Gangadhara Tilak is a retired railway employee who is doing the dirty work that our civic bodies have long ignored—he is making Indian roads safe by filling potholes using his own pension funds. He has filled around 1145 potholes in Hyderabad till now and he is very determined to make Hyderabad India’s first pothole-free city.

We talked to Gangadhara Tilak Katnam about his journey from a retired Railway employee to repairing potholes and the struggles which have made ‘Shramadaan’ a massive movement in Hyderabad.

Tell us a little bit about the philosophy and inspiration behind setting up of 'Shramadaan'?

If the earning member loses life, all the dependents will become orphans, if they don't have any source to earn money.

After seeing a few accidents due to potholes, I got motivated to fill the potholes with a belief that I can save few lives and help few families. After seeing these accidents, my mind flooded with several thoughts. I panicked and felt omitting sensation and something started twisting in my stomach. I felt giddiness and many thoughts surrounded me: If a person is involved in an accident, he may be the only earning person of that family, but what about the family’s fate now?

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(I know it, if the earning member of family dies or becomes disabled to earn, that family members becomes orphans in due course, after few years, if they fail to get a source of earning). I practically starved for food myself and therefore, I know the pain of a starving stomach.

Apart from that a few other questions which arose in my mind were: Can any one of us bring back the life which was lost in such accidents? Can we control the sorrow of the old aged parents? The aged parents might have spent all the money, whatever that they earned in their life time. They need physical and financial support at this age as they can't move and work to earn. What about the fate of his wife? Can any one of us control her sorrow?

Even if we succeed in due time to convince her for another marriage, can any one of us imagine her lifelong humiliation for no mistake of hers?

What about the fate of his little innocent kids?

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These thoughts made me go ahead with filling of potholes. I will go on filling potholes till the last breath of my life or till the Government comes forward to implement my suggestions to ensure "Pothole-free" roads.

How difficult was it to convince the local authorities to provide material and resources for filling up the potholes?

When I started doing this work, for one year I was able to collect material from the foot paths to fill the potholes. Then, for the next one and a half years, I purchased the material from road contractors. Till then I had exhausted all my money and faced problems to even pay my LIC premiums. My wife also reported the matter to my son, who is in the US. But he too failed to convince me to stop this work. He quarreled with GHMC commissioner to provide proper assistance to us for doing this work but the commissioner called me and asked me to stop doing this. He also failed to convince me and then Sri. M. Krishna Babu came forward to supply us the material.

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As long as he was there, we were getting material to the site with one phone call. But now GHMC commissioner has changed and he doesn’t spare more than 30 seconds to talk and his staff is very reluctant to supply the material. Now we are struggling a lot to get material from them. (Maybe because we started questioning about the transparency of the daily movement of thirty trucks).

What do you think is the role of technology to bring to fore the social issues plaguing our society? How helpful has social media been in inspiring youngsters to join this movement?

I had been doing the work for two and half years and filling potholes. And when my son came to stop me from doing this work, he himself witnessed an accident due to a pothole. He then got us organized and helped us become popular using the social network, including Facebook.

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From that day, one by one people started coming forward to take active role in Shramadaan and now we have thousands of volunteers in our city willing to help us. Youth, Software Engineers, students and local people are more interested to see a change. There are more good people in our society around us. And social media is able to create more awareness and good cooperation among like-minded people to build a better India.

How can the situation on the roads in Hyderabad be improved systematically?

By introducing some simple procedures in the working system, many drastic improvements can be seen as far as roads are concerned. Transparency and accountability is more important. In Hyderabad city, GHMC is utilizing 30 trucks of material for filling potholes daily. If the daily movement of these 30 trucks is published in a local newspaper, then we will be able to take better care of the roads and save government money too.

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At many places in the city the potholes are developed due to waste water from canteens, car wash sheds, and residential buildings. At many places the department pipes and drain leakages are damaging the roads. This can be prevented.

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Are youngsters today more aware of the environment in which they live in than the earlier generation?

There is a lot of change among youth and they have awareness about the environment. If someone can lead them efficiently then change can be brought in our society.

What do you think is the future of 'Shramadaan' and will we see you scaling this movement to other states in India in the near future?

Shramadaan’s message is reaching several people through social media, print media and also through electronic media. As far as roads and potholes are concerned, Shramadaan is confident that we will succeed in convincing our government to suggest and introduce some simple procedures in each and every municipality which will ensure pothole free roads. For example, one of our suggestions is that the police should take a picture of pothole and send it to the concerned Municipal Engineer and if that pothole is not filled within 24-48 hours, the same police should book a ticket on that Engineer and impose suitable punishment instead of waiting for public complaints.

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Other suggestions are: In every city, on the bus shelters the phone number of concerned Municipal Engineer should be written to make it easy to report about any municipal issues. Another phone number below it should be to whom a call has to be made if the problem is not attended.

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Also, in every city/town there must be few "Pothole Ambulances" which have to move within 24 hours to fill the pothole after getting a complaint. If no complaints are registered then those vehicles can move with their own schedule and fill up the potholes.

This independence day let us all take a pledge to contribute to our society in every little way that we can and make our society a better place to live in.