I am trying to remove the duplicates in column duplicates and keep only the records where the value in column name is equal to "foo". Is there a better way to do it than my approach?

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame(
    {"name": ["foo", "bar", "foo", "baz"], "duplicates": ["qux", "qux", "fred", "fred"]}
)
df["name"] = df["name"].map({"foo": "a"})
df.sort_values(["name", "duplicates"], inplace=True, ascending=True)
df.drop_duplicates("duplicates")

>Solution :

From your solution need also values if not match foo if not exist per groups by duplicates, right?

Then solution is use DataFrameGroupBy.idxmax for first Trues per groups with msk for compare foo – if not exist get first False value:

df = pd.DataFrame(
    {"name": ["foo", "bar", "foo", "baz","bez"], 
     "duplicates": ["qux", "qux", "fred", "fred","John"]}
)
print (df)
  name duplicates
0  foo        qux
1  bar        qux
2  foo       fred
3  baz       fred
4  bez       John

df = df.loc[df["name"].eq('foo').groupby(df['duplicates']).idxmax()]

print (df)
  name duplicates
4  bez       John
2  foo       fred
0  foo        qux