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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.”

Moral Paralysis

It seems the Britain of 2025 no longer confronts violence but accommodates it. The latest episode of horror, where knife-wielding attackers stormed a London-bound train in Cambridgeshire, slashing passengers and leaving an elderly man bleeding as he shielded a girl, ought to have convulsed the nation in collective outrage. Instead, the government prefers to sigh in weary denial. Within hours, police ruled out ‘terrorism.’


This ritual of minimisation has become a national reflex. The Cambridgeshire attack follows close on the heels of a similar incident in Manchester that left two people dead and several injured in a synagogue rampage last month. In London, knife assaults have risen by double digits this year. The government’s own data show that knife crime in England and Wales has doubled since 2011 despite nearly 60,000 blades “seized or surrendered.”


Nowhere is this moral collapse clearer than in the Keir Starmer-led Labour government’s response. Under Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the Home Office seems to have become less a department of national security than a therapy centre for Britain’s collective guilt. Prime Minister Starmer promises “a Britain that feels safe,” but his ministers seem terrified not of criminals, but of offending anyone who might vote Labour in Birmingham or Bradford. Their obsession with ‘inclusivity’ and ‘multi-culturalism’ has turned into paralysis.


This aversion to truth has roots that stretch back two decades. After the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, Britain ended up producing self-censorship instead of heightened vigilance. The ‘Prevent’ strategy, conceived to counter extremism, soon became a bureaucratic minefield where teachers, police officers, and social workers feared being branded racist more than they feared radicalisation. When grooming gangs terrorised Rotherham and Rochdale, officials looked away lest they inflame community tensions.


Police have confirmed that the Huntingdon train attackers were a 32-year-old black British man and a 35-year-old of Caribbean descent. That fact alone has the government in rhetorical lockdown. Had the attackers been white nationalists, Downing Street would have convened an emergency summit by dawn.


The question must be asked is Britain sliding the way of Syria where the monopoly of violence is lost, where enclaves of lawlessness coexist with islands of civility? That may sound melodramatic, but a society that cannot protect its citizens or even speak truthfully about their killers is one already fraying at the edges. In London, machete gangs operate openly. In Birmingham, Islamist preachers once banned from social media now hold ‘community dialogues.’ In Leicester, sectarian riots in 2022 were airbrushed as “miscommunication.”


The rot seeps deeper still. The Metropolitan Police, under constant political pressure to showcase ‘diversity targets,’ is increasingly wary of aggressive policing in minority-heavy boroughs. Counterterrorism units, once feared, now require ministerial clearance for surveillance operations deemed ‘culturally sensitive.’ The message to would-be attackers is unmistakable: Britain no longer has the stomach to fight.


Britain today presents the picture of a political establishment more afraid of being called racist than of being stabbed. Starmer’s Labour has inherited not only the cowardice of late-stage Conservatism but a moral relativism all its own. Its officials prefer moral lectures to police patrols, hashtags to hard law. Their Britain is one where terrorists become ‘troubled young men’ and victims become statistics in the next quarterly Home Office report.


Even the capital’s mayoralty has become a theatre of denial. Knife crime among teenagers has hit record highs under Sadiq Khan, yet the Mayor prefers to lecture Londoners on ‘Islamophobia awareness.’ Last year, an asylum seeker who had slipped through the border checks attacked pedestrians in Nottingham — another case that was politely dismissed as “not terrorism-related.”


This is not compassion; it is collapse disguised as tolerance. No serious government should treat national security as a diversity exercise. The duty of the state is to protect citizens, not to curate their feelings. Until Labour grasps that distinction, Britain will continue to sleepwalk through its own slow unravelling. If this is Starmer’s idea of a ‘safer Britain,’ it is a chilling vision indeed. Nations that cannot name their enemies soon learn to live among them.

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