The Ethics Journal Editor

Amar Jesani was the kind of man you didn’t forget after meeting once. If the Medico Friend Circle (MFC) was the soul of public health activism in India, Amar was its restless conscience. I had known him since the early 1980s, and his annual visits to Sevagram were events we looked forward to—with excitement, and a little nervous respect.

He was physically striking. His large, searching eyes sat behind thick glasses, as if he was always reading between the lines. And when he spoke, he didn’t just speak—he filled the room. His voice carried both empathy for the marginalized and anger at the medical establishment’s indifference. I often sat in the audience thinking: How does he say these things so openly? I was careful by temperament. Amar was a storm.

In the early 1990s, Amar and a group of like-minded colleagues in Mumbai founded the Forum for Medical Ethics. In August 1993, they brought out a newsletter called Medical Ethics. It later became Issues in Medical Ethics (1996), and eventually took the name it is known by today—the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME)—in 2004.

The journal was unusual even then, and it remains unusual now. It refused to behave like a typical medical publication. It didn’t charge authors to publish. It made its content freely available online. And most importantly, it refused advertisements from drug companies and medical device manufacturers. In a world where journals often survive on commercial support, IJME chose independence, even if it meant running on a shoestring—donations, two underpaid staff members, and a lot of volunteer effort.

Sometime around the turn of the millennium, Amar approached me with an offer.

“We want you to join as an Associate Editor,” he said.

The editor then was Dr. Samiran Nundy—former head of GI Surgery at AIIMS, and a towering figure in Indian medicine. I felt completely out of place. I was a physician from a rural medical college. I had never edited a national journal. I had only recently got an email account and was still learning how not to embarrass myself online.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I told Amar.

He didn’t accept my refusal. Sandhya Srinivasan, the journal’s executive editor, didn’t accept it either. Between the two of them, they pushed me gently but firmly into the role. Looking back, I’m glad they did.

Those three years were a steep tutorial. Sandhya became my guide. She was sharp, quick, and full of ideas—often speaking faster than I could keep up with. But she was also patient. She taught me the craft of editing: how to tighten a paragraph without strangling the author’s voice, how to remove clutter without removing meaning.

My job was to invite manuscripts and support Dr. Nundy with editorial work. In the beginning, I felt clumsy and hesitant. But slowly, the nervousness faded. I began to enjoy the discipline of the edit—the quiet satisfaction of making a piece clearer, cleaner, and more honest.

Through the journal, I also found colleagues who became friends—people like Dr. Sanjay Nagral and Dr. Sanjay Pai. The connection went beyond articles and emails. We were all trying, in our own ways, to keep medicine human.

I started writing too. I co-authored pieces on difficult subjects—ethical questions around government-funded antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS, and the uneasy culture of medical consumerism in an article titled, “When is enough enough?”

In 2003, I stepped down. I was leaving for my sabbatical in Berkeley, and I knew I couldn’t do justice to the journal from across the world.

When I look back, those three years with IJME feel like a turning point. Evidence-based medicine taught me how to treat. Working with IJME taught me why we treat—and who gets left out when the system is unfair.

By the time I left for California, I felt quietly better prepared. Bhavana had dragged me into the digital world. Madhukar Pai had sharpened my thinking about evidence. Amar Jesani had made sure my moral compass stayed awake.

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