The images flashing across our screens over the last three days are grim. The skies over the Middle East are streaked with the exhaust of ballistic missiles. The geopolitical chess match between the USA, Israel, and Iran has escalated into intense bombardment, leaving cities damaged, civilians terrified, and world peace hanging by a dangerously frayed thread.
Watching the smoke rise over Iranian cities evokes a profound sense of melancholy. To the modern observer, Iran is often viewed through the narrow lens of conflict and embargoes. But if we rewind the clock by fifty years, the narrative was strikingly different. In the 1970s, for a generation of young, ambitious medical professionals at MGIMS, Sevagram, Iran was not a theater of war. It was the promised land.
The Push from Home: ₹750 and the Indian Emergency
To understand why so many brilliant doctors left the quiet ashram town of Sevagram for the Middle East, we have to look at the stark realities of India in the mid-1970s.
In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency. The country was plunged into political unrest, marked by censorship, curfews, and profound uncertainty. For institutional doctors, the financial reality was equally sobering. When Dr. Archana Acharya joined MGIMS in October 1972 as a Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynecology, her monthly salary was just ₹750. Even adjusted for inflation, it demanded a life of rigid frugality. Sevagram offered immense spiritual and professional satisfaction—a place where medicine was lived, not just practiced—but financial security was elusive.
The Lure of the Peacock Throne
Just as things grew difficult at home, a golden opportunity arose abroad. The 1973 oil crisis had caused crude prices to quadruple, and practically overnight, Iran found itself drowning in petrodollars. The Shah envisioned a modern empire, building state-of-the-art hospitals at breakneck speed.
They had the infrastructure, but they lacked the human capital. To bridge this critical shortage of skilled physicians, Iran began luring foreign medical talent with salaries that bordered on the unimaginable to a doctor in rural Maharashtra.
Dr. P.V. Acharya summarized the contrast perfectly: “We earned in a month what we used to make in a year in Sevagram. Add a bonus and free tickets to India, and we couldn’t have asked for more.”
The Silent Exodus from Kasturba Hospital
The opportunity was too good to pass up, and a silent exodus began. The Indian government even arranged special chartered flights, ferrying doctors 400 at a time to Tehran.
The corridors of Kasturba Hospital felt the impact almost immediately. A year ago, through long telephonic interviews and sprawling exchanges of messages with these very colleagues, the memories of this era came alive for me in vivid detail. Dr. S.C. Ahuja, our Reader in Orthopedics, and his wife, Dr. Shashi Prabha, a pediatrician, were among the first to sign two-year contracts, departing for Iran and leaving their departments orphaned. Barely two months into the Indian Emergency, Dr. Archana Acharya joined the 9th Abad Hospital in Abadan in August 1975. Six months later, her husband resigned from MGIMS to join her.
The magnetic Dr. S.K. Dhawan, an ophthalmologist who transformed Kasturba Hospital’s eye department into a bustling sanctuary with his charismatic teaching and relentless rural outreach, also found his ultimate calling in the Middle East. Despite revolutionizing ophthalmic care and organizing pioneering blindness prevention camps across Vidarbha, bureaucratic hurdles from Delhi denied him a well-deserved professorship at MGIMS. Unwilling to stagnate, he and his wife, Dr. Chanchal Dhawan—her quiet elegance perfectly complementing his dynamic presence—moved through posts in Pune and Nagpur before joining the massive medical migration to the Gulf. They spent an astounding 37 years at the National Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, taking the surgical brilliance honed in Sevagram’s dusty lanes to the polished clinics of the desert.
The broader region beckoned others, too. Dr. Vivek Poflee, disillusioned by a toxic academic environment during his MD, found himself working across hospitals in Iraq—Baghdad, Balad, and Mahmood—gathering invaluable experience before returning to pioneer our neurophysiology clinic. Later, Dr. Kush Kumar would take his orthopedic expertise to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. I recently spoke with his wife, Dr. Vibha Kumar, who has been settled in the USA for the past 25 years. She warmly recounted the years she and Dr. Kush Kumar spent navigating the rapidly expanding healthcare landscapes of the Gulf, seeking fresh challenges and stability.
This wave of overseas deputations extended beyond the Middle East into North Africa. In 1981, a small newspaper advertisement caught the eye of Dr. V.N. Chaturvedi, our eminent ENT specialist. With a two-year leave granted by the Indian foreign service, he and his wife, Dr. Pushpa Chaturvedi, a dedicated pediatrician, embarked on an unexpected adventure to Benghazi, Libya. At Benghazi’s Hawari Hospital, part of Garyounis University, Dr. Chaturvedi headed the ENT department and led a diverse international team. Meanwhile, Mrs. Chaturvedi served as an associate professor at Benghazi Children’s Hospital. Their leadership left such a mark that even after returning to Sevagram, Dr. Chaturvedi would revisit Benghazi as a visiting professor.
