My conviction that true success in medicine is not easy was made stronger. I believed even more that the success requires will, attention to detail, and creativity. But the most important lesson I took from India was that it is possible anywhere and by anyone.

When I told my colleagues back in Harvard that he was doing more than a hundred of these operations, and he could do each in less in 45 minutes, they were astounded.

How could your Indian experiences be meaningful to America?

The key battle in India is taking the existing knowhow in the world and finding ways to bring it to agrarian people. We have the same problem here; but we do not recognise it. We have thousands of drugs available; but we do not use them consistently or correctly.

We have hundreds of ways in which we can make diagnoses and we have thousands of treatments for almost any condition that a person has. We can find ways to make people healthier and have better lives.

We also know there is a gap between what we know how to do and what is actually done. But there has to be a kind of science of performance, one that requires understanding of people and understanding the situation they work in, and working well within the chaos of the system.

Photograph: Paresh Gandhi

Also see: Wharton honours India's biggest wealth creator

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