There is a particular kind of doctor who turns up in small-town Maharashtra and simply does whatever needs doing. He is not a specialist; he is something rarer \u2014 a doctor who learned, out of necessity and temperament, to be everything at once. Panjabsingh Chavan is that doctor. Over 34 years in public health, he delivered babies, removed appendixes, set bones, administered anaesthesia, and conducted 500 post-mortems. He performed close to 30,000 tubectomies. He ran hospitals, managed wards, and filed the paperwork no one else would touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Over my 34-year career in public health,” he says, “I did almost everything required to run a hospital.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chavan was born in the district hospital at Yavatmal \u2014 the very institution he would one day serve. His father was a headmaster; discipline and application came early. He completed his schooling in Vitholi village, Washim district, took his pre-university at Shivaji Science College, Amravati, and finished his pre-medical year at Amolakchand College of Science, Yavatmal. In 1973, he entered Government Medical College, Nagpur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After graduation, he interned at the Rohana Primary Health Centre and the district hospital in Akola. He secured a house job in Surgery but quickly resigned. Money was short, and the post paid nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“In those days, postgraduate students were offered no stipend. Many were unpaid \u2014 we were called ‘pure PGs.’ I went to Dr Vikram Marwah, our dean, and told him I had to resign because I could not sustain myself without pay. He gave me two days to think it over. My mind was made up. Two days later, I handed in my resignation and left Surgery. Unthinkable today!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He turned instead to public health, a choice that defined the next three and a half decades. He joined the Lakhandur Primary Health Centre in Bhandara district as a medical officer. Two years slipped by, but his heart was not in it. He mentioned this, casually, to Dr Katakwar from the 1971 GMC batch, whose brother was a local MLA. Katakwar took him to his brother to request a transfer. A week later \u2014 just as Chavan assumed the promise had been forgotten \u2014 an official arrived with a transfer order to a Yavatmal primary health centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“That was the last I ever saw of Dr Katakwar,” Chavan recalls. “It was a one-time upkaar<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n His career traced a quiet arc across Yavatmal district, rarely reported in newspapers and rarely rewarded with prizes. He served as a medical officer at Lakhandur, spent five years at General Hospital Yavatmal, moved through primary health centres in Savargaon and Ner, and gradually climbed into administration. He served as Medical Superintendent at the sub-district hospital in Pusad, Resident Medical Officer, Civil Surgeon, and led Women\u2019s Hospitals in Darwha, Yavatmal, and Amravati.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an in-service candidate, he pursued a Diploma in Child Health (DCH) at an age when his classmates were a decade younger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Adjusting to colleagues ten years my junior was hard enough, let alone studying, attending ward rounds, and keeping pace with academics. I failed my first attempt. Discouraged, I mentioned it to Mahendra Sawarkar<\/a>, a classmate practicing at Mahal. He told me not to worry \u2014 Dr Khobragade, associate professor of Paediatrics at GMC Nagpur, was a close friend. ‘Just sit the exam again,’ he told me, ‘and you’ll pass.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n He earned his DCH from Indira Gandhi Government Medical College, Nagpur, in 1990, writing his thesis on dwarfism under Dr Hussain. He retired from government service in October 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My accountability to the government was the highest priority,” he says. “Everything else took a back seat.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n What made him effective was a steady, practical commitment to the work. He was one of those rare government doctors who felt no diminished sense of purpose in administration \u2014 who saw the running of a hospital as a calling, not a distraction from medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Medical careers, particularly those in public service, rarely follow the neat trajectories envisioned by medical college brochures. As irony would have it, despite holding a basic MBBS degree rather than a formal qualification in gynaecology, he spent his peripheral rural postings performing well over 20,000 tubectomies\u2014single-handedly sustaining state family planning targets through sheer volume and procedural grit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The absurdities of medical administration did not end there. Seeking to refine his clinical craft, he later acquired a postgraduate diploma in paediatrics. Yet, in a stroke of bureaucratic comedy, he never spent a single day treating sick children. Instead, that pediatric credential served as an unexpected key\u2014not to the children’s ward, but to the corridors of administrative power, quietly propelling his rise through the ranks from Chief Medical Officer to Resident Medical Officer, and ultimately to Medical Superintendent.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Long Arc<\/h3>\n\n\n\n