Madhya Pradesh man digging well on mountain for 3 years for water

Hari said that the task seemed very difficult at the beginning because of the rocky composition of the land with not even a single layer of soil. However, the wife's hardship of fetching water by walking miles was enough to motivate Hari to carry on the work. People in the village with a population of 3000 are still deprived of basic facilities like water.

Sidhi: Inspired partly by the Bollywood film 'Manjhi: The Mountain Man and Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, a man in the Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh has been digging a well at the top of a mountain for the last three years for his unwell wife who has to fetch water 2 km away from their house. Forty-year-old Hari Singh from the village panchayat of Sihawal, 45 km from the Sidhi district headquarters, said that his wife Siyavati is not keeping well and has to walk for a distance to fetch water which he could not bear.

Hari said he is digging the well for the last three years adding traces of water that have appeared lately. He said that he had taken up the scarcity of water in the village with the panchayat representative, who cited the forest ownership of the land. Mohd Islam Ansari, the panchayat representative indeed cited the forest ownership of the land.

“It is a mountainous region, so it is not possible to provide every facility,” he said. For 3 years now, Hari's wife Siyavati, and three children are engaged in helping him in the work of digging the well and their efforts might bear fruits soon. Hari said that the task seemed very difficult at the beginning because of the rocky composition of the land with not even a single layer of soil.

However, the wife's hardship of fetching water by walking miles was enough to motivate Hari to carry on the work. People in the village with a population of three thousand are still deprived of basic facilities like water.