Dr. Ramdas Pai
CITATION
An alumnus of Karnatak University, Dharwad and Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia, Dr. Ramdas Pai is the widely-respected chancellor of Manipal University and Chairman of the Manipal Education & Medical Group (MEMG). Since taking charge of the Manipal Group in 1979 after the death of the legendary Dr. T.M.A. Pai (1889-1979), who pioneered the concept of self-financed, privately promoted institutions of professional education and famously promoted the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal in 1953, Dr. Ramdas Pai has steered the growth and development of Manipal University — certified by the University Grants Commission as India’s first multi-disciplinary, multi-campus deemed (private) varsity in 1993 — into the country’s largest private provider of internationally acceptable medical, engineering and professional (nursing, pharmacy, business management) education. 
Moreover, during the past quarter century Dr. Pai has fought a lonely battle to assert the fundamental right of all citizens to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice, and to pursue the vocation of education as an ‘occupation’ free of government quotas and fees regulation. Dr. Pai’s unsung legal battles to assert the right of private citizens to provide high quality professional education to the public culminated in the Supreme Court’s historic judgement in TMA Pai Foundation vs. Union of India (2002) in which the apex court reaffirmed these fundamental rights.
Over the past half century, MEMG has also acquired a global reputation for delivering high quality medical education and at the invitation of the governments of Malaysia, Nepal and Antigua, has established state-of-the-art medical colleges-cum-teaching hospitals in these countries. Currently, the Manipal Group is India’s premier education multinational comprising 19 institutions of the not-for-profit Manipal University, the distance education Sikkim-Manipal University and MEMG, boasting an aggregate enrolment of 277,000 students in India and overseas.
For his exceptional nurturance and development of India’s most respected professional education university; for exporting high-quality medical education to neighbouring countries and beyond, and for his tireless advocacy of the fundamental right of all citizens to establish and administer education institutions of their choice, the Board of Directors and Editors of EducationWorld are privileged to present Dr. Ramdas Pai the EW Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2015, and induct him into the EW Hall of Fame of Indian Education.