Science Without Sponsors

When Dr. Sushila Nayar passed away, she left behind more than grief. She left a vacuum—moral, administrative, and emotional—that no one could fill by simply occupying her chair. Kasturba Health Society needed a leader who could protect the Gandhian soul of the institute while keeping the accounts from bleeding. The choice fell on Shri Dhirubhai Mehta.

Dhirubhai was not a doctor. He was a Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary at Bajaj Auto—trained to read balance sheets the way clinicians read ECGs. On paper, he looked like a corporate man, a custodian of audits, budgets, and compliance. Yet, beneath the crisp shirt and the sharp mind was a man with a social conscience. He had worked closely with Dr. Nayar for nearly two decades, absorbing her discipline and her distrust of extravagance. She had watched him carefully, tested him quietly, and, in her own austere way, groomed him for the moment when the institute would need a leader who could say “no” without flinching.

As President, Dhirubhai faced a challenge that would have intimidated most administrators. He had to sustain MGIMS’s academic and research ambitions without allowing money to dilute its moral compass. It was easy to preach simplicity. It was far harder to practise it when every department wanted equipment, every conference needed funding, and every visitor expected hospitality.

The Call from the Airport

In September 2002, I received a phone call that changed the DNA of MGIMS.

Dhirubhai was at Nagpur airport, waiting for a flight. The line crackled, as airport calls often do, but his voice was unmistakable—direct, impatient, and already decided.

“Kalantri,” he said, “I want to stop all funding from the drug and device industry for our medical conferences. I want a plan.”

His bluntness caught me off guard. Yet the context was fresh in my mind. Only the previous evening, we had sat in Sevagram, talking long after dinner, as we often did, about the state of the profession. I had poured out my frustration about the slow degeneration of medical conferences. These gatherings, once sacred spaces for learning, had begun to resemble carnivals—lavish banquet dinners, cocktail parties, expensive gifts, and “travel grants” that were really paid holidays, all bankrolled by companies that had a vested interest in what we prescribed.

I remember handing him a copy of the British Medical Journal from May 2002. It carried a hard-hitting article on pharmaceutical funding and its consequences.

“Read this,” I told him. “The Medical Council of India is a sleeping dog. It refuses to bark. But look at the University of California—they are ending free lunches. Look at American students refusing gifts. Why can’t MGIMS lead the way?”

He slipped the journal into his bag and said he would read it before bed.

That airport call told me he had done more than read it. He had absorbed it.

The Economics of Independence

Once the call ended, I did what a physician-turned-administrator often does when faced with a moral problem: I opened a file and started doing the math.

I pulled out the records of a CME we had organised in October 2001 on “Critical Care in Community Hospitals.” The numbers were revealing.

The total cost had been around ₹3.28 lakh. Of this, the pharmaceutical industry had contributed ₹2.2 lakh, spread across sixteen companies. Delegate fees brought in ₹81,000, and an MCI grant of ₹80,000 helped close the gap.

At first glance, the conclusion seemed obvious: we were dependent on industry money for nearly two-thirds of the budget.

But when I looked closely at the expenditure, I saw where the money had gone. Not into science. Not into learning.

It had gone into the soft, seductive extras: elaborate meals, printed bags, hospitality, travel arrangements, and the kind of “comfort” that quietly turns an academic meeting into a social event. In return, drug companies had put up stalls, hung banners, and plastered the venue with logos until the conference hall looked less like a classroom and more like a marketplace.

The realisation was uncomfortable but liberating. If we stripped the conference down to essentials—if we cut the printed bags, simplified the food, avoided unnecessary frills, and paid only for what mattered—we could run the programme at a fraction of the cost.

If we charged a modest registration fee, used institutional support intelligently, and sought grants more honestly, we could break even without taking a single rupee from a company.

It was not that we needed their money. We had simply grown used to it.

The Council Room Moment

On October 21, 2002, Dhirubhai returned to Sevagram and convened a meeting in the Dean’s office. The room filled quickly—department heads, senior professors, and a few people who had come only because they sensed something unusual was about to happen.

Dhirubhai did not waste time.

“My long experience in running industries and educational institutes tells me there is nothing called a free lunch,” he began. “The medical profession must safeguard its academic independence. We are going to stop taking money from drug companies.”

The words landed like a thunderclap.

The resistance was immediate, and, in parts, predictable.

“How will we fund venue rentals?” someone asked.
“Without sponsorship, we can’t afford good speakers,” another argued. “They expect travel and accommodation.”
Dr. Harinath, always practical, pointed out the obvious. “There are only two ways to fund a conference—sponsorships and registrations. If we cut sponsorships, fees will have to go up, and delegates won’t come.”

But the most revealing anxiety was not about science. It was about food.

“If we don’t serve good lunch,” someone muttered, “no one will attend.”

It was Dr. Ulhas Jajoo who cut through the noise with one question that still rings in my ears.

“As for doctors’ obsession with culinary delights,” he said, scanning the room, “are lavish lunches, dinners, and drinks more important than food for thought?”

The room fell quiet.

I stood up and quoted Arnold Relman, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, who had written words that should make every doctor uneasy:

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry… Academic institutions are allowing themselves to be the paid agents… I think it’s disgraceful.”

Dhirubhai listened patiently to every argument. Then he did what he did best—he made a decision and owned it.

That afternoon, two resolutions were passed, and they changed the way MGIMS would conduct itself.

First, a ban: companies selling drugs or medical equipment would no longer be permitted to finance any academic programme in Sevagram—no stalls, no banners, no logos, no polite disguises.

Second, a safety net: if any department faced a deficit while organising a conference, the institute would support it. The message was clear: we will not abandon you, but we will not sell ourselves either.

Proof, Not Preaching

A policy on paper is easy. The test lies in practice.

Soon after, the Departments of Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Pathology organised state-level conferences. They followed the new playbook. Food was simple, vegetarian, and nutritious. There were no cocktail parties. No “delegate bags” stuffed with promotional clutter. The focus stayed firmly on science.

The cost remained modest—just over ₹3 lakh.

And the delegates still came.

They came in good numbers, not because we offered luxury, but because we offered learning. Many of them, perhaps to their own surprise, realised that pathology did not require a banquet. It required good teachers, good slides, and honest discussion.

In a small but significant way, MGIMS demonstrated something rare in Indian medical academia: academic dignity does not need a sponsor.

Walking Alone, Staying Firm

More than two decades have passed since that decision. If anything, the landscape of medical conferences in India has grown noisier, richer, and more extravagant. In December 2009, the Medical Council of India introduced Rule 6.8, prohibiting doctors from accepting gifts, travel, and hospitality from the industry. On paper, it looked like reform.

In practice, enforcement has often been a joke.

National conferences have become mega-events where “success” is measured not by the quality of debate, but by the size of the banquet hall and the variety of scotch. The All India Congress of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (AICOG) 2017 was estimated to cost anywhere between ₹17 to ₹20 crore—numbers that would have made even a seasoned auditor blink.

As my friend Dr. Anant Bhan once remarked, “This is worrying. The focus should be on academic substance, not hospitality.”

In Sevagram, we have remained an island.

We have hosted countless seminars, workshops, and CMEs since 2002. Not one has been sponsored by a drug company. We have proved—quietly, without fanfare—that when you remove the noise of marketing, the signal of science becomes clearer.

We may not offer five-star luxury. But we offer something far more valuable: education that is bought and paid for by no one but ourselves.

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