
The man who singlehandedly carved a road through a mountain - wr1472
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi
======
jlmendezbonini
Incredible, period. Some pictures for everyone who is curious but is too lazy
to search:

[http://www.theindianblogger.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/08/d...](http://www.theindianblogger.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/08/dashrath_manjhi11.jpg)

<http://images.jagran.com/inext/Inext_p_SC_2Powerof1.jpg>

[http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
ash4/406442_35385902...](http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
ash4/406442_353859024699081_543455915_b.jpg)

~~~
solox3
Title is misleading. In your second link, it could be seen that Dashrath
Manjhi carved using two hands.

~~~
eps
Hahaha, good one :)

Some people just don't have a sense of humour... but they surely aren't
lacking the downvote rights.

~~~
kingnothing
The comment above added nothing to the discussion and should be downvoted,
just like yours.

~~~
MortenK
And yours?

------
known
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

~~~
jquery
<pedant> I've always disliked this quote. One, it's a false dilemma. Two, it
could just as easily apply to criminals as it could to innovators, but I
wouldn't call that "progress."

I will grant that if the quote applies anywhere it applies here. </pedant>

~~~
pdog
All progress depends on the unreasonable man. However, not all unreasonable
men are responsible for progress.

------
smugengineer69
There is a famous Chinese four character idiom about exactly this scenario:
愚公移山 (Yu gong yi shan), or "the foolish old man moves the mountain". Here's a
link to the (short) translation of this story:
<http://english.cri.cn/4426/2007/01/15/167@185195.htm> . I particularly like
the role of the "wise man " in this story, who is actually the naysayer here.
The names of the people in the story illustrate the common perception of these
two roles: the old man YuGong's name means "foolish old man", and "Zhi Sou"
means "wise old man". Who's the foolish one after all?

~~~
jakejake
Great story. I was a little disappointed that in the end god actually moved
the mountain. I can see religious people missing the entire point of the
story.

~~~
seunghomattyang
This is the literal deus ex machina.

------
jbp
On a similar note, few months ago I posted
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827675> (Indian Man Single-Handedly
Plants a 1,360 Acre Forest)

------
MattSayar
So everybody agreed this was a good idea and that the road was necessary, yet
nobody bothered to help this guy? He's a very self-driven guy.

~~~
caycep
agreed - wish someone would have built a public works project around him, and
built that road in a year instead of his entire life...

~~~
31reasons
We are talking about a remote village in india's most corrupt region. He was
lucky no government official asked for bribe.

~~~
neilk
Yep. Every person who knows India would find it incredible too until they see
that it happened in Bihar.

It's sort of like Florida for Americans, except imagine that Florida was still
under feudalism.

~~~
31reasons
No analogy exist in the known western world. To do so would be an injustice to
the word 'corruption'. In fact there is so much corruption in india, we should
invent the new word for it, more like "Slow Cannibalism".

~~~
technolem
How about corrosion? It implies the society is being more or less eaten away
by a corrupting influence.

------
qwertzlcoatl
Here he is standing next to his road:
<http://s3.hubimg.com/u/3993454_f520.jpg>

And a video about this original Minecraft player:
[http://gktalk.blogspot.de/2011/08/man-from-gahlour-
dashrath-...](http://gktalk.blogspot.de/2011/08/man-from-gahlour-dashrath-
manjhi.html)

~~~
jlmendezbonini
An english captioned version of the video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z57-0Pb4IZw>

You want to have TWO videos running in parallel because the captions cover the
whole video at times.

Also, I noticed that he's wearing some sort of white "bandana" with writings,
can anyone care to translate it if it's readable enough from one of the
pictures posted above?

\--- Improved phrasing.

~~~
plinkplonk
Part of the writing on his head gear seems to be his name. You can clearly see
"Dashrath" in Hindi(His name is Dashrath Manji). I suspect the rest of the
writing is a concise description of his achievement, including the dimensions
of the road.

------
ck2
Wow a real-life John Henry
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29>

(though I suppose the legend is based on amazing real workers)

~~~
jimminy
John Henry is based on a real man, though his story has been embellished with
time, and some of the details are uncertain. Most historians, at least in WV,
have little doubt that he did exist.

