• Amitav Ghosh
    Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the The Ibis Trilogy: Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. The Circle of Reason was awarded France's Prix Médicis in 1990, and The Shadow Lines won two prestigious Indian prizes the same year, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the International e-Book Award at the Frankfurt book fair in 2001. In January 2005, The Hungry Tide was awarded the Crossword Book Prize, a major Indian award. His novel, Sea of Poppies (2008) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2008 and was awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the India Plaza Golden Quill Award. Amitav Ghosh's work has been translated into more than twenty languages and he has served on the Jury of the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland) and the Venice Film Festival (2001). Amitav Ghosh's essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times. His essays have been published by Penguin India ('The Imam and the Indian') and Houghton Mifflin USA ('Incendiary Circumstances'). He has taught in many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, Queens College and Harvard. In January 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010, Amitav Ghosh was awarded honorary doctorates by Queens College, New York, and the Sorbonne, Paris. Along with Margaret Atwood, he was also a joint winner of a Dan David Award for 2010. In 2011 he was awarded the International Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis Festival in Montreal.
  • Sunil Khilnani
    Sunil Khilnani is the Director of the King's India Institute and Professor of Politics at King's College, University of London. He was born in New Delhi and grew up in India, Africa, and Europe. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he took a first in Social and Political Sciences, and at King's College, Cambridge, where he gained his PhD in Social and Political Sciences. Prior to becoming Director of the King's India Institute he was, from 2001 to 2011, the Starr Foundation Professor at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington D.C., and Director of South Asia Studies at SAIS, a programme that he established in 2002. Sunil Khilnani was formerly Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has been a visiting professor of politics at Seikei University, Tokyo, and was elected a Research Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He has also held a Leverhulme Fellowship, and has been a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, and a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He has served as a member of several editorial boards, including Economy and Society, Critique Internationale, and the Political Quarterly, and is a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute for Advanced Study in Nantes, the Instituto Oriente in Lisbon, and a Governor of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust. He is a recipient of the 2005 Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, awarded by the Indian government. His books include The Idea of India and Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France. He is completing a book on India's global role and prospects, while he continues to research studies of Jawaharlal Nehru and the history of democracy in India - two of his long-term projects.
  • Niall Ferguson
    Niall Ferguson is professor of History at Harvard University. His best-selling works include Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and Civilization: The West and the Rest. In 2004, he was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. His latest book is on Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State.
  • Wendy Doniger
    Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at University of Chicago. Among over forty books published under the names of Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty and Wendy Doniger are seventeen interpretive works, including Siva: The Erotic Ascetic; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities; Tales of Sex and Violence: Folkore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana; Other Peoples' Myths: The Cave of Echoes; Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India; The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade; The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth; The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was; The Hindus: An Alternative History; and On Hinduism. Among her translations are three Penguin Classics--Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook, Translated from the Sanskrit; The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit; and The Laws of Manu (with Brian K. Smith). In progress are The Ring of Truth, and Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry; Skepticism in the Shastras, or The Manipulation of Religion for Politics and Pleasure in Ancient India (the 2014 Terry Lectures at Yale); Memoirs of a Jewish Girlhood (the 2015 Mandel Lectures at Brandeis); and a novel, Horses for Lovers, Dogs for Husbands.
  • Amish Tripathi
    Amish is a 1974-born, IIM (Kolkata)-educated boring banker turned happy author. The success of his debut book, The Immortals of Meluha (Book 1 of the Shiva Trilogy), encouraged him to give up a fourteen-year-old career in financial services to focus on writing. He is passionate about history, mythology and philosophy, finding beauty and meaning in all world religions. Amish has most recently written the Shiva Trilogy (The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras), which has sold 2.5 million copies in the Indian subcontinent since 2010, grossing over Rs 600 million and making the Shiva Trilogy the fastest selling books series in Indian history. His next book, Scion of Ishwaku, part of his new Ram Chandra Series is just out in 2015.
