Beware of Conferences

Over the last several decades, one has participated in Conferences, big and small, in various capacities. One used to think that Conferences are fun places where you meet various people and exchange ideas and talk about research and the possibilities appear limitless. But things happen which may be considered funny or even sometimes, scary, depending on your luck and skill; I think a fair bit of tension may develop as the following may exhibit. You may be a participant presenting a paper, or maybe a discussant and later on, with age, be asked to Chair or even if you just decide to be part of an audience, listen to some talk by a Nobel Laureate, please be very very careful. For there are traps everywhere and unless you maneuver carefully, and Lady Luck shines, you may fall right in. And your career will take a hit. You may find it difficult to live down a performance like that. Or alternatively, you encounter an opportunity, recognize it as one and seize it with both hands, and jump right up to a different plane. As you will read, these meetings can lead to unexpected outcomes. The events I shall describe are all true events and I shall try to stick to the truth always. And I wish to point out that our Conferences, the ones that we were involved in, were never lavish. And for people like us who taught in Indian Universities on low salaries, it was almost impossible to participate without considerable support.

In the case of traveling from India to international venues, the Government of India was quite capable of throwing an additional spanner or two to spice things up.

The Foreign Exchange crisis

First, the problem is writing a paper that would be acceptable to the Committee making the selections. In the beginning, you have to contribute a paper and ask “Is this worthy of presentation?” and hope they would like to listen to you and say yes. Much later, in your career, once you have arrived, so to speak, you would get a letter saying why don’t you write something for us? For most of us, for most of our careers, we had to submit papers hoping they would be chosen for presentation. Some selection is made and say, you are in. The next thing is funding. If it is inside the country, the University would spend some money on you and in any case, it is not that expensive. While organizers in India do their best to keep you comfortable, you know how things are. But in going abroad, funding IS a big problem. I have generally obtained full funding for outside-the-country conferences. Otherwise, I have not gone. But even with full funding, there are problems.

For instance, consider what happened when I wrote a paper and submitted it for consideration; it was selected and not only that, I received full funding. Let me describe what happened thereafter.

In 1980, I was due to travel to Aix-en-Provence to present a paper at a World Congress of the Econometric Society. Fortunately, as I had said, I had received full support which basically meant that I had the days at the Conference covered and I had a cheap ticket; the catch was that the cheap ticket involved staying at the destination for at least one week; the Conference was usually for three days max; so one had to get a little more support from some source.

I had even worked that out; since I had returned from LSE in 1978 or 79, I knew enough people there to write for support. One would get some money which would cover my four days and since I knew my way about London, I could live cheaply. But all this was possible when one was young. I thought I would have a pleasant break from the usual routine and if I could really rough it out in London, I would even bring back some things for my wife. But the googly from our regulations and ensuing circumstances almost bowled me out. The problem was this. We were entitled to take a small amount of money with us in foreign exchange in those days but, here is the rub, getting the money in French francs became impossible. The currency easiest was US $ for the amount was sanctioned in US$. I thought I would convert some money into French Francs at the airport in Delhi. Alas, that was not possible; they claimed they did not have any French Francs.

So I traveled all the way with a vaguely uneasy feeling; problems began at Delhi itself with our flight getting delayed. We had to make a change in Paris and catch a flight to Marseilles and from the airport, we would be taken to the Conference site in buses. So my idea was to change some of my dollars into Francs in Paris. But then when we landed at Paris, our flight to Marseilles was waiting for us and we had to literally run helter-skelter to catch the flight. So onto Marseilles, still no French Francs in our pockets. The next thing that happened was that the flight to Marseilles started getting delayed after we boarded and the net result was that we landed at Marseilles at around 10pm. I tried to locate a bank at the airport; unfortunately, everything was closed. There were buses to take us to the venue alright but there was a ticket to be purchased, in naturally, French francs. And I did not have any.

