top of page

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.”

Narrow Margin

Friedrich Merz’s bumpy ascent to the chancellorship exposes the legacy of Angela Merkel’s drift and Germany’s struggle to redefine itself in a harsher world.

Germany has long traded on the illusion of stability. For nearly two decades, it wore the mask of quiet strength: a consensus-driven, export-led, rules-abiding economic power, steered by Angela Merkel’s steady hand. But illusions tend to collapse suddenly. That collapse has now come.


Friedrich Merz’s troubled election as Chancellor goes beyond being a mere personal embarrassment. It marks the end of an era in which Germany could glide past political tension and global disruption with cautious rhetoric and fiscal rectitude. For the first time in the Federal Republic’s postwar history, a chancellor failed to win a majority in the first round of parliamentary voting. Merz ultimately secured 325 votes in a second round - barely nine above the required threshold - but the damage to his authority and to the confidence in the governing coalition has been done.


The Merz debacle reflects a vacuum at the centre of German politics. The coalition he forged with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) already looks brittle. A quiet revolt from within his own CDU/CSU bloc prompted in part by a massive borrowing plan rammed through the outgoing parliament has underscored the simmering discontent with the compromises that have come to define German governance.


For all her global acclaim, Angela Merkel left her country geopolitically timid, structurally complacent and economically overexposed. Under her watch, Germany deepened its dependence on cheap Russian gas, allowed critical infrastructure to atrophy, and turned a blind eye to the rise of geopolitical competition from China and the United States. Merkelism prioritised export surpluses and domestic calm until both became untenable.


Now, Merz is left to pick up the pieces. He enters office as Germany’s tenth chancellor since the war, with little room to manoeuvre. His coalition partners distrust him, his party remains ideologically divided and the country’s strategic environment has deteriorated rapidly. The Russian invasion of Ukraine ended Berlin’s energy illusions. Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States has revived trade tensions and put Germany’s reliance on American security guarantees in question. Chinese overcapacity and aggressive industrial policy now pose an existential threat to German manufacturing.


The resistance Merz faced in parliament and even within his own ranks speaks to the uneasy transition Germany is undergoing from being a post-Cold War economic giant to a nation forced to reckon with ideological divides and internal reform.


Part of that reckoning includes confronting political fragmentation. Much ink has been spilled warning of the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), often caricatured as a ‘far-right’ menace. But simplistic labels obscure the causes of its appeal. The AfD emerged not from ideological extremism alone, but from legitimate frustration with elite complacency, chaotic migration policies and the erosion of fiscal discipline - many of them legacies of Merkel-era centrism.


Treating AfD voters as an undereducated rabble or the party itself as a neo-fascist aberration has done little to stem its growth. A more honest diagnosis would recognise that Germany’s political centre has failed to grapple with real anxieties: stagnating wages, demographic decline, a creaking energy transition and the cultural costs of rapid social change. These are not inventions of populists but the lived realities of many Germans outside the elite bubbles of Berlin and Frankfurt.


Merz, unlike Merkel, does not shy away from confrontation. He has long advocated for a more assertive conservatism, though his erratic style and past missteps have left some wary.


Still, he now has the opportunity to reframe the national conversation. That includes overhauling energy policy, making defence spending credible, and confronting the sclerosis of Germany’s bureaucracy and infrastructure.


This is a country that still commands deep global respect. But respect alone cannot substitute for strategic clarity. Friedrich Merz begins his term not with a mandate for continuity, but with a warning that the old consensus has collapsed. What comes next will define Germany for a generation.

Comments

bottom of page