When life's mission is to fix roads, one pothole at a time

MUMBAI/JHANSI: More than 1,000km and a generation separate 48-year-old Dadarao Bilhore in Mumbai from 79-year-old Rupnarayan Niranjan in Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh. But, driven by personal tragedy in one case and an acute sense of social responsibility in another, they have been carrying on a lonely struggle to repair roads in their neighbourhood single-handedly, and to fix other civic issues.
On July 28, 2015, Dadarao lost his 16-year-old son Prakash in a road accident caused by a pothole. Within a fortnight, Dadarao got to read about two similar fatalities caused by potholes. "Prakash died because of a hole which had not been repaired for months," he said. Dadarao then embarked on a one-man mission to fill as many potholes in the city as he could find. He began with a crater near his vegetable and fruit store. "I felt I had paid tribute to Prakash by potentially saving someone's life," he recalls.

Working in the afternoons and weekends, Dadarao at first only reinstalled loose paver blocks. From 2017, he has been getting debris from construction sites to fill the holes.
Over the years, others joined the cause. On the third anniversary of Prakash's death this year, more than 120 people came together to fill over 100 potholes on the Juhu-Vikhroli Link Road close to the spot where the teenager died. "Imagine what we could do if all of Mumbai's residents came together. We could one day have no more potholes or damaged roads in the country," says Dadarao.

Meanwhile, in Lalitpur city of Bundelkhand region in UP, Rupnarayan Niranjan is a familiar sight on mornings - clad in a vest and shorts, cleaning roads, mending potholes and removing litter including plastic. He has been at it since 2000, when he retired as a school teacher. In 1999, he had been given the National Award to Teachers by the President.
As a teacher, he found out his students were staying away because the road to the school was in disrepair. Ignored by the authorities, he repaired the road himself and set up toilets and drinking water facilities at the school from his own salary.
After retirement, Niranjan has been setting out each morning with his handcart, broom and shovel looking for spots that need cleaning and potholes that need to be filled up. But he does not consider this voluntary service he is offering to the community.
"I receive a monthly pension from the government, which works out to Rs 600-700 a day. I consider it my duty to offer some services to the tax payers in return. Also, the work keeps me fit and gives me satisfaction," says the septuagenarian. One of his activities is to develop barren land into lush gardens, and he also spends time teaching school students. Lately, he has taken the responsibility of cleaning a canal near his home. He wades into the water every day and removes the garbage dumped by people.
For Niranjan, driven by a sense of duty from another generation, and Dadarao, spurred by personal tragedy, the work is literally endless. Often, the stretches they repair need to be fixed all over again, time after time. But both these remarkable men vow to keep at it for as long as they can, and so do those who have been inspired by them.