M. Damodaran, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, on the positive and negative of the Indian business climate

A worthy mention must also be made of his memory. It is, well, worthy of a financial guru that he is. The Chief Representative (India) for the ING Group of Netherlands, Head of IDBI, a development finance institution (which he converted to a bank), Damodaran has been the Chairperson of Unit Trust of India—then India’s largest mutual fund from July 2001 to December 2004—as well. Recently, the former civil servant turned entrepreneur with Glocal Medicare, a medical services provider. Damodaran’s journey began differently. Admitting that it was “a really long time ago” Damodaran effortlessly gave us a detailed (precise) description of the major milestones in his life. “I was born in the Palakkad district of Kerala. In 1956, during linguistic reorganisation of states, my father opted for what was then Madras. I studied in Coimbatore. The longest and most significant portion of my school days were spent in Tiruchirapalli in Campion Anglo-Indian Higher Secondary School run by Jesuit brothers.” a bit like “home coming”. “It was not home to begin with, but it felt great to be back. That too while being attached with an educational institution,” he adds as an afterthought. When he was travelling to Coimbatore, Damodaran was also making a move to an English-medium high school. His fluency in the language was limited to his ability to remember the English alphabets and being able to say his name. The first two schools his mother took him to showed him the door fairly quickly. The third had a wise headmaster. He asked Damodaran’s mother, “I suppose he doesn’t know any English?” She admitted that he didn’t and insisted he would soon learn. “I am sure he will”. And he was in. That was an important life event; when someone gave him a chance on the basis of what he did not know. Later in Campion, Damodaran counts his Principal, Jesuit Priest Father Tamby—a “phenomenal person”— as one of the major influences in his life. “He had seen life from both sides as he was a former member of the Indian Navy before becoming a priest. I admired that.” Life’s adventures began in the pre-university period. “I did fairly well in Loyola College and went on to join IIT, Madras. It is one of the few minor achievements of mine that I am an IIT drop out,” he says with his characteristic booming laugh. He admits to have learnt a lot at IIT—except engineering! It was to be the start of a slew of projects which he would “drop” half-way, only to pick up again much later (much to the chagrin of his parents). After IIT, he returned to Loyola and completed his first degree in economics. He went on to join the Madras Law College and dropped out after eight months. “If I could rewrite my life—not that it is a regret—maybe I would not have dropped out. It was a two-year course. I was already into the eighth month. My professors though I was a good student. They were upset. But my father had retired. As the eldest child I took a step back and let my younger siblings have their chance. Not that education was expensive or that my father couldn’t afford it. I started to apply for jobs with no qualification apart from a BA Honours degree. Some companies were actually kind enough to offer me a job. After much mulling I became a probationary officer at the Indian Bank.” He was there for six months and then decades later he returned as its Officiating Chairman helping in the systemic re-structuring of the bank. After Indian Bank, it was time to move to State Bank of India. Again the magic of six happened—till he joined the Indian Administrative Services. Yes, quite the leap! “I got through on my first attempt simply because I did not have the luxury of a second chance. I was one of the oldest students applying having lost three years, thanks to the various stints. I am not too sure whether I wish to attribute this sudden move to parental influence. Of course I did have something to prove after I had dropped out of IIT and law college. I was a reasonably good student (read: he was a topper through school, college and university examinations), but there was always the feeling that this fellow was up to no good! I suspect that at some level my parents did get upset with that. I needed to prove to myself.” So, armed with an economics graduate degree (everyone else had at least a postgraduate degree), he started his battle—preparing for the tests. Imagine this: Damodaran was posted as a probationary officer at the Indian Bank, Vijaywada, when he was appearing for his IAS entrance tests. His examination centre was in Madras. He could not—as a probationary officer—request for leave. So he travelled overnight in the unreserved compartment from Vijaywada to Madras on examination days and came back on the same days. He had no benefit of coaching but months of law studies made him confident enough to choose mercantile and general law as his papers, apart from economics—again, just because he had ‘phenomenal’ teachers. Other subjects included jurisprudence, and political organisation