A medical committee looked at his body and decided that he could not be a doctor.
Ganesh Baraiya is barely 91 centimeters tall and weighs less than 20 kilos because of a dwarfism condition that causes 72% locomotor disability. In 2018, after passing his entrance exam in Gujarat, India, the country’s Medical Council denied him admission to medical school: they feared that his body would not withstand the profession. Before that, when he was just a child, a circus offered his father money to take him as an attraction. His father, a farmer, said no. He preferred that his son study.
Ganesh did not give up either. He lost his first case in the Gujarat High Court, but took his case all the way to the Supreme Court of India, which ruled in his favor on October 22, 2018: his height could not close the doors of the university to him. He began studying in Bhavnagar in 2019, and his own classmates carried him in their arms so that he could observe surgeries from the operating table.
Today, at 25, Dr. Ganesh Baraiya treats patients at Sir T General Hospital. His next goal is to build a new house for his family, who still live in a humble home in the village of Gorkhi.