November 29, 2025: On November 27, 2025, Dr. Ganesh Baraiya who comes from Gorkhi village in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district walked into his first posting as a medical officer in Bhavnagar, Gujarat.
At the age of 25 years old, standing three feet tall and weighing just 20 kilograms, his arrival marked not only the beginning of a medical career but the culmination of a battle against a system that once told him he couldn’t become a doctor.
The year was 2018, Ganesh Baraiya, a bright young man from Gorkhi village, had just cleared the NEET examination. Coming from a family of farmers, with seven sisters and one younger brother, he grew up in a kaccha house. His dreams stretched far beyond its walls, not just for himself but for his entire family.
That same year, the Medical Council of India’s committee denied him admission to an MBBS program with a crushing justification: at three feet tall, with dwarfism resulting in a 72% locomotor disability, it would “impede his ability to work as a doctor.”
For many, this would have been the end of the story but for Ganesh Baraiya, it was only the beginning.
Ganesh didn’t fight the system alone. He turned to his mentor, Dr. Dalpatbhai Katariya, principal of Nilkanth Vidyapeeth, Talaja, where he had completed his higher secondary education.
Dr. Katariya didn’t just offer words of encouragement, knowing that Ganesh’s farming family couldn’t afford the legal costs, he helped finance the long battle ahead.
He filed a case in the Gujarat High Court challenging the MCI’s decision.
The High Court ruled the case but with all his courage and the support by his mentor he later approached the Supreme Court for justice.
While the legal battle continued, Ganesh provisionally enrolled in a B.Sc. program, refusing to let his dream die while waiting for a verdict. Four months after approaching the Supreme Court, the judgment came in 2018: Ganesh Baraiya could not be denied admission because of his height.
Then the Supreme Court (SC) ordered that he be admitted in the 2019 batch.
Joining Government Medical College, Bhavnagar, in 2019, Ganesh faced practical challenges:
How does a three-foot-tall student participate in anatomy dissection classes?
How can he observe surgical procedures when the operating table is beyond his line of sight?
The solutions came not from formal institutional accommodations but from the humanity of his classmates and professors.
During anatomy sessions, friends and faculty reserved front-row seats for him, ensuring he could see every detail. In surgery rotations, classmates literally lifted him onto their shoulders so he could observe procedures from above the operating tables. What could have been isolating obstacles became moments of collaboration and friendship.
“My friends and professors helped me at every step,” Ganesh told TOI. “They made sure my height never stopped me from learning.”
“Initially, they are taken aback by my appearance,” Dr. Baraiya admits about his patients’ first reactions. “But once they hear what I have been through to become a doctor, they trust me completely.”
His Instagram account, with over 11,000 followers, documents not only his medical journey but also his travels and life experiences, inspiring countless others who face discrimination.
His immediate priority, however, is deeply personal. With his first salary as a medical officer, Dr. Baraiya plans to complete construction of a proper brick house for his family, who still live in their kaccha home in Gorkhi village.
As Dr. Ganesh Baraiya begins his medical career, he carries with him not just a stethoscope and a white coat, but the hopes of countless others who face discrimination. He has proven that the qualities that make an exceptional doctor with compassion, determination, intelligence, and resilience, have nothing to do with height.
“I want to treat poor people in rural areas,” Dr. Baraiya says simply. “That’s where the need is greatest.”
From a kaccha house in a Gujarat village to the chambers of the Supreme Court, from rejection to recognition, Dr. Ganesh Baraiya’s journey redefines what is possible in Indian medicine.
(Rh/VK/MSM)