and public administration; and he was a first timer to both. When he cleared his IAS test, He was posted to the Union Territory Cadre and packed off to Tripura (an union territory at that time) for training. Sometime Tripura proved to be a “cultural shock” for this citizen raised in the south of India, he says that the lack of courts was a bothersome and goes on to laugh. Interestingly that was the last time he “properly” played the sports. Now he takes pride in the fact that his son is better at it. Eight years in Tripura. “I was the Director of Tribal Welfare for close to two years. When I was transferred local tribal leaders protested. I suppose I found some measure of acceptance. I also drafted Tripura’s first Tribal Sub-plan (TSP) which made me unpopular among people who thought I was taking away their money for a ‘sub-plan’.” Damodaran was also the first non-political appointee to his district during President’s Rule. Former Home Secretary LP Singh, who later became the Governor, appointed him. After his Tripura days, Damodaran came to New Delhi in later, Tripura received statehood. Those in the know with the “right connections” and an understanding of the services, wrangled out. “I didn’t know enough and had no interest in Delhi. So off to Tripura I went.” When he landed at the Agartala Airport, he possessed a suitcase, a bed roll and a tennis racquet—he played the sports reasonably well. While waiting for his ride, a gentleman informed Damodaran that there were no tennis courts in the state. When quizzed whether the Ministry of Defence where he stayed for—hold your breath—eight months, followed by the Ministry of Textiles where the stint was longer at three years plus. It was at the Ministry of Defence—where he was “hopelessly underemployed”—that he registered for an evening course in law and finished his law degree. “I wasn’t the oldest student in class though. There were people who had retired from their professions. I was only in my thirties,” he laughs. He did well in law and received a high first-division. Today he still reads judgments. “You drop out because you think you need a job. Then you have the comfort of a job. I have enjoyed everything I have done, even if they were not conventionally the best. Along the way there is the family then you do not wish to take the risk and give up your pay cheque.” The Switch “in my life there have been far too many coincidences. I was the Chief Secretary of Tripura for three years. During that time, Dr Manmohan Singh paid us a visit. He was then the Member Secretary of the Planning Commission. The second time he visited, he was the Finance Minister. I closely interacted with him—as I had to explain the state’s workings through a number of interactions. Afterward he mentioned that when I was ‘done’ perhaps he would have a place for me.” A lot of people usually say so—but Damodaran believed Singh meant it. “When I finished my term with the state government as its Chief Secretary and returned to Delhi as the Principle Resident Commissioner—I wanted to spend some time with my family living in Delhi then—I happened to visit the North Block office of the Home Ministry. My driver dropped me off at Gate 2 while I was supposed to go to Gate number 4. And there was the Finance Minister coming out just while I was going in. He asked me what I was up to and I took a chance—I was slotted a time in the afternoon. He decided to take me into the banking division.” And thus the switch happened. Of course, the Finance Ministry was doing nothing out of charity. Damodaran had nursed a bankrupt state of Tripura back on its legs. “After I was done we (the state administrative machinery) still did not have enough money to pay salaries. But we were no longer an overdraft state,” he says. Five years in finance followed. When that term, too, was over it was time to return to square one—the state government. By then Damodaran’s juniors had moved along to higher posts, and he did not wish to rock any boats. Neither was he interested to work in the same capacity anymore. It was then when he was caught in the calling dilemma that RBI Governor Dr Bimal Jalan offered an opportunity—since Damodaran’s Midas touch had worked with state coffers, if he would be interested to use his skills in the banking sector and help restructure three Indian banks (Indian Bank, UCO Bank and United Bank of India). Damodaran was asked to move to Bombay—far from his family in Delhi. He put his foot down till he was allowed to work out of New Delhi and report to Dr Jalan—a fairly large concession. Strangely, Damodaran calls this part of his stint as one that involved little paperwork. “The number of hours I put in for this job were less than I was used to and the paper work was also light. I was by myself, interacting with three banks—helping them to find them new chairpersons. It must have been something that I said or did, people started to believe that I had it too easy. So when the UTI crisis happened I was asked to go to Mumbai and start to earn a living,” he adds laughing. This time a transfer to Mumbai was unavoidable—and he was literally