New Indian Express: Thiruvananthapuram: Saturday, 27 June
2026.
Armed with the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the 62-year-old spends his early mornings peer-reviewing the Indian healthcare system itself.
Dr Babu K V lives a dual
life. He spends most of his day examining patients at his small eye clinic in
Payyannur, Kannur. This scrutiny, however, is markedly different from the
activity that he wakes up to.
Armed with the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the 62-year-old spends his early mornings peer-reviewing the Indian healthcare system itself. It is this life of healing and whistleblowing that has earned this lifelong rebel, who as a medical student in the 1980s kept those in power in the state on their toes, the Indian Medical Association’s ‘National Leadership Award’ for his crusade to bring transparency in medicine.
His primary weapon has been the systematic yet relentless deployment of the RTI Act. Waking up at 2am every day, Babu dedicates two to three hours to rigorous legal research and drafting before heading to the gym and opening his clinic.
Since launching a massive second spell of online RTIs in January 2022 initially targeting medical students’ stipends he has filed over 2,000 applications and subsequent appeals, a milestone likely unmatched by an Indian doctor. He has filed more than 100 RTIs tracking misleading advertisements by Patanjali alone, systematically using the legal mechanism to push for regulatory transparency and asset disclosures within the Medical Council.
Babu’s most profound battle came in 2018 when he challenged the central government’s restriction on the manufacture and sale of Oxytocin. Armed with data gathered through RTI filings, he equipped a national network of activists with evidence needed to fight the case, and together they secured a favourable judgment in the Supreme Court.
His RTI data also proved decisive in a separate SC victory, helping doctors obtain the Covid-19 compensation the government had promised. Now, his long-running fight for patients’ right to appeal against state medical council decisions is in its final stages of fulfilment.
The relentless activist has a long history of fighting powers that be. Babu’s history of defiance began during his formative years, as part of the first medical entrance batch at Kozhikode Government Medical College, followed by postgraduation at the Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi.
As a university union councillor, that he contested as a leftist independent, he was never one to stay silent. During the historic agitation by medicos, he staged fierce protests against the K Karunakaran government’s privatisation of medical colleges. By 1989, he went on a gruelling two-week hunger strike in Thiruvananthapuram to oppose the E K Nayanar government’s introduction of mixopathy.
Even within the IMA, Babu has maintained a fiercely independent voice, carving out a place that the organisation could neither ignore nor silence. To preserve the absolute freedom required for such fierce activism in an increasingly commercialised era, Babu has run an independent, single-doctor ophthalmic practice for the past 30 years. At home, he finds an understanding ally in his wife, Dr M V Bindu, assistant professor in the community medicine department at Kannur medical college hospital.
The IMA will host a ceremony on July 18 National Doctors’ Day to bestow on him the award.
Challenging Centre’s move
Babu’s most profound battle came in 2018 when he challenged the central government’s restriction on the manufacture and sale of Oxytocin. He equipped a national network of activists with evidence needed to fight the case, and together they secured a favourable judgment in the Supreme Court.
Armed with the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the 62-year-old spends his early mornings peer-reviewing the Indian healthcare system itself.
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| Dr BabuPhoto | Express |
Armed with the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the 62-year-old spends his early mornings peer-reviewing the Indian healthcare system itself. It is this life of healing and whistleblowing that has earned this lifelong rebel, who as a medical student in the 1980s kept those in power in the state on their toes, the Indian Medical Association’s ‘National Leadership Award’ for his crusade to bring transparency in medicine.
His primary weapon has been the systematic yet relentless deployment of the RTI Act. Waking up at 2am every day, Babu dedicates two to three hours to rigorous legal research and drafting before heading to the gym and opening his clinic.
Since launching a massive second spell of online RTIs in January 2022 initially targeting medical students’ stipends he has filed over 2,000 applications and subsequent appeals, a milestone likely unmatched by an Indian doctor. He has filed more than 100 RTIs tracking misleading advertisements by Patanjali alone, systematically using the legal mechanism to push for regulatory transparency and asset disclosures within the Medical Council.
Babu’s most profound battle came in 2018 when he challenged the central government’s restriction on the manufacture and sale of Oxytocin. Armed with data gathered through RTI filings, he equipped a national network of activists with evidence needed to fight the case, and together they secured a favourable judgment in the Supreme Court.
His RTI data also proved decisive in a separate SC victory, helping doctors obtain the Covid-19 compensation the government had promised. Now, his long-running fight for patients’ right to appeal against state medical council decisions is in its final stages of fulfilment.
The relentless activist has a long history of fighting powers that be. Babu’s history of defiance began during his formative years, as part of the first medical entrance batch at Kozhikode Government Medical College, followed by postgraduation at the Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi.
As a university union councillor, that he contested as a leftist independent, he was never one to stay silent. During the historic agitation by medicos, he staged fierce protests against the K Karunakaran government’s privatisation of medical colleges. By 1989, he went on a gruelling two-week hunger strike in Thiruvananthapuram to oppose the E K Nayanar government’s introduction of mixopathy.
Even within the IMA, Babu has maintained a fiercely independent voice, carving out a place that the organisation could neither ignore nor silence. To preserve the absolute freedom required for such fierce activism in an increasingly commercialised era, Babu has run an independent, single-doctor ophthalmic practice for the past 30 years. At home, he finds an understanding ally in his wife, Dr M V Bindu, assistant professor in the community medicine department at Kannur medical college hospital.
The IMA will host a ceremony on July 18 National Doctors’ Day to bestow on him the award.
Challenging Centre’s move
Babu’s most profound battle came in 2018 when he challenged the central government’s restriction on the manufacture and sale of Oxytocin. He equipped a national network of activists with evidence needed to fight the case, and together they secured a favourable judgment in the Supreme Court.
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