  • Amit Chaudhuri
    Amit Chaudhuri is Professor of Contemporary Literature at UEA. He has published 12 books, 6 novels, 4 works of non-fiction and 2 collections of short stories and poetry. His latest books are works of non-fiction: Calcutta: Two Years in the City, published in the UK, US, and India in 2013; and Telling Tales, a new selection of essays that appeared in the UK in the same year. He is also the author of a book of short stories, Real Time, a book of critical essays,Clearing a Space, a book of poems, a critical study of DH Lawrence's poetry, D H Lawrence and 'Difference'('a pathbreaking work', Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books), and is the editor of the Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature. Among the awards he has won for his fiction are the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Government of India's Sahitya Akademi Award. In 2013, he was awarded the first Infosys Prize in the Humanities for outstanding contribution to literary studies from a distinguished international jury including Amartya Sen, Homi Bhabha, Akeel Bilgrami, and Sheldon Pollock. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was a judge of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2008, a Guardian editorial about him appeared in the newspaper's famous 'In Praise of...' series. His first novel, A Strange and Sublime Address, is included in Colm Toibin and Carmen Callil's Two Hundred Best Novels of the Last Fifty Years. His second novel, Afternoon Raag, was on Anne Enright's list of 10 Best Short Novels in the Guardian. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian, and is also a vocalist in the Indian classical tradition. His project in crossover music has been performed all over the world, and he has been a featured artiste on flagship culture programmes on television and radio in the UK, including the Review Show (BBC 2) Late Junction (Radio 3), and Loose Ends (Radio 4). His version of 'Summertime' was featured on the BBC 4 television documentary, Gershwin's Summertime: the Song that Conquered the World. He was Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, Leverhulme Special Research Fellow at the Faculty of English, Cambridge, a Visiting Professor at the Writing School, Columbia University, and Samuel Fischer Guest Professor at Freie University, Berlin.
  • Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
    Yogi, mystic, and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serve as a reminder that yoga is not an esoteric discipline from an outdated past, but a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times. Probing, passionate and provocative, insightful, logical and unfailingly witty, Sadhguru's talks have earned him the reputation of a speaker and opinion-maker of international renown. With speaking engagements that take him around the world, he is widely sought after by prestigious global forums to address issues as diverse as human rights, business values, and social, environmental and existential issues. He has been a delegate to the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit, a member of the World Council of Religious and Spiritual Leaders and Alliance for New Humanity, a special invitee to the Australian Leadership Retreat, Tallberg Forum, Indian Economic Summit 2005-2008, as well as a regular speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos. With a celebratory engagement with life on all levels, Sadhguru's areas of active involvement encompass fields as diverse as architecture and visual design, poetry and painting, ecology and horticulture, sports and music. He is the author and designer of several unique buildings and consecrated spaces at the Isha Yoga Center, which have wide attention for their combination of intense sacred power with strikingly innovative eco-friendly aesthetics. Listeners have been ubiquitously impressed by his astute and incisive grasp of current issues and world affairs, as well as his unerringly scientific approach to the question of human wellbeing. Sadhguru is also the founder of Isha Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the wellbeing of the individual and the world for the past three decades. Isha Foundation does not promote any particular ideology, religion, or race, but transmits inner sciences of universal appeal.
  • Anuja Chauhan
    Anuja Chauhan is an advertiser and author. She has created many popular campaigns for Pepsico including Nothing official about it, Yeh Dil maange More, Oye Bubbly, Darr ke Aage Jeet hai and Live it Abhi. She is the author of four bestselling romantic comedies, the latest being The House that BJ Built, which examines how ancestral property can wreak havoc in our desi families Two of her novels have been optioned by major bollywood studios and a third has been adapted as a daily primetime TV soap currently airing on the Zee Network. She lives outside Bangalore with her family and other animals.
  • Shobhaa De
    Shobhaa De is a prolific writer - author, blogger, columnist, who has monitored and written extensively on India's socio-cultural-political contours for over four decades. As a prominent opinion shaper across social media, she is seen as a fearless commentator and an independent media voice. She has authored over two dozen best-selling books and has been the writer of several popular soaps on television. She also writes "Politically Incorrect", a column in The Times of India which carries her sharp observations on politics, society, economy and relationships.
