A farmer from Vishnu Pur of Kurua village, Sukhjora Panchayat, Shyamal Chaudhary, requested the Block Development Officer to have a pond dug that would fulfil the irrigation requirements of the fields. After filing several applications and visiting the officer many a times, a determined Shayamal lost neither courage nor his farming skills. Instead, he took this denial as a challenge and started digging a pond on his own land. After fourteen years of continuous hard work, he not only created a pond but gifted it to the community that was going through hard times in the absence of irrigation related facilities.
Fourteen years of his life were committed to bringing a change in the lives of the farmers for which he demanded nothing. When Shyamal, a Class Eight dropout, started out, many people taunted him. He simply ignored them and remained focused on his objective. "I never asked for help," says the farmer who started digging the pond in 1997 and completed it in 2011. The pond, 100x100 meters long and 22 feet deep, now benefits numerous villages in the vicinity: Kuruvaa, Petsar, Margadi,Beltikari, Vishnupur and Baiganthara to name a few.
On his nine bigha of land, Chaudhary produces a variety of vegetables and fruits like potatoes, onions, bananas and mangoes. He then started fish farming in the pond. The increased income is enough for the survival of his four daughters and a son. Quite happy with outcome of his efforts, Chaudhary feels that his life is blessed as the farmers now have a year-long solution to their irrigation woes.
Chaudhary asked the government department to help with a retaining wall and a pump set and pipes for irrigation, but all of his demands have fallen on deaf ears. The Officers did not pay heed, despite being aware of his remarkable achievement. Undeterred, he tried to access the Agriculture Minister Satyanand Jha, which has not produced any positive outcome so far.
