The Doctors of Melghat

A husband-and-wife doctor duo who chose a remote tribal forest region over city careers, and spent decades bringing healthcare to neglected villages.

In 1985, Dr. Ravindra Kolhe, a newly qualified doctor, made a choice few of his peers could understand. Instead of building a lucrative city practice, he travelled to Bairagarh, a remote and isolated village in the Melghat region of Maharashtra, an area long haunted by poverty, malnutrition and some of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. There he began treating tribal patients, famously charging a nominal fee of just one rupee.

He was soon joined by Dr. Smita Kolhe, who shared his conviction that the poorest deserve good medical care as much as anyone. Together, as husband and wife, they made Melghat their life's work, walking long distances, working with minimal resources, and earning the deep trust of the communities they served.

Over more than three decades, their persistence helped transform health in the region, and infant mortality in the area they served fell dramatically. The change was measured not in statistics alone but in the lives of children who survived.

The Kolhes understood that health cannot be separated from poverty, hunger and livelihood, so their work extended to promoting sustainable agriculture and the wider well-being of the community. In 2019, the Government of India recognised their extraordinary lifetime of service with the Padma Shri.