  • Bulbul Sharma
    Bulbul Sharma is an author and an artist. She has written three collections of short stories - My Sainted Aunts, The Perfect Woman andAnger of Aubergines, along with a full length novel Banana Flower Dreams. Her works have been translated into many foreign languages like Italian, French and Finnish. Her works for children are titled Fabled Book of Gods and Demons and The Children's Ramayana. She has been conducting art and storytelling workshops for special children for the last 15 years.
  • Akshaya Mukul
    Akshaya Mukul has been a journalist for over two decades. He works with the Times of India and reports on politics, culture and society. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, published by HarperCollins in 2015.
  • Jagdish Bhagwati
    Jagdish Bhagwati, one of the most influential trade theorists of his generation, Jagdish Bhagwati is a professor of economics at Columbia University and a Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1991-1993 Bhagwati was an Economic Policy Advisor to Arthur Dunkel, the Director of GATT. For the World Trade Organization, he has been an External Advisor to the WTO and has served on the Expert Group on the Future of the WTO appointed by the Director General. Bhagwati has been a Special Advisor to the UN on Globalization. He was also on the Advisory Committee to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa, and a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cartoso on the future of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Bhagwati is the recipient of several prizes and honorary degrees, including Gold and Silver Stars from Japan's Order of the Rising Sun and the Padma Vibhushan from the government of India. The author and/or editor of over fifty volumes and over three hundred articles, Bhagwati's articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New Republic and The Times Literary Supplement. He founded the Journal of International Economics in 1971 and another journal, Economics & Politics, in 1989. His most recent books are In Defense of Globalization (2004) and Free Trade Today (2002); his early books, particularly India: Planning for Industrialization (1970) and India (1975) opened the doors for current economic reform in India; on these reforms he was advisor to India's Finance Minister, now Prime Minister. Bhagwati has delivered lectures at many top educational institutions and appeared on television shows including the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour, the Charlie Rose Show and Bloomberg. He is a director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, on the board of the Academic Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch, Asia and on the Council of the Economic Priorities Accreditation Agency. The recipient of many awards, among them the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal, the Bernhard Harms Prize, the Kenan Prize, the John R. Commons Award, the Freedom Prize and the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy, he has been awarded honorary degrees from several universities.
  • Akash Banerjee
    Akash Banerjee is Associate Vice-President and Cluster Programmig Head for Radio Mirchi, and author of Tales from Shining and Sinking India. He has been an anchor with Times Now and Headlines Today. He was educated at La Martiniere College, Lucknow, and St. Stephen's College, Delhi.
  • Dipankar Gupta
    Prof Dipankar Gupta is a Distinguished Professor and the Director of Centre of Political Affairs and Critical Theory, Shiv Nadar University. He was formerly Professor in the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that he joined as a faculty. For a brief period from 1993-1994, he was also associated with the Delhi School of Economics as Professor in the Department of Sociology. Over the years he has held many visiting appointments in universities in North America, Europe and UK namely Toronto University, Strasbourg University etc. He was Leverhulme Professor in the London School of Economics in 2003. Prof Gupta has also been a Visiting Faculty as a Fulbright Professor, as Shastri-Indo Canadian Fellow, and as Charles Wallace Fellow in international universities. In 2007 he was Woodrow Wilson Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington D.C., USA. Other Visiting Professor appointments include Deusto University, Bilbao, Spain 2009 and Queen's University, Belfast, UK in 2011. He was the first Asian nominee to the Visiting Asia Chair in the Institute of Politics and Social Science (Sciences-Po), Paris in 2004. Prof. Gupta is also involved in an advisory capacity in several educational and research institutions. He was the President's nominee in the Academic/Executive Committees of Visvabharati and Pondicherry University, which are both Central Universities. He has published nearly 70 research papers and won several awards for his academic contributions. He was the editor of the prestigious journal "Contributions to Indian Sociology" for over 15 years till 2006. Currently Prof Gupta is a member of several boards like RBI, NABARD, National Standards Broadcasting Authority, Punjab Governance Reforms Commission, National Centre for Good Governance and the Doon School. From 2008-2010, he was a member of National Security Advisory Board. He has regular columns in two national dailies including Times of India. He has written or edited 18 books including, "The Caged Phoenix: Can India Fly?" which was re-published by Stanford University Press in 2009. His latest book is titled "Revolution From Above: India's Future and the Citizen Elite". In 1998 Prof. Gupta started KPMG's Business Ethics division in Delhi. He led this practice for over five years. In his corporate engagements he has contributed most significantly in setting up customized ethical business manuals, advising clients on corporate social responsibility, and carrying out social audits and sustainability services. Educated in Delhi School of Economics and JNU from where he obtained his master's and doctoral degrees respectively, Dipankar Gupta has researched on a number of themes beginning with his first work on the Shiv Sena.
