He came to Coal India almost by accident — or, more precisely, through a Member of Parliament who happened to know the right people at the right moment. The path from GMC Nagpur to the coal mines of Chandrapur and Koriya was not one Ashok Ganjre had planned. But over three decades inside Western Coalfield Limited and its sister entities, he discovered that public medicine in the coal belt offered its own satisfactions: a captive population, a real need, and the freedom — which government hospital life did not always provide — to build something steadily, without disruption.
From Velabai to Nagpur
Ashok was born in the village of Velabai, Taluka Wani, District Yavatmal. His father was the principal of People’s Welfare Society College, Indora, Nagpur; his mother, a homemaker. He attended Saraswati Bhavan Primary School in Aurangabad and Jivan Shikshan Vidyalaya, Parvati Nagar, Nagpur, before completing his premedical education at Dr. Ambedkar College, Nagpur. He entered GMC Nagpur in 1973 and, during internship, was posted at Brahmapuri alongside Adesh Gadpayle, Prakash Wakode, and Ganesh Ramteke.
His MD (Medicine) came from GMC Nagpur, his thesis — a high carbohydrate diet in type 2 diabetes mellitus — supervised by Dr. Lata Patil. He earned his degree in 1982. For two years thereafter he worked as a medical officer at the district hospital in Wardha, finding the remuneration insufficient. It was then that he sought — and received — help from Mr. Vasant Sathe, the Member of Parliament from Wardha, who arranged a position with Coal India Ltd.
Three Decades in Coal Country
Coal India is the largest public undertaking in India, and its hospital network — spread across remote districts in Chandrapur, Nagpur, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh — runs largely out of sight of the medical mainstream. Ashok spent his first years as a physician at Majri, a 21-bed hospital 120 kilometres south of Nagpur. From there he moved to Walni, near Nagpur, then to the Western Coalfield hospital in Saoner. In 2005 he transferred to the Southeast Coalfield division — Mahendra Nagar in Koriya district, then Chirimiri, then Burhar Central Hospital in Dhanpuri.
In 2006, he shifted from clinical to administrative work, becoming Company Head of the Southeast Coalfields in Bilaspur. It was a transition that suited him. The managerial demands of running a coalfield hospital — supply chains, staff deployment, patient referral, government compliance — turned out to be a different kind of medicine, applied not to individual patients but to institutions.
His wife, Kavita Lokhande, a 1983-batch MGIMS alumna with an MD in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, worked throughout his career at a 50-bed hospital in Ghuggus, near Chandrapur. Two professionals, two demanding postings, a marriage sustained across the distances that the coal belt imposed — it is a story common to doctors of their generation who chose public service over urban private practice.
A Late Reunion with Batchmates
After retiring, Ganjre has practiced medicine from his home in Nagpur. More recently, he joined Shri Shankaracharya Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhilai, as Assistant Professor of Medicine — a posting that reunited him, to his evident pleasure, with four batchmates from 1973: Prakash Wakode, Sudhakar Dupare, Vinod Sawaitul, and occasionally Prakash Bhatkule. His son Samyak, who completed his MD in Dermatology and joined SSIMS Bhilai as an Assistant Professor, followed him there.
At the 2019 class reunion, Ganjre spoke warmly of his friendship with Sudhakar Dupare — a bond formed in the GMC years and deepened, as such bonds are, by the shared accumulation of decades. Life, he said, was proceeding smoothly. The remark was offered with the equanimity of a man who has seen a great deal of India’s public health landscape from the inside, and has made his peace with what he found.