On National Doctors’ Day, which is celebrated every year on 1st July in India, we travel to Suryapet in Telangana to meet Dr. K Ranga Reddy. His small clinic is located on the Warrangal service road opposite the new bus stop. Here, patients are already standing in line and waiting for the doctor to arrive. Silver-haired 70-year-old Dr K Ranga Reddy arrives a kilometer from his home. He is the ₹20 doctor of Suryapet as he charges only ₹20 as consultation fee. The assistant of Dr. Reddy opens the clinic when he arrives. The clinic consists of two very sparsely furnished rooms, nothing fancy. Patients greet him with namastes and begin to express their complaints: body aches, fever, loose movements, dizziness… the list goes on.
Dr. Reddy treats the one that needs urgent attention first. A young man and a teenage girl. High fever and diarrhea. They must be placed on IV fluids. He asks me to wait and only after a consultation and a meeting with the medical representatives will he sit down to tell his story. Why is he asking only ₹20? He explains that he used to charge ₹5, then raised it to ₹10 and gradually patients started paying him ₹20 voluntarily. He may have been a sought-after doctor in Suryapet, but he did not pursue a career.
He says: “How can the son of a poor man who tilled the land cherish such a dream? Going to school and university and eating three meals a day was a luxury for me. So I didn’t want to be a doctor. I dutifully attended school and college without a problem. I think I stood there and listened to everyone talk about everything they knew.” Ranga Reddy took the medical entrance exam because of a friend. “A friend advised me to write the entrance exam because he did it. 15 places were booked in this area, and we hoped that one or the other would make it,” he remembers.
He completed his graduation and MBBS from Gandhi Medical College in 1983. I still ask him why his charges are so named. “What should I do with more than I need? What to do with more than you need? I’m trying to win. Instead of paying me for a big consultation, they can use that money to shop and eat.
” What about managing their finances? “I don’t know how my wife managed. She never complained. We didn’t live a life of luxury. I somehow made my two sons study well. I know it wouldn’t be easy.” He says friends and well-wishers have even built a clinic for him. Dr. Reddy would not be able to run a larger clinic with the income from his practice.
“I was at a loss and behind on my EMIs. Well-wishers who invested in me also did not get their money on time. Not wanting anyone to suffer for my principles, I rented this place to pay off the debt first. My sons (lived in Melbourne, Australia) paid off the entire loan when they started earning. My family has been my biggest support in this journey,” he adds. Dr. Ranga Reddy currently does not own a vehicle, he either walks from home to the clinic or takes a shared car.
“My sons bought a car and asked me to drive it. I can’t drive and can’t afford a driver, so the car is a burden on me. My sons use it when they go around the house. I also work with an NGO, I take a car when I going there; otherwise I’d rather walk.”