Bastar: Husband-and-wife duo Dr Ramchandra Godbole and Suneeta Godbole, who have spent more than three decades providing critical healthcare and extensive social support to tribal communities in the remote Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, will be conferred the prestigious Padma Shri award by President Droupadi Murmu on May 25, 2026. The high-profile national recognition celebrates the couple’s lifelong dedication to serving marginalized tribal populations across highly inaccessible and Naxal-affected terrains where institutional infrastructure was historically non-existent.
The couple relocated permanently to Bastar shortly after their marriage in 1990, abandoning comfortable opportunities in urban centers to address deep-seated health crises in rural central India. Dr Ramchandra Godbole, a Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery graduate originally hailing from Maharashtra’s Satara district, initially garnered experience working among tribal pockets in Nashik through the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. Driven by a mission to expand medical accessibility, he subsequently established a permanent grassroots clinic at Barsur in the Dantewada district, located on the dangerous fringes of the dense Abujhmad forest. Over the decades, the clinic has treated thousands of critically ill tribal patients who routinely navigate treacherous forest pathways and rivers to seek reliable medical intervention.
Complementing the medical operations, Suneeta Godbole, a postgraduate in social work from Pune, spearheaded sustained community development initiatives focusing heavily on tribal women and children. To integrate effectively with the community, she mastered the local tribal languages of Gondi and Halbi, utilizing her linguistic fluency to run extensive field campaigns addressing high infant mortality, maternal malnutrition, and endemic conditions such as sickle cell anaemia. Her structured nutritional programs across dozens of interior Bastar villages have systematically pulled hundreds of children out of acute malnutrition while simultaneously driving functional literacy and self-reliance workshops for indigenous women’s collectives.
Aside from their daily institutional operations, the duo has organized more than 100 specialized diagnostic health camps in deep forest sectors over the last 15 years. Supported by visiting specialist doctors from across India, these mobile medical camps have provided free clinical examinations and pharmaceutical distribution to over 9,000 remote patients, while establishing advanced referral networks to tertiary hospitals in Raipur for individuals requiring complex surgical intervention. While this upcoming civilian honor marks their highest national accolade, the couple’s quiet crusade has previously earned them numerous regional honors, including the Seva Gaurav Award from Pune’s Natu Pratishthan in 2001. In an unrelated domestic update from West Bengal, local law enforcement authorities launched an investigation into the sudden death of 50-year-old Trinamool Congress councillor Sanjay Das, the chairman-in-council of the South Dum Dum Municipality, who was found dead at his residence in north Kolkata’s Nagerbazar neighborhood on Saturday afternoon.
