MANGALURU: With petitions and a documentary addressed to the Prime Minister yielding no result in more than seven decades, hundreds of Kamila-Mogra villagers pooled in money and built a 50-foot-long bridge across a rivulet on their own.
The bridge on the Mogra in the district’s Sullia taluk cost them nearly Rs 1 lakh.
It is wide enough to let pedestrians or bikers at a time to reach the other side, but villagers are not complaining because it has successfully solved their monsoon commuting worries for now.
The rivulet runs through Kamila-Mogra in Guthigaru gram panchayat, making road connectivity difficult during most part of the year.
Most villagers wade through the rivulet when the water is knee deep, and put off their plans of visiting the other side for the rest of the year.
The village, 100km from Mangaluru, has a population of 2,000.
Fisheries, ports and inland transport minister S Angara, who represents Sullia, told TOI: “I have submitted a proposal to the government for the construction of a bridge at Kamila-Mogra at an estimated cost of Rs 1 crore, but it is yet to be approved.” In November 2020, the Civic Action Committee of Kamila-Mogra made a 3.45-minute documentary highlighting their woes due to lack of roads and bridges and sent it to the PM.
When repeated appeals did not elicit any response, villagers joined hands and built the three-foot-wide bridge with help from engineer Patanjali Bharadwaj, son of Padma Shri Girish Bharadwaj, popularly known as the ‘bridge man’.
Mahesh Puchchappady, a member of Grama Bharat, told TOI: “Organisations and companies, among others, came forward to support the cause of building ‘gramasetu’.
Following this, we consulted Patanjali Bharadwaj, who agreed to construct the bridge.”