When Pramod Karan Sethi joined SMS Hospital in Jaipur in the 1950s and set up Rajasthan's first orthopaedic department and then its rehabilitation centre, it was the beginning of his journey to making the artificial foot now famous as the Jaipur foot.

Days after he died on January 6, Sethi's legacy is being questioned by the very NGO which is today known for taking the Jaipur foot to the masses. The invention won the doctor a Magsaysay award, which in turn has given him enemies.

The founder and chief patron of the Mahavir Viklang Sewa Samiti DR Mehta says that the doctor's contribution was limited to providing the medical technology for it. The sculptor who gave the aesthetic appearance to the foot and the NGO which propagated it deserve equal credit, he says.

He goes on to say that Sethi fixed just 40 limbs while the Samiti itself has fixed three lakh limbs till now. And that the Magsaysay for the doctor was not fully deserved.

A popular version of the invention of the foot is that a sculptor came to the surgeon with the idea of a prosthetic foot after he saw a man repair a cycle with a flat tyre.

PK Sethi, inventor of Jaipur foot

Text: Sreelatha Menon & Ashutosh Kumar