Amitabh Bachchan honours Sullia's Girish Bharadwaj at CNN-IBN awards

Media Release

Mumbai, Dec 5: In a first-of-a-kind initiative, CNN-IBN, in partnership with Paranjape Schemes Construction Limited, honoured 12 unsung senior citizens of India, including Girish Bharadwaj from Sullia, at the Senior Citizen Awards – The Unstoppables.

At a glittering awards ceremony held at Taj Land’s End Hotel in Mumbai, megastar Amitabh Bachchan who was the chief guest felicitated the winners for their brave and inspirational endeavours.

These special awardees, well past their retirement age, have been working tirelessly to improve the lives of people around them, thereby making themselves valuable partners in India’s progress. The Senior Citizen Awards – The Unstoppables adhered to a process of selection which had the CNN-IBN editorial board at its core.

About Girish Bharadwaj

In 1975, engineering graduate Girish Bharadwaj set up a small workshop in Sullia, a town near his ancestral village of Arambur in the Aletty district. One morning in 1989, a delegation from Arambur came to him with a request he could not turn down: the village wanted a footbridge over their river Payasvini to lead them out of isolation. For the first time in his life, Girish began to study bridges.

After intensive research and using a few civil engineering textbooks, he was finally able to build an 87m-long Arambur footbridge. Thus began the journey of the Bridge Man, as he fondly came to be known as. Girish has built over 80 low-cost suspension bridges across rivers in the Western Ghats by using local and eco-friendly resources. In just two decades, he has successfully connected many villages in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief, CNN-IBN, IBN7 & IBN-Lokmat, shared his views about the awards, saying, “We are proud to bestow this honour on our senior citizens who work at the grassroots to uplift our society without looking for any kind of recognition in return. These citizens have withstood the odds of age and have zealously taken it upon themselves to pave way for a better future for the generations to come.”