If you look at the Wikipedia page on Tall Tales,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_tale>, it even has him marked as being
based on a historical indivdual.

------
_delirium
Reminds me a bit of this tunnel, though it had a rather different motivation:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel>

~~~
Someone
Also similar, but by a group of people:
<http://www.ssqq.com/archive/vinlin27a.htm> (it will not win the 'best site
design' or 'best written story' awards, but that site surely does have some
gripping content)

(that road featured in BBC's Top Gear about a year ago)

~~~
anonymfus
Also interesting village subway by Леонид Мулярчик from Russia, 20 years of
elder man's work :

<http://victorprofessor.livejournal.com/106201.html>

<http://suriso.livejournal.com/381310.html>

<http://video.yandex.ru/users/paninbar/view/1/>

Hand made everything: tunnelling shield, waterproofing, electricity supply and
stairs at entrance halls. More than 200 metres of tunnels, including fire-
safety tunnel. All grunt removed by shovel and handmade conveyer belt. Guy
ever installed security cams and cash register. Only cars and rails remained
to make before he died a month after heart attack from visits of journalists.
Also he wanted to place water supply and canalization pipes in subway but can
not to win over authorities.

------
dhughes
That reminds me of my neighbour's wife who on a rainy evening dug a new
driveway, with a shovel.

This was a bungalow and on one side was their driveway and on the other was
the lawn. She dug back ten meters and down about three meters, by hand, with a
shovel, in the rain.

Yes my neighbours are crazy.

~~~
ricardobeat
She probably planned to do it like that, rain softens the dirt.

~~~
lostlogin
I used to use this theory. I now prefer summer, sun and rock hard clay (had to
sledge hammer the spade in for the first few cm). Why? Because the destruction
you cause tramping clay everywhere is terrible - 2 or 3 kgs stays attached to
you and you can't even shake it off the spade. No one who digs clay (as
opposed to soil/sand where I don't really have an opinion) would choose to do
it in the wet. My 2c. Now I'll go back (quite literally) to finishing this
trench before the rain arrives.

------
aritraghosh007
This question on Quora has a reference to many such other stories (including
this one) [http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-gripping-stories-
in-h...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-gripping-stories-in-human-
history)

------
neo_mhacker
I admire his persistence and good will. But more importantly this shows how
India sucks at having a procedure for its people to request basic needs!

------
mikemoka
Remember this story when someone goes on and tells you that something can't be
done.

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unix-dude
This reminds me of that Chinese guy who built stairs up and down a mountain
for his wife. Dedication, true dedication.

------
mileswu
I wonder how much it would have cost to do this with mining/tunnelling/etc.
modern equipment. And whether it would have been cheaper to pay him $10/hr for
22 years of work, or whether the 'modern' way would have cost more.

~~~
masklinn
$10/h is way too much, India's nominal per-capita income is $1219 ($3.33/day)
and its poverty threshold (below which a quarter of the population lives) is
40 _cents_ a day. And this is for the mid-00s, not for 1960.

A "normal" pay would probably have been closer to half a dollar to a dollar
per day (if even that), 300 days a year or so. So we're talking $3000~$6000
total, tops.

This is basically a big straight trench, so you could probably have done it in
a few days or weeks with an excavator. An excavator rental costs between 800
and 3000 a week depending on the excavator class (size and engine power, minis
in the 15-40hp range will be at the lower end, the stuff you can see on
construction sites will usually be in the 150hp range and closer to the higher
third, I'm excluding the ridiculous stuff such as the CAT 6090 or the baggers
which make sense in neither scale nor cost for this comparison)

So the purely monetary cost would probably be about the same if you had an
excavator close-by which you could rent (and you were a skilled operator).

edit: actually for that kind of works you'd probably use a backhoe loader
rather than a straight excavator, but the costs should be in the same range

edit 2: but to answer the question as asked, it would be way cheaper to use
even a full-blown set of heavy earth-movers (and crew) than to pay the guy
$10/h, 10h/day, 300 days/year for 22 years (which would cost $660k)

~~~
nekojima
"300 days/year"

Why does he get 65 days off a year? This is not North America, Europe or
industrialized Asia. Most of day labourers I've spoken to in Asia consider
themselves lucky if they get two or three days off a month. At that low level,
for most of us, they lose a precious few days of work which is often vital for
them to have enough money to eat that day.

~~~
masklinn
> Why does he get 65 days off a year?

Because why not (and I know india has quite a lot of religious celebrations
which may or may not have holidays attached).

