HYDERABAD: The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TGSRTC) is known for its buses, but its true strength lies in the people who keep them running. Behind the tickets, tools and steering wheels are individuals whose lives off-duty are stories of service and transformation. Meet three such employees — a conductor, a store attendant and a driver — recently honoured not for their punctuality, but for their humanity.
For 48-year-old conductor Podduturi Anita from Khammam depot, one child’s death became a lifelong calling. Two decades ago, her young relative succumbed to thalassemia after her family struggled with unaffordable treatment. “I couldn’t forget his parents’ helplessness,” she recalls. “That’s when I decided no other family should go through what we did.”
In 2010, Anita started Sankalp, a voluntary group that organises blood donation camps and supplies free medicines to children with thalassemia. With her husband Ravichandra, supportive in-laws and a network of doctors, she built a quiet movement. Today, 248 children depend on her efforts. She travels to villages to ensure regular transfusions, negotiates with hospitals for low-cost bone marrow transplants — 12 children have already received a new lease of life — and spends from her own salary when funds fall short.
Known affectionately as “Conductoramma”, Anita has been recognised with the Best Volunteer Award five times and the Best NGO Award once. But she brushes aside honours. “I spend first, awards come later,” she says simply. She now urges newly married couples and expectant mothers to take the HBA2 test to prevent passing on the genetic disorder.
Making Karimnagar green
If Anita is fighting a blood-borne battle, Pulle Satyanarayana, a 60-year-old store attendant at Karimnagar’s RTC workshop, is waging a green crusade. By day, he works in the depot; by evening, he roams the city with a sack of saplings strapped to his moped. What began as childhood curiosity at the age of 10 has, over decades, become an obsession. In the last 10 years alone, he has planted and nurtured nearly one lakh saplings.
Satyanarayana waters them through blistering summers, often spending his own money to keep them alive. His trees now line Karimnagar’s streets, offering shade and clean air. He doesn’t just plant; he preaches. A loudspeaker mounted on his bike blares messages on the importance of greenery as he rides along. Saplings are delivered free of cost to anyone who asks, transport included. “Trees don’t just give us oxygen; they give us life,” he says. Recognised with the Telangana Haritha Mitra Award, he has become living proof that one man’s daily effort can change a city’s landscape.
Building futures
At Secunderabad’s Cantonment depot, driver M Ramulu steers buses by morning and dreams by evening. In 2019, he founded the Mahakavi C Narayana Reddy Kalapeetham, a cultural organisation that blends art with social service. Each year, it honours poets from 10 districts and celebrates RTC drivers who complete their service accident-free. Just this June, 11 drivers from the Secunderabad region were felicitated at Ravindra Bharathi.
But his work stretches further back. In 2001, Ramulu adopted the government school in his hometown Rachalapalle of Nagarkurnool district. Twice a year, he returns to distribute clothes and pay the fees of poor and orphaned students. So far, he has supported 55 poets and plans to honour 100 by the 100th birth anniversary of C Narayana Reddy, an award-winning poet and writer, who also served as Telugu University vice-chancellor and Rajya Sabha member.
For TGSRTC, these three are more than staff—they are symbols of selflessness. “They remind us that true service begins where official duty ends,” Managing Director VC Sajjanar tells TNIE. “Their compassion is the fuel that keeps society moving forward.”