Chandrasekhar Sankurathri

Chandrasekhar was born on 20 November 1943 at Singarayakonda in Andhra Pradesh, the youngest of eight children of Sankurathri Appala Narasayya Naidu and Sankurathri Ramayamma. He was schooled at Rajahmundry and took a BSc with honours and an MSc in zoology at Andhra University, Waltair. He then studied in Canada, gaining an MSc in biology from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a PhD in zoology from the University of Alberta.

He worked in Canada as a visiting scientist for the fisheries ministry and later as a scientific evaluator with the federal health department in Ottawa.

On 23 June 1985 his wife Manjari and their children Kiran and Sarada were among the 329 people killed when Air India Flight 182 was destroyed by a bomb off the coast of Ireland. After three years he resigned his post and returned to India in 1988.

He established the Sankurathri Foundation in 1989 with the aim of improving quality of life through accessible health care and education. Its first programme, Sarada Vidyalayam, opened in 1992 and provides free primary and secondary schooling along with meals, uniforms and medical care to rural children, together with vocational training.

The SriKiran Institute of Ophthalmology, named after his son, was inaugurated in 1993 and treats eye patients, with the great majority of cataract operations performed free of charge. A third programme, Spandana, began in 1998 and provides relief after the cyclones and floods that affect the coastal districts. By the early 2020s the foundation reported having treated more than 300,000 eye patients and educated over 3,500 children from poor families.

Chandrasekhar received best non-governmental organisation awards from the Government of Andhra Pradesh in 2002 and 2003 for the number of cataract operations performed, the Service Above Self award from Rotary International in 2004, recognition as a CNN Hero in 2008, an honorary Doctor of Laws from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2012, the ASSOCHAM Social Innovation Excellence Award in 2012 and a CNN-IBN senior citizen award in 2013. In 2023 the President of India, Droupadi Murmu, conferred on him the Padma Shri for social work.[2][3][4][5][6]