Purushottam Puraskar

Ophthalmologist and former Dean of Grant Medical College and J.J. Hospital, Mumbai, and Director of Medical Education and Research, Maharashtra. Known for performing well over a hundred thousand cataract surgeries and for eye camps in remote areas.

Mumbai foundation, working since 2020 for orphans above the age of 18. It offers vocational guidance, nutrition, shelter and counselling to help young people become self-reliant.

Social worker from Baripada village, known for tribal welfare and environment protection. Working from his village with Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, of which he is president, he led forest and water conservation; his Padma Shri citation credits it with a dense forest on 445 hectares and irrigation for at least 500 acres.

Service organisation that grew out of a drought-relief committee formed in 1972. It works in education, healthcare and rural development across Maharashtra, with projects such as a mobile science laboratory for schools in remote areas.

Magician from a family of magicians - grandson of Jadugar Raghuvir, who used magic against superstition and for charity shows. Known for bringing technology into stage magic and for performing around the world.

Jalgaon trust founded by Dr Avinash Acharya. It runs an old-age home, a children's shelter, a blood bank, an eye bank and skill-development and rural-development projects, and received the state government's Shahu-Phule-Ambedkar Award for 2016-17.

Tribal farmer from Akole in Ahmednagar district, known as the 'Seed Mother' (Beej Mata) for conserving indigenous crop varieties. She keeps a community seed bank and encourages farmers to grow native crops and farm organically; awarded the Padma Shri.

Marathi novelist and former IAS officer, best known for the historical novel 'Panipat', and author of 'Mahanayak' and 'Sambhaji'. Elected president of the 99th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan.

Foundation spearheaded in September 2015 by the actors Nana Patekar and Makarand Anaspure in response to drought and distress among farmers in Maharashtra. It educates farmers and works to restore ground and stored water and to revive canals and abandoned water projects.

Founder member of Sahakar Bharati, the national cooperative-sector body set up in 1979. Earlier CEO of Janakalyan Sahakari Bank and Chairman and CEO of United Western Bank.

Founded in 1988 by psychiatrist Dr Bharat Vatwani. It rescues and treats mentally ill people living on the streets and reunites them with their families, from its centre at Karjat in Raigad district; Dr Vatwani received the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Sugarcane scientist at the Vasantdada Sugar Institute, Pune, known for the 'Hapse technology' and the movement for 100-tonne-per-acre sugarcane yields. He bred high-yielding varieties and published over 200 scientific papers and five books.

Founded in 1966 to popularise science through the Marathi language. It publishes the Marathi Vidnyan Parishad Patrika and runs workshops, competitions and scholarship schemes.

Marathi poet and lyricist who was also a working farmer, writing mainly on nature and the land. A member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council, he won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his book 'Paanzad'.

Research institute established at Dhule on 9 January 1927 to preserve the collection of the historian V. K. Rajwade and make it available to scholars. It undertakes research and publishes the journal Sanshodhak.

Former sarpanch of Hiware Bazar in Ahmednagar district. He led the village's watershed-development programme, which NITI Aayog documents as a success story and which has made the village a model for others.

Pandharpur organisation founded by Mangal Shah that runs the Palawi care home for abandoned children living with HIV, giving them care, schooling and a stigma-free home. Its work began in 2001.

Scientist from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre known for the Nisargruna concept, a biogas technology that turns biodegradable waste into biogas and manure.

Ashram at Suryamal in Mokhada taluka associated with Dr. Lajpatrai Mehra, who developed 'neurotherapy', a system of alternative medicine.

Known as the 'mother of orphans'; raised and educated more than a thousand orphaned children. Founder of Sanmati Bal Niketan at Hadapsar, Pune; awarded the Padma Shri.

Ashram near Wardha where Mahatma Gandhi lived from 1936 until 1948 and from which he carried out his work in those years. It is run by the Sevagram Ashram Pratishthan.

Writer and critic who taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Pune. An authority on saint literature and on Sant Tukaram and the author of 'Tukaram Darshan', he was president of the 88th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, held at Ghuman in Punjab.

Started in 1984 by Naseema Hurzuk and Rajani Deshpande, both of whom live with disabilities, to rehabilitate people with disabilities in and around Kolhapur. It has set up hostels, schools and rehabilitation and training centres.

Economist who was Chief Economist of the Reserve Bank of India, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Pune, a member of the Planning Commission and a member of the Rajya Sabha. Author in Marathi, English and Hindi.

Trust that runs Sadhana, the Marathi weekly begun by Sane Guruji on 15 August 1948 and published from Pune.

Honorary dean and chief cardiologist at Bombay Hospital Institute of Medical Sciences, Mumbai, and earlier Director-Professor of Cardiology at the J.J. Group of Hospitals and Grant Medical College. He served on the Medical Council of India.

Rural development organisation founded in 1995 by Nileema Mishra at Bahadarpur in Jalgaon district. It has formed self-help groups of village women, with microcredit and livelihood programmes, in some two hundred villages. Its founder received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2011.

Vice-Chancellor of Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune, trustee-editor of the newspaper Kesari and a great-grandson of Lokmanya Tilak. Associated with education, journalism and social work in Pune.

Nashik institution named after the Marathi poet Kusumagraj (Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar). It has instituted the Janasthan Puraskar, a literary award given once in two years since 1991.

Founding director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune. Known for the Hoyle-Narlikar theory of gravity and for popular science writing.

Writer of poetry, novels and short stories, and critic of modern Marathi literature. He headed the Marathi department at the University of Pune, was Vice-Chancellor of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, and was elected president of the 86th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan.

University at Jalgaon, established in 1990 and named after the poet Bahinabai Chaudhari. Its area covers Jalgaon, Dhule and Nandurbar districts, a largely rural and tribal region, and many of its students are the first in their families to study at this level.

Economist known for research on caste, discrimination and poverty; Professor Emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He chaired the University Grants Commission and the Indian Council of Social Science Research and directed the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies.

Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, a pioneer of solid-propellant rocket technology and Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister; later Vice-Chancellor of Pune University. Known for India's first monsoon-forecasting model.

Marathi literary institution founded in Pune in 1906. It holds annual conferences, publishes the quarterly Maharashtra Sahitya Patrika, runs a reference library and conducts examinations in Marathi language and literature.

Architect of India's national supercomputing initiative and founding executive director of C-DAC, where the PARAM supercomputers were developed. Also known for work on multilingual computing for Indian languages.

Spiritual centre at Dudhivare, about 8 km from Lonavala, set up on 16 acres by the Warkari kirtankar Baba Maharaj Satarkar.

Authority on the saint-poets of Maharashtra, with some twenty books on saint literature. He headed a department at Marathwada University and presided over the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan held at Pune.

Maharashtra's first state agricultural university, established in 1968 and named after Mahatma Jotiba Phule. It serves farmers through education, research and extension.

Physicist who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Pune and later of IGNOU, and chairman of the executive committee of NAAC. Known for developing a model of state open university and expanding open and distance education.

Open university set up on 1 July 1989 by an Act of the Maharashtra Legislature and named after Yashwantrao Chavan. Its headquarters are at Nashik, and it offers study by distance learning to learners across Maharashtra.