When Dr Ravi Kannan signed up with the Cachar Cancer Hospital in 2006, he was an accomplished surgeon based in Chennai. The shift to a remote corner of Assam was a conscious choice to take his skills where they were needed most.

The Cachar hospital had been set up with donations a decade earlier because no such facility existed in those parts. Now, roughly 20 years after Dr Kannan joined, it is a bustling facility with a staff of 500 of whom 18 are well-qualified doctors.