JHARKHAND: For years, Chirchi village under Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district faced water shortage.
Villagers found it difficult to quench the thirst of their cattle, leading to their deaths.
The water shortage coupled with the national lockdown deepened the crisis of villagers, who are completely dependent on farming.
With no other source of water to irrigate their fields, Krishna Singh Kuntia and his wife Sankari decided to take their spade and dig a ‘dobha’ (a pond-like rainwater-harvesting body).
Fellow villagers laughed at them. But the couple was determined. They identified a spot in the village and kept digging — for one-and-a-half months during the lockdown.
The result is nothing short of Bihar’s mountain man, Dashrath Manjhi.
The family, which had no money to hire labourers, dug the 20-feet deep dobha in less than 60 days. During the process, Krishna and Sankari got injured several times, but they never gave up.
Now that they have reached the water level, the couple expects there would be enough water in the pond for irrigation during this monsoon.
Krishna said he was inspired by Manjhi – The Mountain Man, a biopic based on Dashrath Manjhi, and he had been planning to do something similar, but he did not get time.
But soon after the lockdown was imposed, he thought it was an opportunity to make his dream come true.
“Since activities were stopped due to the lockdown, I decided to utilise the time to dig out a dobha so that we do not have to face problems in the coming days. I decided to give it a try and later, my wife joined in, and finally, we succeeded,” says Krishna.
It took a lot of hard work and patience for digging-out the water body as the land is rocky in the area, he added.
“It will take a few more days before it’s ready to use. We won’t have to face the shortage of water once it gets filled with rainwater this monsoon,” says the farmer, adding that his wife, too, played an important role.
“The water obtained from it will cater to about 2 acres of our land. We expect to earn around Rs 25,000 a season by selling vegetables produced on this land,” says the wife.
District Agriculture Officer Rajendra Kishore also heaped praises on the couple’s determination and hard work.