Looking around, I tried to locate some European who would be heading towards the same conference. How does one identify such a person? I somehow did manage to locate one person who was rather suspicious of the whole thing. I explained my predicament and I offered to give him a 100$ note if he bought the ticket for me and I would settle the next day. There was a coordination problem, where to meet, and at what time to complete the transaction. He did not take the 100$ bill and we made the transaction the next day after I had exchanged most of my dollars for French francs. He seemed to think that either I had made up the entire story or that I had no idea that dollars were not a universally accepted currency. It was just a stroke of luck that one managed to overcome all these hurdles. With age, my hurdling abilities weakened considerably; some hurdles were removed, over time of course, but then some remained.

Strange Encounters in Strange Situations

I should have titled this section, The Loo and other Encounters, specifying what the strangeness was. But the Loo I am referring to is not the hot winds that blow across the plains of North India during the summer when temperatures soar to 44 degrees C and beyond. I am referring to the slang phrase usually used to describe the toilet. Apparently, according to some, this was something that the American GIs coined from the phrase “Le Eau” or the water.

The year was 1997 and Hong Kong was to get away from British rule. More importantly, the Chinese mainland will now be in full control. It would however not be fully swallowed into the mainland and there would be a special protectorate to preserve its distinctive economic structure. Thus Hong Kong was to become a SAR, or a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. There would be no Governors as for other regions; instead, there would be a CEO, a Chief Executive Officer. Thus Hong Kong would remain capitalist heaven or so the People’s Republic was trying to convey. And to uphold what was touted as the “One Country Two Systems ” platform, a very suave person, Honourable Mr. Tung Chee-Hwa, clad in western suits, was appointed. This was an interesting time but I am not going to discuss this political situation any further. All this is to introduce how I landed up in Hong Kong (HK).

The Far Eastern Meetings of the Econometric Society was scheduled to be in HK that year as an attempt perhaps to showcase HK before a galaxy of economists from around the world to signal that this was a different China. And in support, the government of HK had raised a lot of money; the Universities of HK were spruced up and were venues for the different sessions on the different days. The Programme Committee for the Conference was drawn up in advance; the chair of the Committee was someone who had been at Rochester after I had studied there, decided that they needed a theorist working in India, in the Committee and thus I was roped in.

Papers came in, routed by the Programme Committee Chairman. By then emails had become fairly common and I could rope in some people from around Delhi to help me in selecting papers. We managed to send a set of selected papers back and I thought my work was done. But soon the people in Hong Kong wanted my travel plans! I told them I was planning not to attend as there was no way that I could raise the necessary funds for the visit. Fortunately, they wrote back saying that they would fund my visit and I should plan to come. And I landed up in Hong Kong. Lavish arrangements had been made; sessions had been set at various Hong Kong institutions and the infrastructure was really outstanding. I had to chair a session but I will not speak about it here. The Inaugural session was over dinner and the lecture was by Professor Robert Lucas, who was also President of the Econometric Society; the Chief Guest was the Honolurabe Mr Tung Chee- Hwa, the CEO of Hong Kong.

We, the invitees, were sitting along a huge circular table; one side of the circle had been made the head because that’s where Lucas and the others were sitting facing us; the screens were there and the acoustics were first class, as we found out. The plates and glasses were set in front of us, as were our names. So we had been assigned places. It was a big area and we had reached early, to search for our names. I found my name and then went up to meet the Programme Chairman and say hello to Professor Lucas. I had met him briefly in Chicago when I had visited the Economics Department to meet Jose Scheinkman, someone I knew from Rochester; this was in 1973; I do not think he recalled but he was polite. Then the Chief Guest arrived and we hurried back to our seats.

