98
years of coaching even if she tar-
gets AIIMS. I’d rather let her go to
Manipal. So, Watson is the com-
puter that defeated people in chess,
GO and so on. Now it’s diagnosing
stuff. In oncology, it is picking up
cancers that humans missed. See,
It can also read through genomic
data which a human can’t. The
only place in India that has tied
up with IBM Watson is Manipal.
That’s where the cool stuff is hap-
pening. I’d rather see my daughter
doing cool stuff than going through
extensive coaching. The point
is branding used to matter a lot
when everyone was the same. If 25
MBBS graduates have done exact-
ly the same thing and you’ve to pick
one, you’d go with AIIMS. Now
things have changed. Tomorrow
you’ll need A guy for this, B guy
for that, you want specializations.
computers will start assisting and
taking over a bunch of responsi-
bilities, robotic surgeries will occur
in a big way. Many things will start
to happen. Then you’d need dif-
ferentiated people. Already people
are so differentiated! In America,
they used to have thumb surgeons.
There was a pediatric thumb sur-
geon. Actually! People get into that
level of specialization. There is an
AIIMSonian, Vikas Gupta who is
a hand surgeon. He will not touch
the elbow, shoulder, knee – he only
operates on the hand. For that,
there’s another surgeon! So, in this
kind of a situation does branding
really matter? There are only two
hand surgeons in all of Delhi! So
the pedigree root is going to keep
getting less and less important.
The more cookie cutter people are,
more the pedigree matters. The
accomplishments and how you dis-
tinguish yourself is what matters in
the long run.
VP: Actually most of the re-
search that has happened, for
example in TB, has happened
in the West and we are using
those drugs now to treat dis-
ease here in our country. So
why do you think India should
still be investing in research
instead of diverting the mon-
ey to healthcare where basic
criteria are still not met?
AA: Number one. India has con-
tributed significantly to TB re-
search. The entire BCG vaccine
stories start from TBRC, Chennai.
Protection against disseminated
TB, against TB meningitis- has
all happened in TBRC, Chennai.
See again, living in AIIMS, we
don’t realize how much great stuff
has come from India but not from
AIIMS. AIIMS has done nothing!
But also remember. AIIMS came
around in the 1960s. And it starts
in this really small place without
the top faculty. Many other insti-
tutes in India predate AIIMS by at
least 30-40 years. And the period
that AIIMS thrived – 70s to 90s in
a sense, or till today, is the time of
decline of Indian science. You start
looking at Nobel Laureates from
undivided India and afterward
when are they peaking? They are
peaking well before AIIMS even
came up. So Indian science was
already on a downhill course as
AIIMS was slowly growing. When
we look back in history, that’s when
Indian science was at its peak. Ac-
tually, Soumya Swaminathan, the
current DG of ICMR, has done
really interesting work on TB. An
Indian guy from ECB has the first
data of Calcium channel blockers
in TB. Really cool data! So for us
to believe that everything will come
from the west is wrong. So now let
me tell you one very important sto-
After the formal interview, we decided to wait for Dr. Anurag to finish his Skype meeting so that
we could have little more of an informal chit-chat. Sir turned out to be the “cool senior” and took
us to the cafteria (while Pasani was too shy to order anything). Although the “little chit-chat”
was also intended to be up here, we pull out only a single quote (if you haven’t realized yet, the
interview is too lengthy!).
“I remember this guy, he was our batchmate and a hardcore Bengali. He waited for a Bengali girl
to turn up at AIIMS. Finally, in his 3rd year, a pretty girl from Bengal landed in AIIMS. And guess
what, he, at the end of his 3rd year, actually got married, to that 1st year girl!”