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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.”

Lethal Stockpile

Kim Jong Un’s enrichment drive revives old Cold War dilemmas in a new Asian theatre.

Few regimes are as adept at turning scarcity into menace as North Korea. A country where electricity is rationed and hunger is widespread has nonetheless managed to spin enough uranium through its centrifuges to amass a stockpile that could shake Asia’s strategic order. This week, in an unusually blunt estimate, South Korea alleged that Pyongyang now held some 2,000 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium, enough in theory to fashion nearly 50 nuclear bombs. For a state that has built its survival on the threat of annihilation, that is a geopolitical milestone.


The revelation is a reminder of how North Korea, one of the poorest and most isolated countries on earth, has mastered the darkest of modern technologies. Enrichment is no trivial undertaking; uranium must be spun through thousands of centrifuges before it reaches weapons-grade. That Pyongyang can now sustain production at four known sites suggests not only scientific expertise but also the procurement networks and covert supply chains that decades of sanctions were meant to crush.


The story of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions is a tale of broken promises. In the early 1990s, amid the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pyongyang agreed in principle to halt its weapons programme under the 1994 Agreed Framework with America. In return it was to receive aid and two light-water reactors. But mutual suspicion and political shifts in Washington meant that deal collapsed. North Korea pressed ahead, secretly enriching uranium while continuing to extract plutonium from spent fuel at its Yongbyon reactor.


Its first nuclear test in 2006 confirmed what intelligence services had long suspected. A cascade of sanctions followed, as did cycles of diplomatic courtship. The Six-Party Talks of the mid-2000s, involving America, China, Russia, Japan and both Koreas, yielded little more than temporary freezes. Each breakdown allowed Pyongyang to push its programme further, testing ever more powerful devices in 2009, 2013, 2016 and 2017. When Kim Jong Un met Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018, the prospect of disarmament briefly flickered. Yet subsequent summits collapsed on North Korea’s insistence on keeping its arsenal as the ultimate guarantee of regime survival.


Five to six kilograms of plutonium is enough for one bomb; 42 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium suffices for another. Pyongyang’s two tonnes of HEU therefore represent not just an incremental step but a leap. In theory, the regime could scale its arsenal to rival that of established mid-tier nuclear powers such as Britain or France. For America and its allies, it is one thing to face a handful of North Korean devices, another to confront dozens dispersed across hardened bunkers and mobile launchers.


This arithmetic also unnerves China. Though Beijing remains Pyongyang’s main economic lifeline, it has no wish to see instability on its northeastern border—or to encourage Japan and South Korea to pursue their own nuclear options. Tokyo already possesses the technology and fissile material to produce bombs within months; Seoul, too, debates the logic of an independent deterrent when faith in America’s ‘nuclear umbrella’ wavers. North Korea’s enrichment binge could therefore cascade into wider proliferation across Asia.


South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, promises a softer touch than his hawkish predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol. His unification minister, however, warned that sanctions alone cannot work, calling instead for a direct summit between Pyongyang and Washington. That may be wishful. Kim Jong Un has already signalled that talks are possible only if his nuclear arsenal is accepted as permanent. For America, that remains anathema, not least because of the precedent it would set for other would-be nuclear states.


Once a state has mastered enrichment and weaponisation, rollback is virtually unheard of. The challenge then shifts from prevention to containment.


Two tonnes of uranium may be an abstraction. But it represents the hardening of a reality the world has long preferred to ignore: North Korea is no longer a threshold state but a de facto nuclear power, growing in strength. To treat it otherwise is to mistake hope for strategy.

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