catapulted to a new city over a weekend. Damodaran was celebrating 30 years of joining the civil service with his friends on a rainy Saturday night when he received a call stating that the Finance Minister wished to see him at 10.30pm at the latter’s residence. “I was forced to inform the Special Secretary that I didn’t see ministers at their homes during daytime. What made him think that I would do so at night? (In the 40 years of working for and with the government, Damodaran has visited ministers’ homes thrice.) I was told I had to go nonetheless, and I abandoned the 30-year celebration half-way.” There he was informed that he had been appointed as the Chairperson of the UTI. “I believed that people needed my permission to grant me a post. I was ordered not to make a fuss. The suggestion had been received by the Prime Minister as well.” It was a time when General Musharraf was on his famous Agra meet in India and Dr Singh finished an official dinner with the Pakistani Minister to come home and designate the new duties to Damodaran. “At seven o’ clock next morning I was woken up by the phone ringing. A telephonic voice asked me to proceed to Mumbai by 9am to take over in the morning. I said, I am sorry but I happen to be in my bed. The voice asked if I could go in the afternoon. I relented. My first board meeting was at 4pm on that Sunday. We took our first decision to open a partial repurchase window for Unit 64 that day itself.” Even before the rest of the organisation had seen Damodaran’s face, he had taken a decision that would change the course of the bank’s future. That was how Damodaran states he got into the ‘arena’ of finance though he was always in the area of finance. “Incidentally, I quit the arena on a Sunday as well, under completely different circumstances,” he says with a mischievous smile. Damodaran’s UTI stint lasted for three years. By then Jaswant Singh was the Finance Minister of India. Singh asked the finance guru to take over the IDBI concurrently with UTI—which Damodaran did. He turned IDBI into a bank, tided over a major merger and did the stressed asset stabilisation front of `9,000 crore. Normally, bail-out and restructuring operations do not lead to profit. However, the Indian Government has been making profit from the UTI even after paying off all dues. And as far as the IDBI is concerned—in a cash neutral manner—Damodaran and team took out `9,000 core worth of MPAs and lodged it in a fund. At last count some `5,800 crore were recovered from it. The best thing? The Indian Government still has 10 years in those interest free bonds. What three previous chairpersons of the IDBI could not manage in all the years, Damodaran managed in three years—though he became unpopular in the process (his effigies were routinely burnt by labour unions). In the UTI, Damodaran reduced the work force from 2,400 to 1,100, and enforced the Involuntary Retirement Scheme. Result; a few more burnt effigies. “That’s part of the process. If you wish to work in favour of public interest then you have to take protests in your stride.” Where We Go Wrong–Every time “The one advantage of studying law is that you tend to hear out all sides. Problems usually have more than two sides. When you hear them out, you tend to weigh all of them in. You don’t start out with one eternal truth. India’s problem is that we have a long-standing love affair with the process of taking decisions. That’s not the way to success. When there are enough alternatives on the table then one should look at them and take a decision—it may be the right one or the wrong one.” Ask the man who has taken some of the toughest decisions our behalf, he says he can live with a wrong decision as long as it was made after honest reconsideration. “We define accountability wrongly. It is not only about taking decisions bona fide. I want to make a distinction between taking a decision bona fide, and taking correct decisions. Ten out of 10 every day is god’s sports. But 10-out-of-10 you have to take decisions. You have to distinguish between taking decisions bona fide and taking decisions mala fide. Accountability must extend to those not taking a decision as well, especially those who have been placed in positions where they are expected to take some. In the General Clauses Act, it says that an act includes an omission to act. So if I am supposed to do something and I don’t do it, I am equally accountable. We never hold anyone accountable for errors of omission but for errors of commission.” For people singing paeans for passion—Damodaran believes that passion has no place in the decision-making process. “You have to decide objectively, keeping personal prejudices out, and then implement the plan passionately. If you remain true to the process, no one in the organisation has the business to keep on second guessing that decision. One may re-visit a decision during a mid-term review. But never take a decision on Monday morning, only to abandon it by the evening. At some stage, apply a closure to the consultative decision. Be a democrat this far—and not further.” With that we end our discussion.