While the Chaturvedis made their mark in Libya, the Gulf region continued to draw scores of MGIMS alumni over the decades, turning it into a well-trodden path for Sevagram’s finest. This legacy of service began even earlier with pioneers like Dr. Venkataramanan, who served as an ophthalmologist in Iran during the reign of the Shah—witnessing firsthand the golden era of the 1970s.
As the years marched on, the chronological roll call of our alumni in the Middle East grew into an extensive and proud list. It includes Dr. Kiran Swarup and Dr. Gopa Chatterjee (1976 batch); Dr. Subir Mitra (1980 batch); Dr. Poonam Verma (1982 batch) and her husband Dr. VB Shivkumar; and Dr. Skand Trivedi (1982 batch) alongside Dr. Prabha Desikan (1984 batch).
The 1980s batches were particularly well-represented, with Dr. Firoze Sogiawala and Dr. Fatima Wali (1983 batch); Dr. Shyam Prasad Kamath (1984 batch) and his wife; and Dr. Omprakash Sharma and Dr. Nita Karia (1984 batch) all making the journey. They were followed by Dr. Muthu Kumar and Dr. Sonali Ingley (1985 batch), each carrying a piece of Sevagram to the desert. This tradition of professional excellence extended into the following decade. Even our current MGIMS Dean, Dr. Ajay Shukla, along with his wife, Dr. Smita Shukla, spent two formative years in the late 1990s working in the Asir province of south-west Saudi Arabia.
Dr. Sushila Nayar’s Masterful Balancing Act
Back in Sevagram, the exodus created an administrative crisis. With orthopedics bereft of senior faculty, Dr. R.K. Belsare, a surgeon, was forced to step in. When the pediatrics department was similarly hollowed out, the strain on the hospital was immense. Outpatient visits were swelling past 7,000, and Sevagram had become the region’s sole referral center.
It was here that the formidable Dr. Sushila Nayar demonstrated her administrative genius. She was pragmatic; she understood her young faculty needed the financial cushion Iran offered, and she permitted these deputations.
However, when the temporary absences threatened the stability of MGIMS, she put her foot down. Reaching out to top government officials, including the Minister of External Affairs, she made her demands unequivocal regarding Dr. Acharya: “No more extensions beyond September 1977.” Her strategy worked. Having secured their financial futures, the wanderers returned. By October 1977, Dr. Archana Acharya was back in Sevagram, dedicating the next decade to shaping the futures of young doctors. Dr. Ahuja returned to lay the groundwork for expanded pediatric care. Iran had successfully subsidized the long-term retention of world-class faculty at our rural hospital.
The Ripple Effects: India Feels the Tremors Today
The contrast between that golden era and today is stark. Fifty years ago, the Middle East was a sanctuary for our professionals; today, it is a geopolitical fault line whose tremors are felt acutely across India.
As missiles cross the skies, the immediate fallout is economic. Ship movements in critical maritime choke points remain paralyzed. This disruption to global trade routes inevitably points to surging oil prices. For the average Indian, a spike in crude oil translates directly into higher grocery bills, elevated transport costs, and creeping inflation.
Furthermore, the human cost is mounting. Widespread airspace closures and the sudden shutdown of Dubai have thrown international travel into chaos. Across the Gulf, thousands of Indian nationals—expatriates, pilgrims, and families—find themselves stranded in a terrifying limbo, anxiously awaiting safe passage home from a region that once promised them a better life.
A Paradise Lost
Today, as I read the headlines, the dissonance is jarring. The Abadan where Dr. Acharya delivered babies is now part of a landscape bracing for airstrikes. The Tehran that welcomed Indian doctors with open arms is now a flashpoint, its skies illuminated by interceptor missiles.
The physicians of Sevagram who walked the streets of 1970s Iran remember a country of immense promise, hospitality, and hope. As the drums of war beat louder today, one can only lament the loss of that era. We are left hoping that the region which once provided a sanctuary for our healers can someday find healing of its own.
My records indicate that 55 MGIMS alumni are currently working in these countries. I am deliberately withholding their names and locations for reasons of confidentiality and safety. They remain in our thoughts and prayers, and we sincerely hope for their well-being and safe return to normalcy.
A timely post, reminder of those good old days, when lucre of money attracted our doctors to foreign shores. Everything was safe and everyone was happy.
But the world keep on changing, all of us see the kaal chakra moving.
There are unbelievable changes, we are forced to accept the reality.
Thank you Sir for this information of MGIMS contribution to international health sector.
Well written with all details about why many MGIMS doctors migrated to gulf country in 1970s