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By:

Bhalchandra Chorghade

11 August 2025 at 1:54:18 pm

Healing Beyond the Clinic

Dr Kirti Samudra “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” This thought by Mother Teresa finds reflection in the life of Panvel-based diabetologist Dr Kirti Samudra, who has spent decades caring not only for her family but also thousands of patients who see her as their guide. As we mark International Women’s Day, stories like hers remind us that women of substance often shape society quietly through compassion, resilience and dedication. Doctor, mother, homemaker,...

Healing Beyond the Clinic

Dr Kirti Samudra “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” This thought by Mother Teresa finds reflection in the life of Panvel-based diabetologist Dr Kirti Samudra, who has spent decades caring not only for her family but also thousands of patients who see her as their guide. As we mark International Women’s Day, stories like hers remind us that women of substance often shape society quietly through compassion, resilience and dedication. Doctor, mother, homemaker, mentor and philanthropist — Dr Samudra has balanced many roles with commitment. While she manages a busy medical practice, her deeper calling has always been service. For her, medicine is not merely a profession but a responsibility towards the people who depend on her guidance. Nagpur to Panvel Born and raised in Nagpur, Dr Samudra completed her medical education there before moving to Mumbai in search of better opportunities. The early years were challenging. With determination, she and her husband Girish Samudra, an entrepreneur involved in underwater pipeline projects, chose to build their life in Panvel. At a time when the town was still developing and healthcare awareness was limited, she decided to make it both her workplace and home. What began with modest resources gradually grew into a trusted medical practice built on long-standing relationships with patients. Fighting Diabetes Recognising the growing threat of diabetes, Dr Samudra dedicated her career to treating and educating patients about the disease. Over the years, she has registered nearly 30,000 patients from Panvel and nearby areas. Yet she believes treatment alone is not enough. “Diabetes is a lifelong disease. Medicines are important, but patient education is equally critical. If people understand the condition, they can manage it better and prevent complications,” she says. For more than 27 years, she has organised an Annual Patients’ Education Programme, offering diagnostic tests at concessional rates and sessions on lifestyle management. Family, Practice With her husband frequently travelling for business, much of the responsibility of raising their two children fell on Dr Samudra. Instead of expanding her practice aggressively, she kept it close to home and adjusted her OPD timings around her children’s schedules. “It was not easy,” she recalls, “but I wanted to fulfil my responsibilities as a mother while continuing to serve my patients.” Beyond Medicine Today, Dr Samudra also devotes time to social initiatives through the Bharat Vikas Parishad, where she serves as Regional Head. Her projects include  Plastic Mukta Vasundhara , which promotes reduced use of single-use plastic, and  Sainik Ho Tumchyasathi , an initiative that sends Diwali  faral  (snack hamper) to Indian soldiers posted at the borders. Last year alone, 15,000 boxes were sent to troops. Despite decades of service, she measures success not in wealth but in goodwill. “I may not have earned huge money,” she says, “but I have earned immense love and respect from my patients. That is something I will always be grateful for.”

Chanakya Redux

Nitish Kumar’s tenth ascent to power marks not just personal endurance but the remaking of Bihar’s political economy.


Patna: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar embodies the peculiar mix of durability and opportunism that defines much of Indian state politics. Admirers cast him as a ‘modern Chanakya’ while critics deride him as a relentless shape-shifter. Both readings miss the more telling point which is that Kumar has become the architect of Bihar’s long, hesitant transition from a basket case to a state with the rudiments of order and growth.


A product of the JP Movement of the 1970s, he lost more elections than he won in his early years, but outlasted most of his contemporaries. His break with Lalu Prasad Yadav in the mid-1990s and his partnership with George Fernandes and the BJP gave him his first coherent platform. When he first took charge in 2005, Bihar was a byword for criminality, broken roads, and a state apparatus hollowed out by patronage. His initial years in office, unusually stable by Bihar’s standards, brought sharp improvements in law and order, modest economic recovery, and a technocratic seriousness rare in the state’s politics.


His social policies were equally calculated. His wager on women through reservation in panchayats, bicycle schemes for schoolgirls and the strengthening of self-help groups shifted Bihar’s political arithmetic. Prohibition, whatever its distortions, cemented his grip on female voters. Incremental attention to extremely backward classes, Dalits and Mahadalits helped him build a coalition broad enough to survive repeated realignments.


Those realignments have been many. He has aligned with the BJP, broken with it, allied with the RJD, abandoned it, and returned to the BJP fold more than once. Ideology has rarely been the driving force; staying in office to push what he sees as necessary administrative reform has. The 2025 mandate, delivered under the NDA banner, underscores his continuing relevance in a state still marked by demographic pressure, chronic underinvestment and fragile institutions.


His achievement is neither mythical nor miraculous. The gap between Bihar and faster-growing states remains wide; the state’s dependence on central transfers is acute; and outmigration continues unabated. Yet the Bihar he governs today is not the one he inherited. Schools function more predictably, roads have multiplied, and welfare delivery, though still patchy, is less capricious.


A tenth term offers a moment to judge his legacy less by hagiography than by hard outcomes. If he is to earn the Chanakyan comparisons, it will be by using his unmatched longevity to push Bihar beyond incrementalism and towards serious investment, institutional strengthening and a labour market that does not send its young to distant cities in search of dignity.

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