If not for one man Dasrath Manjhi, few outside the Gaya district would have heard of Gehlaur, a village in Bihar’s Atri Assembly constituency. Though the Gehlaur was renamed Dasrath Nagar in his honour, Atri remains synonymous with his legacy.

Gehlaur, home to a sizeable Mahadalit population (the poorest among Scheduled Castes), was where Manjhi, a landless labourer, once lived. When his wife fell critically ill, the nearest hospital was 70 km away, a distance that cost her life. Driven by grief, he picked up a hammer and a chisel in 1960 and began carving a road through the rocky hills to connect Gehlaur to the nearest Wazirganj town. For 22 years, villagers mocked him, but by 1982, he had single-handedly cut a 110-metre-long, 9-metre-wide path through the mountain.

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