  • William Dalrymple
    William Dalrymple is a bestselling author whose books include In Xanadu, City of Djinns, From the Holy Mountain,White Mughals, The Last Mughal and, most recently, Nine Lives. He has won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the French Prix d'Astrolabe, the Wolfson Prize for History, the Scottish Book of the Year Award, the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Asia House Award for Asian Literature, the Vodafone/Crossword Award for non-fiction and has, prior to the shortlisting of Return of a King, been longlisted three times for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.
  • P. Chidambaram
    P. Chidambaram is former Finance Minister of India. A member of the Indian National Congress, he has had three stints as Finance Minister (1996-1998, 2004-2008 and 2012-2014) and also served as Union Home Minister (2008-2009). As a cabinet minister, he has held additional charge of the ministries of Law, Justice and Company Affairs (1996). In addition, at various times, he has been Union Minister of State for Commerce (1985; with independent charge in 1991-92 and 1995-1999); Personnel, Administrative Reforms, Training Public Grievances and Pensions (1985-1986); and Home Affairs -Internal Security (1986-1989). As Finance Minister, he was widely credited with implementing a series of reforms to stem a slowdown in growth, curb a widening fiscal deficit and attract more foreign investment into Asia's third largest economy. Between 1984 and 2009, Chidambaram was elected as a Member of Parliament to the Lok Sabha seven times. A leading lawyer, he holds degrees from Madras University in Chennai and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard University.
  • Arun Jaitley
    Arun Jaitley is currently the Union Minister of Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information and Broadcasting of India. A Member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party, he is also the current Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha. He has also previously been Minister for Law, Justice and Company Affairs (2000-2002) and Shipping (2001). In addition he has been Minister of State with independent charge for Information and Broadcasting (1999-2000) , Disinvestment (1999-2000) and Law, Justice and Company Affairs (2000). Jaitley began his political career as an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) student leader in the Delhi University Campus in the seventies when he rose to be President of the University Students' Union in 1974. During the period of the Emergency, (1975-77) when civil liberties were suspended, he was under preventive detention for a period of 19 months. He was a prominent leader of a movement against corruption launched in the year 1973 by Raj Narain and Jayaprakash Narayan. He was the Convenor of the National Committee for Students and Youth organisation appointed by Jai Prakash Narayan. He was also active in civil rights movement and helped found PUCL Bulletin. Jaitely is also an eminent lawyer who practiced law before the Supreme Court of India and several High Courts in the country since 1977. He was appointed Additional Solicitor General of India by the V P Singh government in 1989 and did the paperwork for the investigations into the Bofors scandal. He has authored several publications on legal and current affairs.
