Untruthful Manipulator - India Today
Ila Prasad
()
April 20, 1998
Title: Untruthful Manipulator
Author: Ila Prasad
Publication: India Today
Date: April 20, 1998
In his interview Subramaniam Swamy has stated that if he was not
included in the new Cabinet, "it will be to their loss" ("The Odd
One Out", March 23). He has claimed that he is eminently
qualified to hold an important position in the new Government
since he was a professor of economics at Harvard at a very young
age. The implied claim is that he is a genius and the new
Government would do itself an honour and serve the country well
by giving him the finance or a finance related portfolio. I am
currently a PhD student at Harvard and decided to check the claim
about Swamy's position at the university by going into the
Harvard archives (kept in Pusey Library). Swamy had a one-year
appointment in 1965-66 as an instructor and then a three-year
appointment from 1966 to 1969 as an assistant professor in the
economics department of the university (instructorship and
assistant professorship are both considered very junior positions
and are usually the first postdoctoral position in a university).
After a gap of several years, he was a visiting scholar at
Harvard for a year in 1980-81 and had a visiting position there
again for a year in 1985-86, presumably on leave of absence from
IIT Delhi, where he had a position. He never had a permanent
position at Harvard; it is quite rare for an assistant professor
to gain a tenure at Harvard. In an interview given some time ago,
Swamy claimed, "By leaving Harvard, I left behind a chance of
winning the Nobel Prize." it is a tragedy that even pygmies cast
such long shadows in the current Indian political system.