Re-elected from Assam

POLITICS// Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took oath as member of Rajya Sabha after being re-elected from Assam on June 17, 2013. The eighty-year-old Singh, who is the Leader of the Upper House, was re-elected as the member of Rajya Sabha from Assam for the fifth consecutive term. Congress President Sonia Gandhi and party leaders Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vohra and Rajv Shukla were among those present on the occasion. Taking his oath in the name of God, Singh told reporters that “It is a great opportunity for me to re-dedicate myself to the service of the people of Assam.” Among the people present at the ceremony were Lok Janshakti Party President Ram Vilas Paswan, SP leader Ram Gopal Yadab and a many other Rajya Sabha members. Another Congress member from Assam, Santius Kujur, also took oath the same day. The election to the two Rajya Sabha seats from Assam had taken place on May 30, 2013, and the Congress had won both seats.

PROTEST// On May 28, 2013, 50 environmentalists protesting against the demolition of Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park were attacked with tear gas and water cannons. The attack sparked outrage among masses and triggered protests across regions. People raised their voices against issues concerning freedom of press, expression, assembly, and the government’s encroachment on Turkey’s secularism. Protesters opposed to the 10-year rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came up with a new method of protest—Standing Man. Thousands walked into Taksim Square throughout the day, staring silently at a massive portrait of the country’s founding father hung by the security forces a week before the new method of protest got started. In response, government detained more than 80 protestors, all Left-wingers.

Players Caught in Spot-fixing Scam

MATCH FIXING// On May 16, 2013, Delhi Police arrested three Rajasthan Royal bowlers— Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan—for allegedly fulfilling promises made to alleged bookies of bowling a bad over each, for a return sum ranging from $36,000 to $109,000 for each over. Along with the three players 11 alleged bookies were also arrested. BCCI, in response to the actions taken by the Delhi Police, suspended the three players. The BCCI Chief N. Srinivasan later in his statement said that, “IPL is not untenable.” The controversy continued to thicken as names of many big fishes came to light. Vindoo Dara Singh, a small-time actor and son of wrestler-turnedactor Late Dara Singh, was also arrested, as the Mumbai Police traced his connections with bookies, BCCI President N. Srinivasan and his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan. Meiyappan, a top official of the Chennai Super Kings franchise, was later arrested by Mumbai Police on charges of betting, cheating, forgery and fraud. Mumbai police team had raided Meiyappan's Chennai residence and summoned him for questioning. They rejected his request for an extension till after IPL-VI finals, and took him into custody. The Income tax department initiated a probe into the hawala and illegal cash transactions involved in the spot-fixing case. Soon after, India Cements sought to dissociate Meiyappan from the CSK franchise, stating that he is neither the team owner, nor the CEO/team principal. Mumbai police said that Meiyappan passed on vital information about CSK to bookies. He has been booked under various sections of the IT Act, Gambling Act and the Indian Penal Code. Meiyappan later said that Vindoo lured him into betting. Vindoo Dara Singh and Meiyappan were later granted bail on condition that they won’t leave the country. Madras High Court had issued notices to BCCI president N. Srinivasan and IPL chairman, among others, on a PIL filed by a Madurai-based lawyer, seeking a government takeover of the administration of the BCCI and the IPL. At the same time voices were being raised by many within the sports ministry demanding Srinivasan's resignation. Srinivasan, however, in his statement said that “I won’t be bulldozed into resigning." On May 29, the sports ministry asked Srinivasan to step down due to conflict of interest in the enquiry. While he refused to resign, he decided to step aside temporarily, making way for Jagmohan Dalmiya, the former BCCI President, who will be taking care if the Board in the absence of Srinivasan. Umpire Asad Rauf was also allegedly involved in the spot-fixing scandal. According to police investigation, the Umpire was showered with expensive gifts from bookies, soon after this was revealed ICC decided to remove Rauf from the Champions Trophy squad. Rauf, has denied all allegations. Adding another twist to the story, on June 6, Raj Kundra, owner of Rajasthan Royals, the team whose players have been accused of spot-fixing, confessed to betting in IPL after being interrogated by the Delhi Police for 10 hours. According to Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar, Kundra confessed to betting in the IPL through Goenka and that he placed bets on his team as well. BCCI issued a 12-point diktat to restore IPL's image and suspended Raj Kundra. Sreesanth, Chavan and 18 others who were booked under MCOCA released on bail by a Delhi court however, Chandila was again sent to police custody for further questioning.

Khan who marked her debut with Ram Gopal Verma’s Nishabd was found hanging at her house on June 2, 2013. The actress was allegedly in a relationship with Aditya Pancholi’s son, Suraj Pancholi. According to a ‘note’ found, the relationship allegedly had been a reason behind her suicide.