  • Padma Desai
    Padma Desai, Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems and Director of the Center for Transition Economies at Columbia University, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was President of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies in 2001. She received her Ph. D. in economics from Harvard University in 1960 where she began her teaching career. Professor Desai has published extensively in professional journals on issues of economic planning in the Soviet Union before she switched her research agenda to economic reforms in Russia and the emerging market economies. Her latest writings focus on the globalization of these economies and their exposure to financial crisis. Among her publications are: Planning for Industrialization A Study of Indian Industrialization and Trade Policies (with J. Bhagwati), OECD Development Center, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970; second printing; paperback edition. The Bokaro Steel Plant A Study of Soviet Economic Assistance, Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1972. Estimates of Soviet Grain Imports in 1980 85: Alternative Approaches, Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, February 1981. Weather and Grain Yields in the Soviet Union, Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, 1986. Marxism, Central Planning and the Soviet Economy (Editor) (The MIT Press, 1983) The Soviet Economy: Problems and Prospects (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1987, a collection of her econometric essays subsequently published in 1990 as paperback) Perestroika in Perspective: The Design and Dilemmas of Soviet Reform (Princeton University Press, 1989, subsequently published in its fifth printing in 1990 as a revised paperback edition (Indonesian and Korean translations) Going Global: Transition from Plan to Market in the World Economy (Editor) (The MIT Press, 1997; second printing in 1999; Chinese translation); and (jointly with Todd Idson) Work Without Wages: Russia's Nonpayment Crisis (The MIT Press, December 2000). Her Financial Crisis, Contagion, and Containment: From Asia to Argentina (Princeton University Press, 2003; Chinese translation and Indian edition) was described by Paul Krugman as the "best book yet on financial crises." Her Conversations on Russia, a collection of interviews with distinguished Russian and Western policymakers and analysts on Russian reforms from Yeltsin to Putin, published by Oxford University Press in April 2006, was selected by the Financial Times among a few select books as "pick of 2006." Her "From Financial Crisis to Global Recovery" was published by Columbia University Press in the Spring of 2011. The book was published in India by Harper Collins in November 2012. Her memoirs, Breaking Out: An Indian Woman's American Journey were published by Penguin/Viking (India) in April 2012. They were brought out by the MIT Press in September 2013 with wide recognition. In mid- September, Publisher's Weekly mentioned the memoirs among a few books published in the Fall of 2013. Professor Desai was elected member of the prestigious PEN America Chapter (which has 600+ members) consisting of academics, writers, historians, novelists and poets.
  • Rajdeep Sardesai
    One of India's most respected journalists, Rajdeep Sardesai, has nearly three decades of journalistic experience in print and TV. He has been the founder- editor of chief of IBN 18 network, which included CNN IBN. Prior to setting up the IBN network, he was the managing editor of NDTV 24 x 7 and NDTV India. Rajdeep has won more than 100 national and international awards for journalism, including the Padma Shri in 2008. He is currently consulting editor at the India Today group. He is the author of '2014: The Election That Changed India' is a national bestseller, already in several reprints and being published in several languages.
  • Salman Khurshid
    Salman Khurshid is former external affairs minister of India and a member of the Indian National Congress. He is a lawyer, and a writer and has previously also been minister of state for commerce. He is the author of - Babr: A Play in Search of India', 'Beyond Terrorism: New Hope for Kashmir' and 'At Home in India: A Restatement of Indian Muslims'.
  • Varun Gandhi
    Varun Gandhi is a member of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India's Parliament, representing the Sultanpur constituency. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party National Executive and the youngest national secretary in the history of the party. Gandhi wrote his first volume of poems, titled The Otherness of Self, at the age of 20, in 2000. His second volume of poems, titled Stillness was published by HarperCollins in April 2015. The book broke sales records and became the bestselling non-fiction book, selling over 10,000 copies in the first two days of its release.
  • Mickey Mehta
    Mickey Mehta is a well-being, wellness and fitness guru. He is a TV and Radio presenter and a columnist in various publications and websites. He preaches the concept of holistic health and equipment free workouts and has done so by establishing a chain of Mickey Mehta Wellness Temples across Mumbai city.
  • Kancha Ilaiah
    Kancha Ilaiah is an Indian academician, writer and activist for Dalit rights. His books include Why I am not a Hindu, Post-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan, Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution, God As Political Philosopher: Budha's challenge to Brahminism, A Hollow Shell, The State and Repressive Culture, Manatatwam (in Telugu), and Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism.
  • Manisha Koirala
    Manisha Koirala is an actress, UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador and social activist. One of Hindi cinema's leading ladies in the 1990s, she is also a cancer-survivor who after her cancer treatment decided to use her celebrity status and personal story to inspire others who are battling the disease.
