Dear Fellow HSItes,

It is an honour and a privilege for me to take up the mantle as the President of the Hernia Society of India (HSI). I shall strive hard to live up to the expectations of my colleagues who have entrusted me with this responsibility. The hard work of the stalwarts who occupied this position before me – Dr H G Doctor, Dr M G Bhat, Dr Rajesh Khullar, Dr Sandeep Dave and Dr Ramesh Agarwalla – has brought the HSI to its present stature. Both Dr Pradeep Chowbey, Founder President of Asia Pacific Hernia Society (APHS) and Dr Anil Sharma, Past President- APHS have been a constant source of guidance to the HSI, for which we are grateful to them. I am looking forward to working alongside Dr Manish Baijal – Hon. Secretary, Dr Randeep Wadhawan – Hon. Treasurer, Dr Vijay Borgaonkar – President Elect, the Zonal Vice Presidents and all the Executive Committee Members.

Today the HSI has grown to a society of 1000+ members – all likeminded surgeons interested in the field of herniology. The scientific activities of HSI have increased multifold. Despite the recent challenging times, HSI managed to organise 23 online webinars in the past year and a half. These encompassed various aspects of modern hernia surgery.

In the next two years we hope to focus on three main goals. Firstly, we will continue the regular academic events – web-based in the short term, and hopefully physical meetings, workshops and courses once the cloud of COVID-19 hanging over us lifts. Secondly, we shall create and regularly update online hernia-related resources. These will be in the form of a completely revamped educational resources section on this website, the HSI  YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/HerniasocietyofIndia) and regular posting of challenging cases, operative videos and technical innovations on our Facebook group page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/herniasocietyofindia). Finally, we hope to conduct activities that create value for the in-training and younger surgeon colleagues. I urge you all to engage with us in all these forums.

The 15^th Annual Conference of the HSI is being organised at Aurangabad on November 12^th and 13^th, 2021 (https://hsicon2021.in). This will be a hybrid meeting with on-site and online components. This meeting, with Dr Vijay Borgaonkar as its Organising Chairman, promises to be educative as also exciting. I look forward to your personal / online presence and active participation in this event.

I welcome your thoughts, suggestions or critique related to the activities of the HSI and on how the Society can serve its members better. Please feel free to communicate with me at deeprajbhandarkar[at]gmail.com.

With warm personal regards,