SPORTS// On a frustrating Sunday evening, as the rain gods wrecked havoc, fans waited patiently in the wet Birmingham stadium. The 50-over one day-match had to be changed to a 20-over match, the blame for which squarely fell on the shoulders of the ICC who failed to keep a reserve day for the final match. Yet, at the end of it all, it was a rewarding wait, as India managed to clinch victory from the hands of the England, who had stupendously contained the Indian side within a small score of 129. The English side, then, collapsed in their pursuit of 130, and went home, yet again, without the ICC trophy. Ravindra Jadeja, who was named the Man of the Match, scored an unbeaten 33, and also took two wickets, giving away 24 runs. He was also given the 'golden ball' for picking 12 wickets, the highest in the tournament. Kohli was the highest run getter from the Indian side scoring a punchy 44. Shikhar Dhawal, the leading run-getter of the tournament was named the Man of the Series and was awarded the Golden Bat.

Toll reaches 150, Rudraprayag worst hit

FLOODS\\ Tragedy struck Uttarakhand region of the Himalayas, when a cloud burst caused massive rains in the region, leading to floods that washed away roads, guest houses, buses and people, leaving large number of pilgrims and travellers stranded. It is being feared that the thousands of pilgrims staying in as many as 90 guest houses have been washed away in the flash floods. The State Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre, in its report to the Union Home Ministry, has said that casualties in the affected areas may run into thousands with about 90 ‘dharamashalas’ swept away in the flash floods. However, the toll was kept officially at 150. Later, June 21, more than 40 were found dead in Haridwar, that upped the official figures to 200. In Uttarakhand, over 15,000 people stranded in Kedarnath and Govindghat on way to Hemkund Sahib have been evacuated so far to Joshimath relief camps through air and road routes, IG police R S Meena said. Rudraprayaag district was the worst affected place, and rescue efforts are being focussed on the region, where almost 90 dharmashalas have been washed away, and many villagers and tourists are still under water.

Bihar CM breaks its 17 year tie with the BJP

POLITICS\\ Bihar’s ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U) ended its 17-year-old alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on June 16, 2013, after days of speculation, marking a major split in the country’s main opposition grouping. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had told Governor D.Y. Patil to sack all the 11 BJP ministers in his government for not performing and had vowed to win the trust vote in the state. Soon after the decision was made public, JD(U) president Sharad Yadav announced he was quitting as the convenor of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). “We are not responsible for ending the alliance. We were pushed to this situation so as not to compromise with our basic principles,” Nitish Kumar said. “We don’t care for the repercussions, we are not worried.” Both, Kumar and Yadav, stated they would not dilute the party’s “basic principles” by which they meant that they would never accept a BJP seemingly led by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The JD(U)’s departure forced BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi to demand Nitish Kumar’s resignation while Sushma Swaraj called the divorce “sad and unfortunate”. The initial fights between the BJP and JD-U were triggered by Nitish Kumar's opposition to Narendra Modi and the BJP decision to make the Gujarat chief minister its public face in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Yadav pointed out the difference between the Modi-driven BJP and BJP stars Vajpayee and L.K. Advani.