First, there was the welcome address, by the Finance Secretary of the Hong Kong Administration: a Chinese gentleman who welcomed us and in passing informed us that he had a Ph.D. in Economics from Chicago! He spoke with an American accent and it was clear that given his governmental responsibilities and his philosophical background, capitalism and the free market would reign supreme and that the One Country Two System Paradigm would have no problem in flourishing. If I recall correctly, Professor Lucas’ talk was titled “Industrial Revolution: Past and Future”; I listened enthralled since it was the kind of economics that you seldom get to hear. It was also a rather humid evening and I was feeling thirsty and kept sipping on the glass of orange juice that I had opted for. Wine was being served too, but I had been warned to stay off given the kind of medication I was on then. I was enjoying the lecture very much and not paying attention to the fact that there were liveried waiters filling up our glasses whenever we took a sip. They were standing at our back. The lecture lasted for 45 minutes or thereabouts and since I had been drinking a fair amount of orange juice, I realised I had to urgently look for a loo and as soon as Professor Lucas finished, I pushed back my chair, got up, asked the waiter where the loo was and headed there as quickly as I could.

I located the place and noticed that the loo was empty and so walked up to a stall and started to complete what I was there for. I suddenly noticed two very tough-looking persons in dark suits come into the loo, and stand at the back of the loo, facing me looking very serious, hands by their sides. Obviously secret service types, I figured. I wanted to get away but I was still not done when I noticed that the door opened and who should walk in but the CEO of Hong Kong; he walked into the next stall, looked at me and smiled, and began his activitiy. I then realised, why the secret service was there. I finished and walked to the sink, washed and walked out, and realised what had happened. There was a long line of fellow invitees, held up by the secret service waiting to get to the loo; there had been empty stalls but then they had to wait for the CEO to finish. D S who was waiting at the top of the queue, knew me from my time at the LSE, asked me how did you manage to get in? I said I was in first and walked away to sit down for dinner. It was a first-rate dinner. First mover advantage is what I should have called this piece. The point is that the authorities in China acceded to my rights due to my first move. What would have happened in other countries? And more importantly, would the authorities in Hong Kong today be so gracious? It is not every day you share the loo with the head of state.

On Chairing Sessions

Chairing sessions, one would think, is easy. The difficult thing is to keep the speakers within the time given to them. Usually, the standard practice is to show cards saying 5 minutes more; most of the time, that card is enough; occasionally, you have to flash the other card which says 1 minute more, when the speaker shows no sign of winding down. If you have to flash the card saying STOP, then the speaker has decided to eat into the other speakers’ time and you, as Chair of the session, have lost control. Let me describe how bad this can get with truant speakers.

I think it was the same Hong Kong conference where I got to share the loo with you know who. I am not too sure though but this happened at one of the Far Eastern Meetings. I was to Chair a session with three speakers; one of them was H A; he had been on my thesis examination committee, one of Lionel McKenzie’s early graduate students who had been visiting Rochester when I submitted my dissertation, and we had been together at the Value and Capital 50 years Conference and finally, he had once hosted me at his University in Japan for a whole academic year. So he was someone I knew well and he was my senior. The other two speakers I did not know; one of them was a Chinese academic and the third, I do not recollect. I also think the time allotted for the entire session was perhaps 90 minutes. So thirty minutes for each paper. That’s about normal for these conferences, in fact, it was somewhat generous by the norms, for three speakers.

The Chairman’s main job is to control the speakers and see that the room is available for the next session according to the schedule. Also if there are questions then, it is the responsibility of the Chair to see that some discussion takes place and again, see that the schedule is adhered to. So in this case, there were about thirty minutes per paper, as I said and I did not perceive any problems. I walked into the room slightly ahead of schedule just to find out who the speakers were. I noticed Professor H A of course; went up and spoke to him. Called out the other two names, but there was no response. Chatted with some of the others who had come to listen; some were friends who had come to listen to Professor H A. And it was time to start. I once again called out for the other two names and once again there was no response. So I signaled that Professor A should begin but speak for 25 minutes. And we were on the way.

