What does it take to fight poverty for an entire village? You might be thinking about big trucks and planes for food delivery or volunteer workers from across the globe. But for one village in India, all it took is one man and 30 years of work.
Laungi Bhuiyan is a villager from Gaya, India who knew his village needed…
The story begins in Kothilawa in Lahthua area of Gaya, India, where Laungi Bhuiyan lives. Laungi, like many of the men in his village, spends the large part of every day tending to his cattle.But Laungi wasn’t satisfied with just cattle herding.
Even when he started the project, Laungi knew that his village needed something more to help them thrive as a community. Draughts, bad seasons, and other agricultural problems caused far too many problems for his fellow farmers. The families of his community needed easily accessible water source.
He didn’t need a team to get started. Just knowledge and…
Laungi decided that his village needed a canal. He knew of a place in the nearby jungle where rainwater fell and collected. It would be the perfect place to start a major irrigation project.
He took up simple farming tools and a basket to help him move dirt and soil and began the slow work of digging a canal.
No one thought he could do it, so he stood…
The work would have gone by faster if he had help from his villagers. But no one believed in Laungi’s vision like he did. Family and fellow villagers tried to stop him, but Laungi was not going to give up. So he dug and dug, ignoring the stares of villagers who thought he went crazy.
No one thought he’d complete his work, especially not on his own, since a useful irrigation system is normally a project for large teams of people and engineers. Laungi’s passion for his village was unstoppable.
Decades passed and Laungi was still hard at work
The decades passed, and Laungi’s routine had never changed. He’d tend to his cattle and dig his canal. Foot by foot, the canal was getting closer to a lake that served his village during the dryer seasons.
You might think that this is when the villagers came to help. But he still managed the entire project on his own. But Laungi never complained, since it was what he wanted to do.
A 30 year dream turned him into a local legend
Finally, after 30 years of dedicated work, Laungi’s 3km long (1.86 miles) canal was complete. It was the talk of the village and many people across the world were comparing him to the “Dashrath Manjhi” or Mountain Man, who broke a mountain to save his village.
Laungi was proud of his work, since he knew that it would serve his village for ages to come. Now, the village had one more powerful layer of defense against poverty and hunger. He reflected on his achievement by saying:
“It took me 30 years to dig this canal which takes the water to a pond in the village.”
What Laungi’s story means…
Laungi’s story is a lesson that even a single person devoted to the welfare of his people can do wondrous things. A village was given support in a very large way because of Laungi and his dream of a water canal.
You can check out the story in more detail by checking out the video below.
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