WHILE IT is a matter of great concern that India does not boast of several world-class institutions, it is a matter of shame if leading scholars in Indian politics and history are not India-based or if the most prestigious research centres are in the West. It is time we asked some disconcerting questions: which are the leading centres of excellence for scholarship on Indian economy, anthropology and languages? What is the Indian contribution to the field of Indian politics or culture? Where will the next generation of India experts come from? Gurcharan Das recently said that, ‘an Indian who seriously wants to study the classics of Sanskrit or ancient regional languages will have to go abroad’ (Times of India, September 9, 2012). This is an understatement. The situation is much worse and it applies to several other disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. To get a broader sense of the quality of Indian scholarship in the social sciences, I collected data on the scholarship in Indian politics from The Oxford Companion to Indian Politics (2010) and the India Review (2002-2011). The Oxford Companion to Indian Politics—edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Centre for Policy Research)—contains 38 original articles by 44 leading scholars—Indian and Western academics—of Indian politics. While not every leading scholar has a chapter in the book, the collection is a fairly good representation of well-known scholars who work on Indian politics. The India Review ‘publishes social science research on Indian politics, economics, and society’. Between 2002 and 2011, it published 139 original articles by 162 authors on a variety of issues in Indian politics, economy, society and international relations. (Note: 1) Two special issues on public anthropology and India Studies in the US were excluded from the count; and 2) several scholars published more than one article and are counted multiple times. Why just politics? I have two reasons for focussing on Indian politics to determine the quality of scholarship in India. First, since my academic training and experience is primarily in political science, I have a better sense of what is happening in the field of Indian politics than in say sociology or history. Second, and more importantly, there is no doubt that politics is both the problem and solution to India’s challenges—including higher education—in the coming decades. It is essential that we develop and nurture the discipline of Indian politics to understand why we have succeeded or failed in different areas as a nation and what we can do to fix our failings. To get a sense of the Indian contribution to Indian politics, I created three categories: 1) Indian/ Western scholars; 2) India/ West-based scholars; 3) Indians with PhD degrees from India/ the West. Indian/Western Scholars: Of the 44 contributors in Jayal and Mehta (2010), 32 are Indians and the rest are a mix of British, American and others. In India Review, 84 of the 162 authors are Indians. The ‘Indian’ category includes those who may have been born in or outside India and was determined on the basis of name, location and any other information that was easily available online. Many scholars who are counted as ‘Indians’ may only be nominally so. India-/West-based Scholars: Only 14 of the 44 authors in Jayal and Mehta (2010) are based in India. Of the 84 Indian scholars whose papers have been published in India Review, only 20 are based in India. Excluded from the count are current or former bureaucrats and journalists whose interaction with students is quite limited. India-based scholars with PhDs from India/ West: Of the 14 India-based scholars in Jayal and Mehta (2010) only seven have PhDs (or highest degrees) from Indian institutions. Similarly, only 10 of the 20 India-based scholars who published in India Review earned their PhDs at Indian institutions. These numbers indicate that there is a very small pool of experts in India to train and mentor the next generation of scholars. Clearly, Indian institutions have not been fertile grounds for grooming scholars of Indian politics. The number of home-grown scholars like Sudipta Kaviraj and Ramachandra Guha is far too few. Both Jayal and Mehta, incidentally, earned their degrees from Western institutions. Similarly, the founding and current editors of India Review—Sumit Ganguly and E. Sridharan—are also trained at American schools. Are these above mentioned numbers surprising? I think not. These numbers confirm what we already know but do not wish to acknowledge or address. At the moment, we are far away from being the leaders in disciplines and fields that are our own, let alone compete globally in higher education in a broader range of disciplines and subject areas. After all, even those Indian institutions which rank among the world’s best overall, such as IIM-Ahmedabad and ISB-Hyderabad, the ranking on scholarship—measured in terms of publications—is poor. Not one Indian business school ranks in the Top 100 in terms of research contribution (See The University of Texas-Dallas Top 100 World Rankings of Business Schools Based on Research Contribution 2007-2011- http://jindal.utdallas.edu/ the-utd-top-100-businessschool- research-rankings/ worldwide-rankings/). Admittedly, only two sources have been used to make sweeping conclusions. It may be that the state of affairs is specific to the study of Indian politics. As Susan and Lloyd Rudolph note in their essay “An Intellectual History of the Study of Indian Politics” (Jayal and Mehta, 2010), the discipline developed fairly late in independent India. Even today, a premier liberal arts college like Delhi’s St Stephen’s does not offer a Bachelor’s degree in political science. With the exception of some central universities, the state of teaching and research in Indian politics is poor. The question that could be asked is, is Indian politics an exception? It is possible that the study of Indian politics has suffered because better-run institutions such as the IITs and the IIMs offer only a select number of social science disciplines and politics is not one of them. None of the IITs—with the exception of IITGuwahati— have political scientists on their faculty. A good friend in the humanities and social sciences at one of the IITs quoted a colleague who once said that ‘this was to keep politics out of the institution!’ To my knowledge, IIT-Gandhinagar may have become only the second IIT to hire a faculty member with a degree in political science. Other social science disciplines such as sociology, economics or history probably fare better. They have a longer tradition of scholarship at premier Indian institutions. Furthermore, since the IITs too have PhD programmes in economics and sociology, we might expect them to produce greater number of good quality scholars. But chew on this. When Pranab Mukherjee needed an economic advisor, he invited Kaushik Basu from far away Ithaca. P Chidambaram’s man of the hour Raghuram Rajan has come all the way from Chicago. It appears that students of Indian economy are in good hands at Cornell, Chicago and scores of other institutions in the US, Europe and Australia. Are they in equally good hands today in places other than maybe JNU and the Delhi School of Economics? We need to ask ourselves, what is missing in the gravy? Worldclass institutions, research centres and departments develop around a core group of faculty members who are leading scholars in their field. These are the people who train and mentor the next generation of scholars. Unfortunately, very few of our institutions can boast of such a core group of faculty members. There is no point in taking pride in the scholarship of Indian academics based outside India. Their existence does little for our politics, history and economics departments. It is a depressing fact that the next generation of leading scholars in Indian politics and several other disciplines is currently not being trained in India, but in the West.