Around the time there were 5 minutes left; I flashed the 5 minutes more card and that somehow upset Professor A. He had still some things to speak on and he decided to ask for more time. I was still not worried; I asked whether the other speakers were there; there was no response. So I decided to give some more time to Professor A. Maybe 10 more minutes. He again began in full flow and now I was a bit worried. After 10 minutes I tried to halt the speaker and now he turned against me: How can you not give me more time he said. And further he claimed that his paper was the best paper in the entire conference and he made the claim that since I was like his student, I had to yield and in any case there were no other speakers. I inquired whether the other speakers had arrived: still no response. So he had a point, or so I thought. He took the entire 90 minutes, stopped, very pleased at the way things had gone. And we were going off from the room in time, some of us who knew Professor A, were laughing at his antics. While I was leaving the room, the person sitting in the first row all this time started saying something. He looked Chinese and in broken English, he was enquiring whether he should speak now! He was apparently one of the persons who had been scheduled to speak. I asked him why he had not responded when I had asked and there was nothing I could do at that moment. HA had disappeared by then. I wondered whether he knew that the Chinese speaker was present; I know he spoke reasonable Mandarin. I went up to the Programme Chair and explained what had happened. He did say he would like to see whether the speaker could be fitted in some empty slot somewhere. I apologised as profusely as I could to the Programme Chairman, but still, I have not figured out why the Chinese did not respond.

Another extreme situation took place in a silver jubilee celebration of an Indian institution and in an economic theory session with two extremely well-known speakers, I was again chairing. I accepted because one of them was like my student while the other had been my student and I thought I would have a nice time with them. The first speaker did his bit and answered questions and then I found out that the second speaker was ill and had sent a video, which the organisers wanted to play. I asked whether it was alright for time and the organisers said that it was. That was not entirely true; the video went on and on and there was no way anyone could do anything. The very eminent T. N. Srinivasan was in the audience and he told me audibly, Anjan shut off the proceedings he has had his say and everyone laughed and the session had lost its seriousness. Let me emphasise, the second speaker is one of the most beautiful expositors that I have come across and he was speaking really well. But still, he exceeded the time that had been allotted to him. And that was not kosher.

Walking away from the end of the session, T. N. Srinivasan and I were chatting, I recall saying how the younger lot should learn to stick to the time. I told him T N, as he used to be called, presenting or discussing papers can be very scary too. I had thought Chairing was safer. I told him about the experiences over lunch and he enjoyed my reminiscence so much that I made a note of them. Alas, T N is no more. He was a very interesting person and I am grateful to him for he gave me my first job after my Ph.D. But that is another story altogether.

On Discussing or Presenting at Conferences

Let me discuss my encounter with Kenneth Arrow; he was in the audience and I was a discussant of Frank Hahn’s paper. Arrow was the Last of the Mohicans. His reputation intimidated everyone. In 1988, the conference to celebrate the 50 years of Value and Capital was held at Bolognia. This was certainly a conference where I was pitched in to bat in a league where I was totally outclassed. I spoke and while speaking, my attention was diverted to Ken Arrow sitting in the front, tossing the pencil and catching it continuously. There was John Hicks quietly sitting in his wheelchair with twinkling eyes and smiling whenever I mentioned something from Value and Capital. Friends had warned me that the danger man was Kenneth Arrow; the minute he stops twirling the pencil, be prepared, he is going to launch into a question. I had just mentioned something and used a result that I attributed to Metzler when immediately the pencil stopped, and Arrow said ” Why do you say it is Metzler’s result?” I said nervously, ” because it is Metzler’s” and he said “No it is mine” and then there was complete silence. You know everyone working in general equilibrium was there. I had to say something: I stuck to my guns. He said that what was Metzler’s result and launched into something at the terrific pace that he spoke; I of course said that what he said was correct but what I had said was also correct. But since Ken Arrow wanted to claim the result, who was I to intervene. And proceeded. After the talk he came to me and said you know, you have got it wrong. We had a coffee break and several people, Guy Laroque I specifically recall, came up to me and said you know you were right. I did say I could have done with some support. I recall Laroque telling me, that was Ken Arrow, who would like to take him on. I remember telling Lionel McKenzie also and he said well you stood your ground. That was not the end of the encounter. I came back to Delhi and located a paper by Arrow which mentioned the result I had used as Metzler’s, was introduced by Arrow himself as ” one of the lesser-known results of Metzler was…”. I xeroxed the page, underlined the sentence, and sent it to Ken Arrow saying ” I now have the best authority on my side: Ken Arrow”. I forgot about it but a letter did come from him which said he was being silly in Bolognia and of course I was correct but what he had actually meant was… You know I used to keep that letter on my table in JNU. Someone, to my great regret, removed it from the table. But Arrow had done me in; people, who didn’t know, thought that I had been caught out. And incidentally, this lot was the larger lot; those that knew the result were in a minority, and to them, it did not matter. But I felt completely helpless at the Conference. Fortunately, other things happened and that was also talked about much more.

