Warden · Orientation In-Charge · Eight Years at Sevagram · The Kettle Was Always On Laxman Radhakrishna Pandit — known to every student, nurse, clerk, driver, and doctor who passed through the early years of MGIMS as Pandit Kaka — was the quiet human infrastructure of the institution’s founding years. His door was always open. … Read more
Professor & Head of Pharmacology · Principal · Forty Years at Sevagram · The Man Who Found the Place Where He Belonged Twenty-five years after teaching their first pharmacology class, the 1970 batch of MGIMS invited Dr. M.L. Sharma to teach them again. He accepted. He was in his late seventies. His scalp hair was … Read more
First Dean of MGIMS · Principal · Professor of Physiology · The Man Who Gave the Institution Its Administrative Spine Anyone who walked into Dr. Kharak Singh Sachdeva’s office at MGIMS for the first time learned quickly that the first thirty seconds were the most important. He was a tall man, traditionally turbaned, salt-and-pepper beard, … Read more
First Principal of MGIMS · Professor of Physiology · Soldier · Scientist · The Man Who Gave MGIMS Its Academic Spine On September 1, 1969, a man in a neatly tied turban stepped onto the sun-baked platform at Wardha station. He had traveled a thousand kilometres from Punjab on a slow-moving train. He carried the … Read more
President, Kasturba Health Society In the winter of 1966, the world of Indian finance was a kingdom of polished leather, starched collars, and an unspoken code of urban elitism. Into this world stepped Parmanand Tapdiya, a twenty-one-year-old who had just performed a feat of intellectual levitation: clearing the final Chartered Accountancy examinations on his first … Read more
Founding Trustee, Kasturba Health Society · Secretary to Jamnalal Bajaj · Disciple of Vinoba Bhave · The Continuity of Sevagram When Raghunath Shridhar Dhotre died in Wardha on May 16, 1967, the President of India sent condolences to his widow. It was a gesture that would have puzzled Dhotre himself, a man who spent fifty … Read more
Founding Trustee & Finance Manager, Kasturba Health Society · Disciple of J.C. Kumarappa · The Third Pillar of MGIMS He began work at four in the morning. “Son,” he would chuckle, “four a.m. — that was my happy hour. Three quiet hours, just me and the numbers. No phone calls, no meetings, no interruptions. I … Read more
The bullock cart left before dawn. Two figures sat in it as it lurched down the red dirt roads of Vidarbha — a young doctor in white khadi and a determined nurse named Manimala Chaudhary. They were going to the villages to collect the harvest premium. Not cash. Jowar. A handful from one family, a … Read more