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A fifth-generation master artisan with only a fourth-grade education, Ram Chandra has a gift for turning inanimate objects into lifelike creations. Above, he fits a child amputee with a Jaipur foot at his Delhi center, which is funded by a religious charity |
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In 1971 Sethi felt confident enough about the invention to
present it to British orthopedic surgeons at Oxford, who were
impressed by the artificial limb's suppleness and durability.
From 1968 to 1975 only 59 patients were outfitted with the
Jaipur foot, but the use of the new limb spread outside India
during the Afghan war, which began in the late 1970s. Russian
land mines--some diabolically shaped like butterflies to attract
curious children--caused thousands of injuries, and the
International Committee of the Red Cross discovered that the
Jaipur foot was the hardiest limb for the mountainous Afghan
terrain.
Since then, countless land-mine victims in many countries have been fitted with the Jaipur foot. "Western aid agencies have helped millions of amputees, and they've found that they can't do it as cheaply as with the Jaipur foot," says Sethi. In India most of the 72,000 amputees wearing the prosthesis were migrant laborers injured while trying to hitch free rides by clinging to train roofs and windows. During their long journeys to the harvests, many of these workers slipped off the trains and were run over. Much of the credit and many of the awards for the Jaipur foot have gone to Sethi; the two inventors have not seen each other since the surgeon retired from active medicine in 1981. Chandra works with a Jaipur-based charity, the Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti, which provides free artificial legs for the poor not only in India but in other countries too. He says he feels no bitterness over Sethi's greater fame. At his Delhi workshop, where he has been developing above-the-knee artificial limbs, Chandra points out a little girl whose leg was severed in a bus crash. "People said I would be a rich man if we had patented the Jaipur foot, but it's enough satisfaction for me to see the joy on that girl's face when she walks again." He adds, "I'm still learning from my patients. I haven't done anything yet." He too is semi-retired. He dresses in a simple white dhoti and lives frugally. "I only need money for the barber and occasionally the tailor," he says, laughing. He rises at 4:30 a.m., milks his cow and prays until breakfast time. Only then does he resume his ongoing effort to improve the Jaipur foot and create new artificial limbs that will be as real and useful as humanly possible.
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