Dear Trustees,
We write to you today as longstanding admirers of EPW and as proud members of the “EPW community” that has benefited from the existence of this unique and high-quality journal. We wish to express our concern at what we have heard of the unusual circumstances in which the incumbent Editor of the Economic and Political Weekly, Dr. Rammanohar Reddy, who had decided to step down in April 2016 but had agreed to continue as Editor-in-Chief or in some other position as requested by the Board of Trustees, has chosen to formally announce that he is resigning from his position as Editor and severing all links with the institution.
In our view, Ram Reddy’s decision to accept the role of Editor at a crucial juncture in the history of the journal, despite the considerable personal (and economic) sacrifice it involved, was only the first indication of his commitment to the journal and its objectives. In the eleven years since then, he has succeeded in transforming the journal into a consistently excellent and contemporary periodical, which is widely seen as an internationally unrivalled journal –- one that combines fine scholarship with social conscience. He has done much to streamline organisational functioning, significantly improve and diversify journal content, stabilise the journal’s financial position, mobilise additional resources to expand editorial staff and enable EPW to have its own office, give EPW a strong online presence with commercially marketed archival access, and strengthen the EPW Research Foundation. In sum, Ram Reddy as Editor did an exceptional job of re-energizing and contemporizing EPW at a time when many felt it was showing its age and at risk of losing its edge. All this he did in a self-effacing and accommodating style that has won him respect and admiration across ideological lines.
It would indeed be profoundly unfortunate if such dedication, personal sacrifice, and unstinting effort from an extremely successful Editor were to end in an unhappy and ungracious parting of the ways between him and the EPW Board of Trustees. We understand that the Board had questioned the appropriateness of his efforts to produce a set of volumes and a documentary to commemorate the completion in 2016 of fifty years of the journal’s existence, even though he had organised the required funding from outside. In addition, he had been excluded from any role in the future governance of the journal and also kept out of the formal process of finding a successor, even though he clearly is the person most thoroughly involved with and informed about the editorial and financial conditions and requirements of the journal, and therefore conscious of its future needs. We believe that involving him as a member of the Board of Trustees would be a natural next step following his retirement, and one that would be widely welcomed in the broader community of contributors and readers of EPW.