This was during the presentation of a paper in another session. When the speaker, it was my old friend and teacher HA, who has appeared earlier, stopped, there was a question from a VVIP ; the speaker immediately said “thats a stupid question” and stood grinning. There was shocked silence in the room. Suddenly Lionel McKenzie: started laughing and he said nicely to the speaker… You can’t quite say that you know and then launched into some discussion of why the question needed to be answered. And some people joined in. A first-class crisis was nicely defused and bore the stamp of an excellent chair. That day over dinner, there were two large tables; one for the big guys like Arrow, Debreu McKenzie, Uzawa etc and one, for those who also ran, people like us. But there was a big guy with us too, David Cass. He did remark on the eccentric behavior of the speaker concerned and then said how well McKenzie had handled the situation. I could not add to my story of HA since that happened much later.

Many years ago, when the ISI campus in Delhi was being inaugurated lots of big shots had come. TN had asked me to present something and I had decided to present my paper on Choice which I had just completed. I was somewhat nervous because it was the first time, I was presenting this paper. I knew that it was OK but how it would be received by my peers, one did not know. Frank Hahn set upon me from the word go. It was really difficult to speak with so many interruptions. In fact, I did not know Frank Hahn at all at that point in time. A friend, Dipankar Dasgupta, also in the audience, told me later that as soon as my name was announced, Frank Hahn whipped out something from his pocket and compared the names and launched into his tirade. Dipankar also knew what Hahn had taken out from his pocket; it was the copy of a review of Arrow and Hahn’s magnum opus on General equilibrium, which Dipankar and I had reviewed in the ISI journal, Sankhya. It was a good review but Hahn obviously while skimming through it, he had it only for a few minutes, decided that it was not laudatory enough. We thought we had written a good review though. But anyway, my presentation was shot. Incidentally, the paper I presented at the ISI conference ultimately appeared in Econometrica, one of the really prestigious journals, so Hahn was just being difficult I thought. Over coffee, Hahn relented perhaps and told me it was a nice paper! I mumbled something but then he went on to say that he had just seen our review of his book with Arrow. And he said that there was one result in the book which was erroneous and the review had not caught it. He continued that it had been pointed out by some guy. named Mukherji, he fumbled over the name and then it struck him, it is not you is it, he asked. I did own up and he suddenly became very friendly. The review had talked about the problem but there had been no dancing up and down saying got you; consequently, he had missed it.

During the same conference, against my protestations to TN who was the chief organizer, I was appointed to discuss a paper by Hirofumi Uzawa. The problem was Uzawa kept dodging sending me the paper till he caught up with me and just before he started speaking he said the paper is a standard two sector model, and I still wanted to have a look and then he dropped his bombshell that the paper was in Japanese. That somehow angered me: the complete disrespect to ISI did not make any sense; perhaps it was just his laziness or that he was caught up with too many things. I refused to discuss the paper after his presentation. I generally have thereafter refused to discuss papers insisting that unless the paper is with me at least a week before, it’s off. When Professor McKenzie asked me to discuss Hahn’s paper ( I have already talked about it and my interchange with Arrow), Professor McKenzie said that I had missed an opportunity. I should have discussed Uzawa’s paper in Hindi.

