The Better India · 4 hours ago

How One Man Turned 25 Acres of Barren Land Into a Loving Home for 123 Abandoned Children

For over 35 years, Shankarbaba Papalkar has been doing something quietly radical: choosing, again and again, to be a father. He began with four girls with disabilities on 25 barren acres in Amravati, and over time that land became home to 123 children - many abandoned within hours of birth, many never having known a family's name. His choice to enter his own name in the father's column of each child's Aadhaar card was not a formality; it was a declaration that belonging can be created where it was never given. When he received the Padma Shri in 2024, he did what had become his habit - he redirected the recognition, wanting "the honour to belong to them." One of those children, Mala, was abandoned at a railway station at age ten; she learned Braille under his roof, and in 2025 cleared a competitive state exam to become a government officer - a life built, in part, because one man decided the world's indifference was not the final word.