The look of relief on the parents’ face when they saw their son cured of a congenital disorder at the camp was our most cherished gift,” says PDG Dhiran Datta, chairman of the RAHAT medical mission hosted by RC Jhabua, RID 3040, for a week in February, at Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh. The 12-year-old boy was suffering from a condition where his right arm was stuck to his cheek, and fingers intertwined with his mouth. “A year after his birth we had taken him to a couple of sadhus who said that he was cursed. We had accepted his condition until now. These divine men (Rotarians) have now saved our son and no words are enough to convey our thanks to them,” said the mother, with tears rolling down her cheeks, recalls Datta.

When Amrut Dhara, a global grant project conceived and executed by members of RC Aurangabad West, RID 3132, to set up a modern, well-equipped human milk bank, was finally inaugurated at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Government Medical College and Hospital in the city, it proved the tenacity of this bunch of Rotarians led by the club’s past ­president Hemant Landge. The project proposal had come to the club way back in 2018. Putting together a huge sum of $58,000 required, and then navigating through the challenges of the unprecedented Covid pandemic, during which medical services were not only overstretched but their priorities had also shifted, were no mean tasks. But team Amrut Dhara, led by project chair Landge, stayed focused on what they had to do to see this work through.

RI President Gordon McInally declared past ­district governors K P Nagesh (RID 3191) and M Muruganandam (RID 3000) as directors for 2025–27.

Are we able to manufacture to the standards that we import, even after decades? The answer is a resounding no. Because when you say technology transfer… I call it an oxymoron…. Technology is a creation that lives in the mind and the heart of the creator. There is no way to transfer that. We are stuck between mindlessly global and hopelessly local. The truth is stuck somewhere between, I would say near the hopelessly local.”

Imagine a world where whispers don’t turn into screams. Where tiny abnormalities are caught before they morph into monsters. This is the transformative power of early detection, especially for breast and cervical cancer. A mammogram could re-write your destiny. A test kit could detect the earliest stage of cervical cancer and hold the key to unlock a healthier future,” says PRIP K R Ravindran.

I simply loved Kerala and can tell you that no available tourist literature captures the entire beauty of Kerala,” gushes Henry Clemens, 18, a Rotary Youth Exchange (RYE) student from North Rhine-­Westphalia, Germany, now in India on an RYE programme of RI District 3132. He is living with the family of Abhay Raje Jain from RC ­Ahmednagar Dignity, “but my host club is RC Ahmednagar Midtown.”

Thanks to a long-­standing, sustained partnership between the Rotary Clubs of Thana West, (RID 3142) and Maple Grove, ­Minnesota, US (RID 5950), a clutch of 33 villages in the talukas of Jawahar, Mokhada and Vikramgad, about 125km from Thane, Mumbai, have water for both irrigating their fields and household use.

If the session moderated by PRIP K R Ravindran was titled ‘Frankly speaking,’ the address delivered by RIPN Mario de Camargo at the Bengaluru institute deserved the title ‘Plain speaking’.