Residents of Piprahwa Tola under Pandu police station in Palamau worked one full day to rebuild a 200-feet road that was too risky to navigate.

“The road was riddled with potholes. Such was the condition that one would be bound to fall into one of these potholes despite care and caution,” Shambhu Sharan Singh whose wife Manju Devi is the mukhiya of the local Dala Kala panchayat told The Telegraph Online on Tuesday.

Singh said it was risky to walk on the road at night.

“Pregnant women would never wish to cross the road. 'The road pain is far worse than the labour pain', they say,” said another resident.

Sources said a gush of rainwater from the two adjoining hillocks, Khaira Pahar and Lohri Pahar, had eroded this portion of the road.

Singh said the water is a major destroyer of the road but the problem became acute when a rich villager raised a concrete boundary wall across the road.

Hence, residents decided to take matters in their own hands. Some came with tractors and JCB machines at Singh’s behest and filled the potholes. But the measure is temporary.

“Panchayats don’t have any funds for road repairs. There is no provision for it either in the 15^th Finance Commission funds either,” Singh said, adding that he paid for the fuel for using the machines.

“The road was ready in a day, by Monday, August 24,” he said.

Palamau villagers said they dared to build roads themselves only after a decline of extremism in the area. From the '90s till about 2001, extremism was at its peak and building and repairing roads in rural areas of the district was a risky affair.

They said rebels hate good roads since good roads mean faster mobility for police.

“Such was the fear of rebels in the past that people used to avoid making their own houses. But now, with extremism on the back foot in Palamau due to police intervention, rural people have become emboldened to build public utilities like roads,” said sub-divisional police officer Bishrampur Surjit Kumar.

“We are happy that villagers are coming forward to work on useful things like making their own road,” said the SDPO.