In July 2015, a 16-year-old boy named Prakash was riding pillion on his cousin’s motorbike through Mumbai when the wheel hit a pothole. He was thrown from the bike and did not survive.
His father, Dadarao Bilhore, a vegetable vendor, could have drowned in grief. Instead, within a month of losing his son, he picked up a shovel. He began filling the very potholes that had killed Prakash — first the one near his home, then the next street, then the next. He collected sand and gravel from construction sites and worked in the punishing monsoon, alone. Over the years, he has filled more than 1,500 potholes across Mumbai. “I don’t want anyone else to lose a loved one as we have,” he has said.
Dadarao Bilhore
Dadarao is not a politician. He holds no office and draws no salary for this. He is simply a man who decided that a broken road was his problem to fix — because it belonged to all of us.
We usually reserve the word patriotism for one or two days a year. We hoist the flag, sing the anthem, feel the swell of pride, and then return to stepping over the same garbage, ignoring the same overflowing bin, jumping the same red light. But somewhere in that gap between the feeling and the doing lies a quieter, harder, more beautiful kind of love for one’s country. It doesn’t shout. It shows up. It sweeps, digs, plants, and repairs.
This is the love The Better India has spent years documenting. And this Independence Day, we’re giving it a name.
Introducing #CivicSenseHeroes
Civic Sense Heroes is our year-long, nationwide campaign to find, celebrate and recognise the Indians who turn pride into action and responsibility into real change. They care for the streets, parks, lakes, roads and public spaces that belong to every one of us — and in doing so, they prove a simple, powerful idea: true patriotism is civic sense.
Because when you look for these people, you find them everywhere.
They’re on the roads
In Hyderabad, a retired railway engineer named Gangadhara Tilak Katnam earned the nickname “the doctor of roads.” Long after retirement, he spends his mornings — and his own pension — repairing the potholes that injure his city’s commuters. A photo of a spot where a child was hurt is all it takes to send him out with his tools before the sun is fully up.
Gangadhara Tilak Katnam
They’re at the water’s edge
In Bengaluru, Anand Malligavad was a mechanical engineer who knew nothing about ecology. When he saw a lake near Anekal that had dried into a dumping ground, he didn’t file a complaint and move on. He taught himself ancient irrigation techniques, rallied neighbours, and brought that 36-acre lake back to life in just 45 days. “They laughed at me,” he recalls. “Everyone thought I was crazy.” He has since revived more than 35 lakes.
Anand Malligavad
And it isn’t always one person. In Chennai, a handful of residents of Chitlapakkam began cleaning their neglected lake every single weekend. A few became dozens; dozens became a movement of over 2,000 people. Their persistence eventually pushed the government to sanction ₹25 crore to restore it. Today, a whole neighbourhood has water again. As one resident put it, “We no longer pay for water.”
They’re in our neighbourhoods
In Bengaluru’s Domlur, Dr Hemant Agarwal grew tired of the stinking dump yard outside his home. Together with an anonymous group of citizens, he cleared ten truckloads of garbage and turned that eyesore into Ajja-Ajji Park — a green space where the area’s grandparents now walk each evening.
Sometimes the act is smaller, and no less powerful. A Ranchi teacher, Manoj Ranjan, took the roadside patch outside his home — once a garbage spot — and grew a garden of over 200 plants. Soon, his neighbours started their own. One patch of green became a street of them.
They’re in the smallest daily moments
But civic sense isn’t always about reviving lakes or clearing landfills. Sometimes it’s just refusing to look away from the small stuff.
Earlier this year, a video from Bengaluru made the rounds. An auto driver had noticed his passenger leaving behind a mess on the backseat — and instead of sighing and cleaning it up later like most of us would, he simply asked the man to clean it himself before he left. No lecture. No scene. Just a quiet, “That’s not okay.”
And the internet, for once, agreed. Because we all know the feeling, don’t we? We’ve all left the wrapper on the seat, the cup on the wall, the mess for someone else. We tell ourselves it’s not our problem — it’s a public space, someone’s paid to clean it. But someone always does have to clean it. Or we could just… not make the mess in the first place.
That’s the whole point. Civic sense isn’t a rule someone imposes on us. It’s a small debt we owe the place we call home.
Why this matters now
You may have noticed that civic sense became a national talking point this year. Everyone has an opinion on what’s broken. But blame is easy, and it changes nothing. What changes things is what Dadarao did. What Anand did. What a teacher in Ranchi did with a few pots and some soil.
Here’s the quiet magic of it: when one person takes responsibility, an entire community sees what’s possible. The dumper becomes the volunteer. The bystander picks up a broom. Change, it turns out, is contagious — it just needs someone to start.
That’s what this campaign is really about. Not pointing at the problem, but pointing at the people already solving it — so that more of us are moved to join them.
This is where you come in
Over the coming year, we’ll be telling these stories through articles, videos and reels, and recognising outstanding citizens nationally around Republic Day. But we can’t find them all on our own.
You know someone. The neighbour who quietly keeps the park clean. The uncle who has directed traffic at that chaotic crossing for years. The group of students who adopted a lake. The person whose small, stubborn act of care makes your corner of India a little better.
Tell us about them. Nominate your Civic Sense Hero, or tag them on social media with #CivicSenseHeroes. Selected heroes will be featured across The Better India and seen by millions — because the people who love this country enough to care for it deserve to be seen.
This Independence Day, don’t just feel proud of India.
Celebrate the Indians who are quietly building a better one.
