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 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.

Nominate Your Civic Sense Hero

In Hyderabad, a........

© The Better India