In the quiet hours before dawn, when the first light of independence still lingered like a promise over the young nation, India’s doctors did not merely treat the sick. They built. They dreamed. They argued with bureaucrats, mortgaged family homes, and whispered to one another in hospital corridors: “If not us, then who?”
The Padma awards—those small metal discs of national gratitude—became the quiet applause for men and women who refused to accept that quality healthcare belonged only to the privileged few. From 1948 onward, year after year, the Republic of India has pinned these honours on the chests of physicians who went beyond the stethoscope and the scalpel. Some of them founded institutions that now stand like living monuments across the land. Let us walk among them, listening to the voices that still echo in their halls.
Picture a young cardiologist named Prathap Chandra Reddy, freshly returned from America in the early 1970s. He stood in a Madras hospital and watched a patient die for want of a proper cardiac facility. “Why must an Indian heart travel abroad to be mended?” he asked a colleague one humid evening. The answer came not in words but in action. In 1983, Apollo Hospitals opened its doors in Chennai—the first corporate hospital chain in India. Reddy would later receive the Padma Bhushan in 1991 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2010. Today, more than seventy hospitals carry the Apollo name, and the founder, now in his nineties, still insists, “There is more to be done, much, much more.”
Across the country, another cardiac surgeon, Devi Prasad Shetty, returned from England with a different fire. “Why should heart surgery cost as much as a house?” he demanded. In 2000 he founded Narayana Health (then Narayana Hrudayalaya) in Bengaluru, turning volume and efficiency into a weapon against cost. Padma Shri in 2004, Padma Bhushan in 2012. The chain now spans dozens of hospitals, proving that compassion and commerce can share the same operating table.
In Chennai’s eye-care world, two legends rose almost side by side. Dr. Sengamedu Srinivasa Badrinath, inspired by the Kanchi seer, founded Sankara Nethralaya in 1978 as a charitable tertiary eye hospital. “Sight is not a privilege,” he told his young team. Padma Shri in 1983, Padma Bhushan in 1999. Meanwhile, in Madurai, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy—“Dr. V” to everyone—had already received the Padma Shri in 1973 for his pioneering eye camps. At retirement age he mortgaged his house and, with his siblings, opened Aravind Eye Hospital in 1976 with just eleven beds. “Eliminate needless blindness,” he declared. The model that followed—high volume, high quality, low cost—became a global case study. His sister Dr. G. Natchiar and the family carried the vision forward; she herself would later be recognised among Padma awardees for her lifelong contribution.
In Lucknow, a young doctor named Mansoor Hasan watched patients from distant Ballia queue for hours outside AIIMS Delhi. “Why should a heart patient from eastern Uttar Pradesh travel so far?” he asked. He returned home and built the Lari Cardiology Centre, a beacon for the region. The nation answered with a Padma Shri in 2011.
In Madras (now Chennai), the film producer B. Nagi Reddi—already a Dadasaheb Phalke laureate—turned his philanthropic gaze toward medicine. In 1972 he founded Vijaya Hospital under the Vijaya Medical & Educational Trust. Though not a doctor himself, the institution he created became a multi-specialty haven, later expanding into heart care and trauma services. Generations of physicians practised and taught within its walls, continuing the spirit of service that the Padma tradition celebrates.
Farther north, in the cooler air of Dehradun, institutions such as the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust (founded under the vision of Swami Rama) and various specialised centres grew, many nurtured by doctors later recognised with Padma honours for orthopaedic, surgical, and community work. The Christian Medical Institute and related facilities in the region also drew Padma-recognised physicians who believed the hills deserved the same standard of care as the plains.
In the realm of fertility and hope, Dr. Indira Hinduja in Mumbai delivered India’s first scientifically documented IVF baby in 1986, followed by the first GIFT baby and the first oocyte-donation baby. She received the Padma Shri in 2011. Parallel to her pioneering laboratory work, the Indira IVF chain—founded by pathologist Dr. Ajay Murdia and expanded by his sons—grew into one of India’s largest fertility networks, carrying the name of hope across dozens of cities.
Other names join this living tapestry. Dr. D. Nageshwar Reddy founded the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG Hospitals) in Hyderabad and became the first doctor to receive all three Padma awards—Shri, Bhushan, and finally Vibhushan in 2025. Dr. S. I. Padmavati, India’s first woman cardiologist, established the National Heart Institute in Delhi and received both Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan. Dr. Purshotam Lal built the Metro Group of Hospitals and earned the rare Padma Vibhushan for interventional cardiology. Dr. Ramakanta Panda founded Asian Heart Institute in Mumbai and received the Padma Bhushan. In Ladakh, Dr. Padma Gurmet founded the National Institute of Sowa-Rigpa and received the Padma Shri in 2026 for preserving Himalayan medicine.
Even smaller, deeply personal institutions carry the same spirit. Dr. H. V. Hande founded Hande Hospital in Chennai for affordable care. Dr. Armida Fernandez established Asia’s first human milk bank. Dr. Jose Chacko Periappuram’s Heart Care Foundation continues to support poor cardiac patients. Across decades, doctors who received Padma Shri, Bhushan or Vibhushan have founded or shaped institutions ranging from single-specialty centres to multi-state chains—each one answering the same quiet question first asked in the early years of the Republic: “If not us, then who?”
These are not merely hospitals. They are conversations that never ended—between a doctor and a patient who could not pay, between a visionary and a sceptical banker, between a generation that inherited scarcity and one that refused to accept it. The Padma awards did not create these institutions; they simply named the courage that did. And as long as an Indian doctor still looks at an empty plot of land or a neglected specialty and says, “We will build here,” the story continues—larger than any single award, longer than any single lifetime, and brighter than the medals that hang on their walls.
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