On Organizing Conferences big or small

Organizing Conferences are difficult; large conferences are naturally more difficult to organize. First of all, they require more money to be raised and then you need a reasonable accommodation for the participants, transportation costs need to be covered too. My only experience with organizing a large international conference was with the organizing of the Meeting of the Econometric Society, South East Asian Chapter. The countries of South East Asia are not really known for their interest in such activities; Malaysian members expressed a willingness to organize and host and were confident to raise enough money. Our regional boss who was basically in charge convinced me to be the Programme Chairman and I set out to draw up a programme. The Call for papers went out together with the announcement. Papers arrived and there were a large number of papers from the region which bucked us up to no end. We made the selections and just when we were about to send out acceptance letters and I kept asking the Local Chair of Arrangements to let us know what arrangements had in fact been made, I was told that they could not host it and would like to cancel. Canceling was easy; forget about the loss of face etc., we realised that the next time we would not get a chance to host these meetings. We talked about the matter with our local boss and we talked with the ISI in Delhi and checked whether their hostel/guest house could put up about 40 odd outside participants and they agreed and we announced the change in the venue and the conference was held. Speakers arrived from all over; it was the month of December and the year was 1998, the first year that massive fogging took place and all flights, international and national, were grounded. And we had lots of speakers with cancelled flights. There was nothing very much we could do but use our travel agents to get them new flights. And of course, arrange for additional days of lodging. Somewhere along the way, the purpose of the conference was lost, I felt.

During the later stages of my working life, after my retirement from JNU, in 2010, I became the Country Director of the India-Bihar programme at Patna; this was a programme of the International Growth Centre (IGC) which was run by LSE and Oxford University. The funds came from the British Government through DFID. In the initial stages there was a big gap of understanding of what constituted research. For instance I was asked whether we knew what we were doing or going this way or that way and suddenly finding the end conclusion. He was smiling sarcastically while he described this. My response that if we knew what the conclusion would lead us to, we wrote memos, and that research meant following up on something which can at best be called a hunch which may or may not be ultimately correct.

