The much awaited opening ceremony of the foot suspension bridge in Rayagada was organized on 26th March 2012. The bridge has become a centre of attraction for the people of Rayagada and daily thousands of visitors flock to this place in the evening to enjoy the marvel of engineering in their district.
The bridge was formally dedicated to the people by Sri. Girish Bharadwaj, the bridge man of India. He has built more than 100 such bridges in South India, especially in his home state of Karnataka. He is the inspiration behind this bridge and has shared his technical expertise for this bridge free of cost.
Sri Bharadwaj, runs the Bharat Grama Sethu Pratishthana, a trust which believes in the using engineering skills for social causes. It aims at providing rural connectivity n a cost effective nad innovative way through foot suspension bridges. This trust has shown a new system of execution of public works, within and also outside the government system. Mr. Bharadwaj calls this need based connectivity.
Suspension bridges rarely figure in the government scheme of things. If at all it is only in the mega structure level. In the state of Orissa though, there exists a suspension bridge in Dhabaleshwar in the Cuttack district, suspension bridges are not in the schedule of the Works dept. This makes the achievement of the district IAP team a special one, as they achieved a feat of which there was no precedent in the state, as the earlier bridge was designed and executed by a Kolkata based agency.
Collector Rayagada said that though the district IAP team had decided for a suspension bridge over the river Nagavalli at the place called Chekaguda, it struggled for months together to find execution support and in thisphase all they could get was discouragement, as no dept was willing ot risk a project of which they had no experience. The district administration was left in lurch and but did not give up, as it very well knew the importance of this connectivity, that it was to connect 200 villages to the district HQ. When there was very little hope left, light came in form of Mr. Girish Bhartadwaj, who willing took the challenge, when most declined.
The cooperation of the Police Housing board, especially its MD. Sri. Sudhanshu Sarangi, IPS is also valuable, as they helped in floating the tender, when no dept came forward.
The most valuable of all is the spirit and enthusiasm of two young entrepreneurs of Rayagada. Sri. Ravi Prasad Dora and Sri. Narin Kumandan. their participation in this project was to be the most critical part. These two gentleman who the Collector and SP call as them the part of the 'dream team' took up the most important challenge, that of execution of the project.
This project will act as a prototype for such connectivity in other districts of the state and its a great joy to dedicate this to the people of the district Collector Rayagada said.
