RESEARCH IN PROGRESS SEMINAR SERIES

AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Friday 3 June 2016, 4.30pm

Getting In: ‘rank’ as biographical number at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)

Anna Ruddock, King's College London

This event is free, but places must be booked. To book tickets please go to: http://annaruddock.eventbrite.co.uk

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) was established through an Act of Parliament in Delhi in 1956. It retains a reputation as both India’s premier public hospital and its most prestigious medical college. Differentiated from their peers at the moment of admission, AIIMS students are catapulted into an educational elite aspired to by many but reached by a tiny minority of applicants. In this paper, I examine the steps involved in accessing AIIMS, and I interrogate the power of ‘rank’ as a means of differentiating candidates. I introduce the idea of a ‘biographical number’ and follow Stafford (2009) by suggesting scope for further exploration of ‘numericized narrative’ in Indian lives.