~~~
masklinn
also, sundays alone is 54 days off.

------
olalonde
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience>

------
JoeAltmaier
Wondering: how many years would it have taken to petition the govt to make the
road?

------
lsiebert
Saw this on metafiltet yesterday, a testament to the human spirit.

------
oulipo
It would have been easier to just build an hospital in his town..

~~~
FrojoS
What is a hospital with no doctors good for?

I have to admit though, that my first thought on the story was: "Why build the
road? Just move to the city!"

In this case, I admire the endurance of this man and pity the destiny of his
wife. But in general, the process of bringing more and more infrastructure to
ever more remote place is what destroys the natural environment of this
planet. I strongly believe in the efficiency of density and scale and that
humanity should limit them self to cities. Leave the rest of the planet to
other species!

------
instakill
Someone's been reading the Quora newsletter.

------
batgaijin
I would have used dynamite, but to each his own.

~~~
SeanDav
I am sure that every poor person in India has the spare money to buy dynamite,
the expertise to use it, access to it and the legal permissions. /sarcasm

Why do some people try to denigrate something which is wonderful with smart
alecky comments.

~~~
neo_mhacker
yes what this person did was wonderful, but it shouldn't blind us away from
what the govt. should have done in the first place. He did the work of an
entire department under the Bihar state govt. It is kind of annoying that how
the govt. didn't even realize it was their job. It makes me think it didn't
because they honored him with a state funeral. They should have established a
procedure and let the public know that its their job to do such things and how
the public should approach them, instead of just making him a hero; making him
just a hero implicitly says that acts like that are _encouraged_.

~~~
gnufied
I originally come from same region this story is about and currently as we
stand Bihar is one of the poorest states in India. Much of road work in Gaya
district happens courtesy of Japanese govt. funds (Gaya is a popular Buddhist
tourist attraction).

Now back in 1960 I can only imagine the chaos the country was in. We just got
independence. State and central govts are just figuring out, how to run a
country. How to channel funds where the need is most. There is whole
bureaucratic and panchayat system which is still being established. Also a
state funeral after 47 years hardly can mean anything other than the deed was
well done.

Having said all of above, Bihar is still a poor state. Current state govt. is
trying but I wouldn't be surprised if similar things happen again. It is not
very unusual for entire river bridges to be washed away during some rain and
villages to be cut off from rest of the world (even now).

~~~
beernutz
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate having your local
viewpoint!

------
Revekius
Is this even relevant to hacker news? I mean I could see that technically he
is "hacking" through a mountain, but really?

~~~
tammer
Personally, I find this to be quite inspirational, especially when compared to
entrepreneurial endeavors.

While the comparison is mostly metaphorical, often metaphors are more on point
than any 1:1 comparison.

~~~
Avshalom
man, fuck metaphors, this was awesome. No further justification needed for
sharing.

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mseepgood
I did that once as well in Minecraft.

~~~
antman
How many points do I need to get downvoting rights?

~~~
smoyer
I passed 500 a couple weeks ago and that's when I got downvoting. I've limited
my down votes to comments that were inappropriate or offensive. For a comment
like this isn't a lack of up votes enough?

~~~
JoachimSchipper
I think you're too nice. Downvote things that made you regret taking the time
to read it; flag anything horribly offensive, stupid, etc. It's the only way
to keep the community healthy -
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/>.

~~~
nessus42
Squelching all humor, on the other hand, is _not_ a way to keep a community
healthy. This just makes it seem humorless and unwelcoming.

