Prakash and Mandakini Amte get Magsaysay Award
Nagpur: Prakash and Mandakini Amte, the physician couple who have won this year's Magsaysay Award for community leadership, have been running a hospital, a school and development centre in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district since 1974. Prakash is the son of renowned social worker Baba Amte, a Magsaysay award winner himself. Prakash, 60, and Mandakini, 62, who studied at Government Medical College , Nagpur, plunged into social work immediately after getting their degrees, starting a health centre at Hemalkasa in the middle of an area inhabited largely by the Maria Gonds tribesmen. For decades, they have worked under the shadow of Murlidhar Devidas Amte, revered as Baba Amte, who died on Feb 9 this year. Shunning the attractions of private medical practice, the couple opted to live and work among the 100,000-strong Maria Gonds. The area in which they serve includes parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh in the very centre of India. Mandakini told sources on phone...