IIMB PhD alumnus shares the behind-the-scenes of producing the national award-winning documentary
Professor Rajesh Chandwani, alumnus of the Fellow Programme in Management (FPM) at IIM Bangalore and faculty member in the HRM area at IIM Ahmedabad, recently won the Best Documentary Film Award at the 71st National Film Awards (2023) for God, Vultures and Human. Produced in collaboration with Studio Lichi and directed by Rishiraj Agarwal, the film brings to the fore the pivotal and indispensable role of Organ Transplant Coordinators (OTCs) in India’s transplant ecosystem.
Professor Rajesh Chandwani, Human Resources Management Area, IIM Ahmedabad.
A pediatrician by training and a scholar of HRM and healthcare systems by vocation, Prof. Chandwani has long been preoccupied with the overlooked recesses of India’s healthcare architecture. For nearly 15 years, his work has examined questions of access, affordability, equity in healthcare in India. He has been working in the domain of organ donation for more than 8 years, examining systemic challenges as well as behavioural barriers. The research drew him to the critical role of OrganTransplant Coordinators (OTCs), and their invisible labour that sustains clinical outcomes.
The documentary weaves together intimate testimonies accompanied by visuals of stark, somber realities to platform a cadre of professionals who must simultaneously carry the weight of grief, ethical dilemmas and extraordinary responsibility, often without recognition.
In this first-person account, Prof. Chandwani speaks about the origins of the film, the paradoxical identity of transplant coordinators, the influence of his background in OB&HRM on his storytelling, and the ethical weight of filming grief. He also gestures to his next project, a documentary that will turn its gaze towards the second pillar of the transplant ecosystem – the donor families.
As a pediatrician by training and later through my research work in healthcare management, my proximity to this space, both intellectually and emotionally, only grew. Over the years, I studied healthcare systems at scale to focus on affordable access, Information Communication Technology-enabled healthcare, and HRM innovation in healthcare delivery.
My interest in the organ transplant ecosystem goes back nearly a decade. I was closely associated with Donate Life, a not-for-profit organization whose efforts in the field of organ donation resulted in a high number of deceased donors in Surat, with the city recording the largest number of donors in the state of Gujarat.
I met with the founder, Mr. Nilesh Mandlewala, and that helped me understand the ecosystem. I also connected with MOHAN foundation, another NGO working in the field of organ donation. These interactions enabled me to understand the remarkable, unheralded labour of OTCs.
It increasingly came to my notice that this critical human link of transplant coordinators remained unacknowledged in both policy and public discourse.
In 2019, when NATCO (Network and Alliance of Transplant Coordinators), in association with IIMA’s Centre for Management of Health Services and the MOHAN Foundation, a Chennai-based NGO dedicated to organ transplantation training and a major collaborator on the film, hosted the Annual Transplant Coordinators’ Conference on campus, the idea of documenting their experiences crystallized for me.
Photo courtesy: IIMA and Donate A Life
What kinds of stakeholders do OTCs engage with?
I’ve come to see OTCs as the ignition point of the entire transplant system. They counsel families, help in stabilizing brain-dead donors, navigate logistics, liaise with forensic teams, coordinate with hospitals, and manage the emotional and ethical turbulence of grieving families – all often within a 24-48-hour window where their own personal lives remain suspended.
As a vital link between donors and recipients, their role is, in essence, integrative. A coordinator reviews medical records, assesses donor viability, initiates diagnostic testing, and ensures that organs remain stable for retrieval. At the same time, they are negotiating with multiple stakeholders: hospital staff, transplant surgeons, law enforcement officials, histocompatibility laboratories, transport services, and most importantly, grieving families.
As the documentary captures, during those brief windows of action, the coordinator’s own life recedes into the background. With time of the utmost essence, even the ordinary comfort of making a cup of tea must be deferred when duty beckons, as it could alter the course of another life.
Could you unpack the relevance of the title ‘God, Vultures and Human’ to the narratives in the film?
There is a distinct identity aspect to OT Coordination. In my co-authored research paper on ‘Role of Emotions in Curating Professional Identity: An interplay of Identity Work and Identity Play’, we study identity formation and sustenance in the case of nascent jobs where preexisting expectations and idealized identities are absent. I have argued that such novel roles evolve in stages like identity probing, steadying and advocacy, with emotions playing a significant role in sensemaking and sense giving. OTCs epitomize this evolution.
While the above aspect relates to the job of OTCs in general, they also navigate multiple identities during the 24-48 hours of organ transplant coordination.
To grieving families, coordinators are sometimes perceived as predatory figures or “vultures” that surround death, suspected of commodifying human organs. In a clear dichotomy, to recipients and their loved ones, they are “God’s messengers” who deliver the gift of life. And yet, beyond these labels, they remain fundamentally human as people who struggle to balance relentless professional demands with their own emotional well-being and private lives.
The title captures this trinity of perception: divinity, malignancy and humanity, which OTCs must constantly reckon with.
Did your background in OB&HRM influence the way you approached storytelling in the documentary?
Very much so. OB&HRM, at its core, seeks to understand the identities people assume in organizations and the roles they inhabit under compliance or emotional pressures. This overarching lens contextualized how I interpreted the OTCs’ narratives.
My prior work on healthcare systems, particularly the interface between technology and human behaviour, also helped me better understand how coordinators navigate human relationships within digitized systems, often in highly sensitive environments during a race against time. Storytelling, then, became less about presenting facts and more about rendering visible the identity struggles, emotional labour, and social negotiations that define this profession.
What kind of change were you hoping to achieve through the documentary?
The first step is to bring awareness. The broader idea is to reframe OTCs as the engine of the organ transplant ecosystem, not as peripheral actors.
The documentary also builds on the ongoing training efforts by organizations like MOHAN Foundation, which have been essential in professionalizing the field. Training in grief counselling, legal protocols, brain-stem death identification, and communication with families are identity-shaping interventions that, through this form of documentation, can help coordinators sustain themselves in this profession and create further opportunity for research and development.
At a societal level, I hope the film destigmatizes organ donation by showing the human complexity behind it. At a policy level, my hope is that it pushes for more structured training, robust institutional support, and recognition of the coordinators’ role in legislation and hospital systems.
Finally, I also wanted the film to provide a realistic orientation for potential coordinators. Attrition is high in this profession, and part of the reason is that new entrants are unprepared for the emotional and ethical weight of the work. The film could help prospective coordinators see both the nobility and the hardship of the role.
How did you navigate the ethical and emotional responsibility of representing moments of grief on screen?
As a researcher, no matter how rigorous one’s methods are, the emotional toll is unavoidable. It was one of the most difficult aspects of the project. It was impossible to separate ourselves from the extent of vulnerability we were exposed to, due to which our film now serves as an instrument of empathy, not exploitation. It was a responsibility all stakeholders involved in the process took extremely seriously.
Ultimately, our film is an acknowledgement that no matter what roles we play, we are all human. That acknowledgement, I believe, shaped the tone of the film.
Looking ahead
Professor Chandwani has already begun work on his next documentary, which will turn the lens towards the second pillar of the organ transplant system – the donor families. The forthcoming project promises to examine moments of intimate grief, moral dilemmas and acts of courage that sustain the system from the donor side.
