A 71-year-old doctor is ‘Sunderban ke Sujan’

Even in the remote villages of Sunderbans, there are stories of good to be found. Like this one about Dr Arunodoy Mondal whose Sujan Clinic offers a lifeline to the poor villagers of Hingalganj and its neighbourhood for free. 

For the last 25 years, 71-year-old Dr Arunodoy Mondol has travelled 160km from Kolkata to Hingalganj in the Sunderbans every Saturday without a single break. Rising before dawn, he first catches a train from Dum Dum Cantonment Railway Station to Hasnabad village, from where he takes an auto to Lebukhali. This is only the halfway mark in his journey though. From Lebukhali, he takes a boat ride across the river to Hingalganj and then travels the last 12 km by a motorcycle. 

After travelling for six hours, he arrives at Sujan Clinic, the free medical facility that he founded back in 2000. By the time he reaches there, hundreds of poor residents of Hingalganj area, including local villagers, fishermen and tribals, are already waiting to be treated by him. Many of them have walked miles to reach the clinic in this poorly connected region.

Having grown up in the Sunderbans, Dr Mondal or ‘Sunderban ke Sujan’ as he is popularly called, is no stranger to their suffering. He recalls how as a child, he used to see people suffer from disease and die of snake bite because of the lack of medical facilities, poor transportation connectivity and sheer poverty. “I saw both mother and child die during childbirth many a time. That’s when I decided to take modern medical services to the poor people of Sunderbans,” he recounts.

Determined to alleviate their suffering, he studied medicine at Calcutta National Medical College and worked at the Dr B C Roy Memorial Hospital for Children before setting up his own practice in 1980. The desire to serve the people of Sunderbans kept niggling his consciousness, though. 

So, in 2000, he started Sujan Clinic and began consulting patients and providing medicines for free at his family home in Hingalganj. When he ran out of space as patient numbers grew, he used his life savings to buy a piece of land and build the two-storey Sujan Clinic. Ever since, he and his small team have become a lifeline for the thousands of patients that they treat for free each year. 

Dr Mondal’s dedication and selfless service was recognised by the Government of India in 2020, when he was awarded the Padma Shri. He has not rested on his laurels, though, and continues to travel and tend to patients at Hingalganj every weekend. “I want to continue the work I started in 2000 till the last day of my life. My only wish is to do it with the same devotion,” he says.

Aditya Birla Group is happy to partner The Better India to amplify positive stories of people acting as #AForceForGood.