Page 13 - Vaidy

I am the only one who has done both MPhil and PhD thesis with Vaidy – on very diverse topics. He was very demanding and ruthlessly rigorous when it came to working. At a personal level, very kind and considerate, never hierarchical. In Hyderabad, he would gladly take a scooter pillion ride to see my newborn son. In Bombay, whenever on the campus, he would always come home to enquire about the kids.
Academically, we always kept in touch, very often disagreed on many issues. In the late 1980s, Vaidy was joining the Planning Commission; disputed my empirical contention that India's annual GDP growth rate had accelerated after 1980s, away from the Hindu Growth rate of 31⁄2. After a yearlong statistical disputation and after a final arbitration by VM Dandekar, Vaidy saw the merit in my publishing the results.
Vaidy was very disturbed about the recent GDP estimation dispute. We would have long conversations on the data and methods after each of my publication. Vaidy appeared keen to intervene in the debate with a definitive piece. His mind was willing, but I guess physically, he could get himself to do so.
I will miss you, Vaidy. R Nagaraj
From: Prof. Rakesh Basant <rakesh@iima.ac.in> Dear Sunil,
Here are a few paragraphs.
The news of Dr Vaidynathan’s passing this morning came as a shock. We knew that he was not doing well but still one was not mentally and emotionally prepared for this news. This is really sad and a big loss for all of us. Frankly, I did know that the news will hit me so hard as I have not been interacting with him very frequently in recent times. He was my MPhil supervisor and also taught several courses to our batch. He taught me a lot about analysing data and writing. He was, in fact, responsible for my initiation into research. In retrospect, there was so much to learn from simple cross-tabs and linear regressions and I am still benefiting from that basic but very essential training. He taught us the value of asking the right research questions and put them to rigorous empirical tests. This was probably the most critical part of our training at CDS. Data was his forte and we used to joke that if we cut a vein in his hand, data would flow out! His scribbles on our assignments and thesis drafts were legendary that only a few could decipher! By the time I graduated, I was one of the privileged few who could and was in demand when my juniors got their assignments back. I may still have some of those drafts with his scribbles in pencil! Our tenure at CDS was also the phase when he was getting out of smoking using cloves as a substitute and one would always find him chewing cloves.
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