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Jalandhar Nayak working on the next stretch of the road that would connect his village to the nearby town in Kandhamal district, Odisha, India.

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EXCLUSIVE: By Sanjay Pandey in India A 50-year-old Indian man has singlehandedly scraped though hills for a period of two years to make an 8km stretch of road to ensure that he and wife can meet their school-going children more often. Jalandhar Nayak, a small-time farmer from Kandhamal district of east Indian state of Odisha, constructed the first stretch of the road all by himself with just a pick axe and crowbar by working from dawn to dusk since 2016. So how did he stumbled up on the idea? “At the time of birth of our first child, my wife was home. When she went into labour pain, I tried to take her to the nearby health centre. But we couldn't reach there in time and she had to deliver the baby on the way. It was then the idea of building a road struck me first. I thought to myself, if having no roads in the village is causing us so much of problem to us, it would cause the problem to our children, too,” said Nayak, explaining how he stumbled upon the idea of contracting road." According to the Nayaks, the government has been giving assurance of building a road for decades in the area, but they never moved anything on the ground. Jalandhar’s father father who is 80 now, tells about the same hollow assurances that he got from the administration in his youth.   “When my children grew up and started going to school, it would take them three hours one way to go the school trekking though the mountainous terrain. Since they cannot commute to and from the school everyday, we had to get them enrolled in a residential school, a 15km away from home.   Nayak’s children spend six days in the school and return home on seventh day. But trekking though five hills is not a child play, the journey used to make them tired and exhausted. “This made me more determined to tear though the mighty mountains to pave way for my children. I didn't want my children to meet the same fate as mine. Hence, I decided to go ahead with the plan of road construction -- with or withou

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man scrapes through mountains to make a 10km-road - 2 Feb 2018
EXCLUSIVE: By Sanjay Pandey in India A 50-year-old Indian man has singlehandedly scraped though hills for a period of two years to make an 8km stretch of road to ensure that he and wife can meet their school-going children more often. Jalandhar Nayak, a small-time farmer from Kandhamal district of east Indian state of Odisha, constructed the first stretch of the road all by himself with just a pick axe and crowbar by working from dawn to dusk since 2016. So how did he stumbled up on the idea? “At the time of birth of our first child, my wife was home. When she went into labour pain, I tried to take her to the nearby health centre. But we couldn't reach there in time and she had to deliver the baby on the way. It was then the idea of building a road struck me first. I thought to myself, if having no roads in the village is causing us so much of problem to us, it would cause the problem to our children, too,” said Nayak, explaining how he stumbled upon the idea of contracting road." According to the Nayaks, the government has been giving assurance of building a road for decades in the area, but they never moved anything on the ground. Jalandhar’s father father who is 80 now, tells about the same hollow assurances that he got from the administration in his youth.   “When my children grew up and started going to school, it would take them three hours one way to go the school trekking though the mountainous terrain. Since they cannot commute to and from the school everyday, we had to get them enrolled in a residential school, a 15km away from home.   Nayak’s children spend six days in the school and return home on seventh day. But trekking though five hills is not a child play, the journey used to make them tired and exhausted. “This made me more determined to tear though the mighty mountains to pave way for my children. I didn't want my children to meet the same fate as mine. Hence, I decided to go ahead with the plan of road construction -- with or withou