For the last 11 years, an elderly couple from Hyderabad has been patching potholes on the roads of the city with the purpose of saving lives. The couple has been spending money from their own pockets to help people avoid accidents caused by potholes.

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Gangadhar Tilak Katnam, a 73-year-old man from Hyderabad, is popularly known as the ‘Road Doctor’. As per the report, he and his wife, Venkateshwari Katnam, 64, go along the road in a car, called the ‘Pothole Ambulance,’ and fill potholes wherever they see them.

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Tilak served for the Indian Railways for over 35 years. He moved to Hyderabad after his retirement to work as a software design engineer for a software company. Since then, he’s been filling potholes all around the city.

With a genuine urge to get rid of the city potholes, he resigned his work as a software design engineer after a year and has been totally committed to fixing the city’s potholes since then.

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In an interview with ET, Gangadhar said, “I am managing the finances of this initiative from the pension that I receive.” 

“All the material that is required for the task is bought using money from my pension. For the last 11 years, I was able to fill nearly about 2,030 potholes in and across the city and spent about Rs. 40 lakh on it” he added.

While what they’re doing, in and of itself, is commendable; what makes it all the more endearing is that they’re using their own pension savings to give back to the city.