNREGS scheme proud.

Only, this was a private project. Though villagers led by Napo panchayat mukhiya Kunti Devi did meet at the local high school back in June to decide on donations and plan the project, they took ownership of the funds, the execution and completion.

Civil engineers who make bridges prepare detailed project reports on how to achieve highest strength-to-weight ratio. The villagers only acted upon common sense.

Ganesh Sao, who is mukhiya Kunti Devi’s husband, was one of the front-rankers in the bridge project.

“We erected four tree logs on the riverbed as pillars, embedding each of them 5-feet in the soil to make them stand strong. Then, we placed two 65ft long tree logs horizontally. These formed the skeleton of the bridge. Then, we placed bamboo sticks horizontally on the logs. We have taken all possible steps to make this bridge strong enough to withstand loads,” he said.

Sao added the village managing committee comprising residents and headed by his wife Kunti calculated the exact amount spent on the bridge. “It cost Rs 45,000 to make. We are monitoring the bridge everyday,” he said.

Villager Raju Paswan of Napo said the river had knee-deep water the year round. “But in monsoon, the water swells. We waded through in waist or neck-deep water to reach Barkagaon district headquarters. Or else, we took the Napo-Barkagaon Road, a 15km detour,” he said.

Kamleshwar Kumar of Chunatari village voiced the mood of the villagers — a sense of vindication. “Sarkar sunti nahin hai (the state doesn’t listen to us). For four years, we knocked on all doors,” he said. “Humne bana kar dikha diya (We made the bridge and showed them),” he said.

Hear it loud and clear, Congress MLA Yogendra Sao, zilla parishad member from Barkagaon Braj Kishore Jaiswal, DC Sunil Kumar.

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