“I was too poor to afford the GMC admission fees,” Madhukar Parchand recalled. “My father had to collect donations from the community to pay Rs 132 — the annual tuition fee.”
He was born in Patansaongi, Taluka Saoner, 26 km north of Nagpur, the son of Pundlik, a petty farmer. He studied at Bhalerao High School, Saoner — one of three students from that school to appear in the HSSC merit list in 1970, the first and last to do so in its history. He came to Nagpur for his premed year at Shri Mathuradas Mohota College of Science, repeating his BSc I as many students did those years, and eventually entering GMC Nagpur in 1973. In his first year, he shared a room near Sakkardara Square with Sudhakar Dhakite and Chintamani Sonkusare, then moved to Hostel 2.
The Slum Clinic
After graduation, he did his rural internship from Kuhi, 40 km southwest of Nagpur. He then did something that few of his batchmates attempted: he opened a private practice in Lalganj Gujari, a slum near Itwari railway station in Nagpur. His fee was one rupee for an adult, fifty paise for a child, a rupee for an injection. He seldom asked for money and seldom counted what patients gave him. He personally facilitated admissions of serious patients to GMC and Mayo Hospital. The people of Shantinagar Colony, Ladpura, Shahid Chowk, and Itwara came to him.
He practiced from 1979 to 1995 — sixteen years of general medicine in a city slum, before anyone called it primary care.
The Long Turn Toward Anatomy
In 1981 he enrolled for DGO at GMC Nagpur, spent a year pursuing it, and then — for reasons that life imposes on careful plans — did not sit the examination. He changed track, enrolled for MS (Anatomy) at Indira Gandhi Government Medical College, Nagpur, and earned it in 1989 under Dr PS Patki, writing his thesis on anthropometric measurements in sickle cell anaemia.
“I owe everything in my life to Dr PS Patki,” he said. “He was not only my teacher but a trusted and wise counsellor who stood by me at every stage of my life. A Sherpa at every career stage, he supported me no matter what and helped me overcome the challenges.”
He served as assistant professor at GMC Nagpur from 1981, rose to associate professor and then professor, moved to medical colleges in Miraj and Kolhapur, and served as Dean of Indira Gandhi Government Medical College, Nagpur between 2010 and 2013, and again in 2016–17. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Senate member at Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Nashik.
He is one of five students from the class of 1973 to serve as Dean of a medical college — a distinction shared with Padmakar Somvanshi, Prakash Wakode, Abhimanyu Niswade, and Vinayak Sabnis.
“I spent my best days at Kolhapur and Miraj,” he said. “I made it a point to work with attendants, nurses, and doctors — to attend their family functions and stand by them through thick and thin. During my farewell, I told them that Class 4 staff were my hands, Class 2 were my head, and Class 1 staff was my brain.”
His three sons are engineers and scientists of distinction. Swapnil is a retina consultant in Raipur. Amit is a data scientist at Amazon in the United States. Harshad holds an MTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Chennai.
In April 2017, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court appointed him Officer on Special Duty at the Superspeciality Hospital, GMC Nagpur. He retired from that post and settled in Nagpur.