Anyway the gap remained. Our job was to set up an advisory set of experts that the Bihar Government could call upon to seek input into their policymaking. The challenge was to get really good professionals located anywhere in the world to engage in evidence-based research which could be presented to the Bihar Government. And the other equally important aspect was to explain to the Bihar Government why this could be beneficial for them. This was really a dicey process and we had to be extremely careful but I am not really going to be discussing these things here. But in this capacity, I had to organise a section of an annual conference held at the LSE. And once again my task was to cajole researchers to be present at this conference to showcase what was being done. The objective was different from the usual academic conference that I have been involved with previously. One aspect of these Conferences was to get people from the Bihar Government to come to London for the Conference as well. In the first year, our brief from the people in the UK was to get the Chief Minister to go to London for a special session of the Conference. This was easier said than done; and in spite of our best efforts, while the CM never said he wouldn’t come to London, he did not commit either and kept putting up one difficulty or the other. The IGC wanted a session on Governance where senior academics like Timothy Besley and Paul Collier would talk to policymakers. The idea was to get the CM of Bihar and someone from Africa and they thought that would be a great session. But the CM was not repared to accede to our request and time was running out. We found out that Mr Sushil Modi, the then Deputy Chief Minister and also the Finance Minister of Bihar was going to be in Europe for some other work around the same time. And on hearing this, the CM said that why dont you ask him and see wheter the Deputy CM can accommodate being at LSE. I thought that the CM wanted to get rid of the constant repeated requests from us and thankfully, Mr Modi agreed. So we wrote back to London saying that the Deputy CM (DCM) would appear in their planned session. At the LSE, I was asked by IGC whether the DCM would be up for the task; and I had to spend some time with the DCM before the planned session and I could see that although he is a seasoned politician, he was somewhat out of his comfort zone, within the confines of academia and on top of that was the fact that he does not usually speak in English. By then we knew that the special session on Governance would have the two senior British academics and the DCM only, the African policymaker having pulled out. The DCM had no idea what was to happen and he asked me in Hindi .. kya poochhenge mujhe? I realised that he needed to be talked to and told him that there would be no Q& A ; and that DCM should speak about the policies in Bihar that were being adopted and if he could connect them with what the academics had said, it would be great. Due to the IGC hype on Governance session, the entire auditorium was completely filled by the time I arrived and the usher told me there were no seats; fortunately behind me was the then Executive Director of the IGC, who waved me inside and I asked him whether the IGC people would escort the DCM in. I was kind of apprehensive whether the huge crowd would upset Mr Sushil Modi; but I needn’t have worried. Crowds do not affect seasoned politicians adversely. Well the introductions over, the two academics spoke. Each talked about Governance what it entailed, what was needed to be done; the kind of things that had been established through research , the different facets of things that had to be kept track of. Throughout all of this Mr Modi was taking copius notes. Once he began speaking and in English, he was fully in command; he said that he was sorry that he had not read the things that the academics had referred to ofcourse and there was a big round of laughter from the LSE student crowd. Mr Modi had found his supporters. He then took up point by point each of the suggestions made by the previous speakers and he showed how each of the new policies followed by the Bihar Government could be seen to follow. And since the academics had mentioned about adequate quality of leadership, in Bihar we were fortunate in the leadership provided by the CM. This was a remarkable statement since they belonged to different political parties and the government was run by a coalition. But the affirmation of the quality of leadership that we saw there is seldom seen. He went on for quite some time and then the moderator had to stop the session and let the audience have its say. Thunderous and sustained applause came first and there were some remarks and questions. Mr Modi was now prepared to answer everything. The last question was more of a comment, a wishful thinking from a young lady from Pakistan, she said, doing the B.Sc (Econ) at LSE; she asked if Mr Modi would be willing to come to Pakistan and talk about what policies were being followed. That brought the house down. From a humdrum session yet another talk fest, Mr Modi had weaved magic. I must have been congratulated many a time in our choice of the representative. Although we had very little say in the choice; IGC had wanted the CM and we had got the DCM and all of a sudden, he was the hero of the entire IGC conference. This was exactly what the IGC wanted to propagate. Conferences are so unpredictable. Anything may happen.

Finally, over several years my colleague Satish Jain and I organised far smaller affairs. These were easier to arrange and we started arranging for Theory and Policy Conferences which would have about a fixed number of participants, people we could rely on to deliver papers, well worked out in advance. Such conferences helped students to see reasonable papers and we have had students developing into paper presenters in later editions of the Conference. And people we got together enjoyed being there and we thought such meetings were good and useful. But raising say about 5-6 lakhs for a two or three days conferences and having Institutional support on a regular basis became increasingly difficult.

Research support to faculty has never been present in India; in contrast, Japanese faculty received substantial research support. In the early years, I have heard some Japanese faculty grumble that it was money being wasted. The increasing number of Nobel prize winners in more recent times is surely the result of such support, it should be noted. Senior professors have adequate support to run seminars which are mini-conferences; participants are their students and one or two speakers who work in their area. I can testify to the usefulness of such seminars since I was once invited to speak over three or four sessions, each about two hours or so, on what I had been working on. The people listening were mostly younger scholars who were working in similar areas. The task of organising and discussing whatever work I had done and was doing first uncovers some areas which can be developed and clarifies issues that would not have been clarified otherwise. This was an extremely useful way of going about things and very pleasant too because you do get to meet people, share a meal and interact. And of course, the organization of such seminars is really quite hassle-free. I tried to get people in India to see the point of such conferences but was not successful.

Finally, conferences can be fun places; but unexpected things can happen as well, so do be on your guard. Happy Conferencing!!