Ganesh Baraiya was still in primary school when a circus troupe walked into his family's home in Gorkhi village, Bhavnagar district, and offered his father Rs 5 lakh to take the boy away as a performer. 

Ganesh has dwarfism and stands barely three feet tall, a fact the troupe saw as a curiosity worth paying for. His father, a farmer raising eight children on modest means, turned down the life-changing sum. He chose his son's schooling instead, a decision Ganesh has since called the turning point of his life.

A rejection that made no sense

Ganesh wanted to become a doctor. He scored 87% in his Class 12 board exams and 233 marks in NEET 2018, clearing the entrance test that should have opened the door to a medical college. 

Instead, the Medical Council of India denied him an MBBS seat, citing his height and 72% locomotor disability as reasons he might struggle to handle medical emergencies. "The committee said I would not be able to handle emergency cases because of my height," he later told PTI. 

It was a verdict that reduced years of academic effort to a single physical measurement, and Ganesh, weighing barely 20 kg, was devastated.

He did not stop there. With support from his school principal, Dalpat Katariya of Nilkanth Vidyapeeth in Talaja, who helped fund the legal battle his farming family could not afford, Ganesh approached the district collector, the state education minister, and finally the Gujarat High Court. The High Court upheld the council's........

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