For Girish Bharadwaj, engineering was never meant to remain inside a workshop.
Born into a farming family in Aramburu near Sullia, Karnataka, Bharadwaj grew up watching rural life closely. His father, Balekkala Krishna Bhat, was an agriculturist who had little enthusiasm for his son’s decision to pursue engineering. His mother, however, persuaded him to continue his education
. Engineering college was not inexpensive for the family; the fees and hostel expenses were a significant burden. Bharadwaj eventually graduated in mechanical engineering from PES College of Engineering, Mandya, in 1973.
After college, he did not immediately become the factory executive he had imagined. Instead, he returned to Sullia and established a fabrication workshop, later known as Rational Engineering Works.
He manufactured farm equipment and carried out general fabrication work. Then, in 1989, a group of villagers from nearby Aramburu came to him with a problem that had little to do with conventional mechanical engineering.
The Payaswini River separated their community from the other side. During heavy rains, the river became dangerous, and the damaged country boat that people depended on could no longer provide reliable passage. For villagers, crossing the river affected everyday life, including access to schools, markets and other necessities.
Bharadwaj had never built a bridge before. He could have said no. Instead, he began learning.
He consulted engineering books, sought help from fellow engineers and worked with the local community to develop a low-cost suspension footbridge. That first bridge at Aramburu became the turning point of his life.
What began as a local problem slowly became his life’s work. Over the following decades, Bharadwaj designed and built more than 140 hanging footbridges across rural parts of Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha. Many were built in places where rivers, forests and difficult terrain had kept communities physically isolated.
His bridges were deliberately simple and economical, designed around the needs and realities of the people who would use them.
The work also demanded more than engineering. Bharadwaj and his teams sometimes lived in temporary camps near construction sites for months. Projects could take three to six months, and when funding fell short on community-supported bridges, he sometimes contributed his own money.
His work eventually earned him a name that was bigger than any professional title: the “Bridge Man of India.”
In 2017, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri under the field of Social Work for his contribution to rural connectivity.
His contribution was also recognised by his alma mater. PES College of Engineering records him as a 1973 mechanical engineering alumnus and credits him with constructing numerous hanging bridges in remote areas.
Bharadwaj passed away in Sullia on 7 July 2026 at the age of 76. He was survived by two sons and a daughter. His son Pathanjali, an M.Tech graduate, had also become involved in continuing the bridge-building work.
Girish Bharadwaj did not build the biggest bridges in India. He built the ones that mattered to people who had been waiting for a way across.