To be a doctor and to blog is great, but you can never be more careful

Imagine this. You wake up with a throat that feels worse than sandpaper. You follow the drill—you gargle a bit to soothe the matter, but it just won’t go away. Now, instead of picking up the phone and booking a checkup with the doctor, what do you do? You head to the Internet and Google your symptoms to see if anyone else has faced them, and what they’ve done to cure the malady. If you browse WebMD, Google or various online forums for answers before a doctor visit, you are not alone. Increasingly, the healthcare industry is noticing a trend that a lot of folks try “Dr Google” before reaching out to a real doctor. But just because you can, does not mean you should, right? How good is the social web to find good healthcare advise, and how should the medical profession react to this ever-increasing trend of—“let us just ask folks on the Internet”? As internet-adept patients, going to the web is a natural, convenient alternative—to first look for quick-and-easy options to address a less serious medical issue before committing money and time to a doctor’s visit. Another reason often cited by patients is to be better prepared for the actual doctor’s visit, armed with the wisdom of the crowds, so to speak. Being better prepared can only be good? Not if you ask the doctors. Most doctors speak of the challenges of dealing with patients who had retrieved wrong or incomplete information from the internet, thereby spending time undoing bad information which they could have spent on the patient’s real issue (or attending to other patients’ needs). The common strain was that unlike doctors who are trained to give appropriate weightage to symptoms, patients are not, and tend to fixate on extreme diagnoses. In addition, Dr Google fundamentally changes the doctor-patient equation, where a doctor has to defend his diagnosis and views against what people have read on the Internet or on their social networks—a shift that many experienced doctors find hard to adjust to. In addition, as with any reputation-based profession, doctors often fret about the ease with which disgruntled patients use the Internet to vent and tarnish reputations, so much so that ‘googling’ a doctor could first show up negative reviews if patients are vocal enough about their dissent. And then there’s the concern of over sharing, this time on the doctor’s end—an inexperienced doctor may use social media in a manner which could be unprofessional at best and downright damaging at worst— discussing details which may identify a patient, for example—which may place themselves and their institutions at risk. How then should doctors harness the every day realities of the increasing importance of the social web, and not appear outdated by rejecting it outright? Remember, the institution of medicine is built on principles of following rules, while social media is not. Here are some common wisdoms that doctors should bear in mind. First, never ever post anything that can identify a patient. It’s not enough to merely change the details of the case, sometimes timing can be critical as well. Avoid terms that identify when the patient came in, more so if it is recent. Second, always assume the patient will end up reading your posts, be it on Facebook or on a medical forum. Don’t say anything about the patient that you wouldn’t say to them in person. Even if there’s been a disagreement in opinion or some degree of discord with the patient, do not post when you’re in an angry or perturbed state—remember the permanent nature of social media. Third, be extremely careful if patients send you friend requests on Facebook or other social networks. It’s not as if patients can’t be friends, but it may serve you better in the long run to create an official “Dr X” Facebook page and a separate identity for your personal relationships. Steer your patients towards the professional page rather than connecting directly with your non-work persona. Depending on your institution policy, you may want to avoid medical advice over SMS or emails, instead encouraging the patient to schedule an appointment (or go to the emergency ward, whichever is more time appropriate). Fourth, if you post on a hospital blog or your own blog, assume that patients will read what you post and abide by it. Even though they are not necessarily as peer-reviewed as medical journals, blog posts should never fall short in terms of accuracy. Lastly, educate yourself and do not fear social media—it is an amazing tool that can bring hospitals, doctors and patients closer together for the greater good of patient education and healing. Do peruse the following resources for some much-recommended reading on social media and healthcare.