  • Karan Thapar
    Karan Thapar is an eminent Indian television anchor and journalist. He currently hosts the daily news show 'To the Point' and the weekly interview show 'Nothing But the Truth' on India Today TV. He also writes a weekly 'Sunday Sentiments' column for Hindustan Times. A collection of these columns was first published as a book called Sunday Sentiments in 2006 and a second collection as More Salt than Pepper in 2009. A collection of his interviews has also been published as Face to Face India: Conversations with Karan Thapar. Thapar began his career in journalism with The Times in Lagos, Nigeria, and later worked as their lead writer on the Indian subcontinent till 1981. In 1982 he joined London Weekend Television where he worked he worked for programmes as varied as Weekend World, The World This Week, The Business Programme, The Walden Interview and Eastern Eye. In 1991, on his return to India, Karan Thapar helped establish H.T. Vision Limited as Executive Producer; was Director of Programmes for Home TV; and President, News & Current Affairs, for UTV. He also heads ITV, a television production house, and for several years hosted the prestigious Hardtalk Indian series on the BBC.
  • Captain Amarinder Singh
    Captain Amarinder Singh is an Indian politician of the Indian National Congress. Belonging to the erstwhile royal state of Patiala he is a former Chief Minister of Punjab. At present he is Deputy Leader of Opposition in 16th Lok Sabha, a post he was appointed to after his election as a Member of Parliament from Amritsar, where he has defeated BJP's stalwart Arun Jaitley. He joined Indian Army in June 1963 after graduating from the National Defence Academy and Indian Military before resigning in early 1965. He rejoined the Army again as hostilities broke out with Pakistan and served as Captain in the 1965 Indo-Pak War. He has written books on military history war and Sikh history which include A Ridge Too Far, Lest We Forget, The Last Sunset: Rise and Fall of Lahore Durbar, The Sikhs in Britain:150 years of Photographs". His latest book is Honour and Fidelity: India's Military Contribution to the Great War 1914 to 1918.
  • Katherine Boo
    Katherine Boo is an American journalist who has won great acclaim for her writings on the poor and the vulnerable. She is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service (2000), the MacArthur "genius" award (2002), and the National Book Award for Nonfiction (2012). She has been a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine since 2003. Her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity won nonfiction prizes from PEN, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the New York Public Library, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in addition to the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
  • Kiran Nagarkar
    Kiran Nagarkar was born in Bombay in 1942. In addition to plays and screenplays, he has written five novels, establishing his reputation as an outstanding representative of contemporary Indian literature. Nagarkar studied at the Ferguson College in Bombay and then worked as an assistant professor at some colleges, as a journalist and screenplay writer, and, notably, in the advertising industry. He wrote his first book Saat Sakkam Trechalis (1974; Eng. Seven Sixes are Forty Three, 1980) in his mother tongue, Marathi. His bitter and burlesque description of the young Bombayite Kunshank - achieved by means of a fragmented form and rendered in innovative language - is considered to be a milestone in Marathi literature. In his first play Bedtime Story (1978), Nagarkar takes on the subject of modern responsibility by broaching the topic of political crises of the day (for instance the Cuban Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the State of Emergency called for by Indira Gandhi). Due to problems with state censorship as well as religiously motivated restrictions that prevailed over the cultural scene, the play was not staged until 1995. His second book Ravan and Eddie (1994) also met with a hostile response. The story of the childhood of two young boys, one Hindu, the other Christian, from families who live next door to each other yet live in completely different worlds, was criticized both as anti-Hindu and anti-Christian. The fact that Nagarakar chose to write this book and other subsequent writings in English, the language of his education, also encountered objections from his fellow countrymen. In his subsequent novels, Nagarkar contrasts bigotry and extremism with a tolerance that feeds on doubt and is open to diversity. In Cuckold (1997), this mentality is embodied in a character who looms in Indian historiography. This is the unknown spouse of the famous princess Meera from the 16th century, whose love songs to the God Krishna have passed into popular Indian culture. In God's Little Soldier (2006), the protagonist, who switches faiths without ever abandoning extremism, stands opposed to his questioning brother. Nagarkar was distinguished with the H.N. Apte Award for the best first novel, the renowned Sahitya Award and the Dalmia Award for the furtherance of communicative harmony through literature. He received a Rockefeller grant and was awarded a scholarship by the city of Munich. He lives in Bombay.
  • Robin Jeffrey
    Robin Jeffrey graduated from the University of Victoria (Canada), taught school in Chandigarh and completed a doctorate in Indian history at Sussex University in 1973. He worked in Australian universities from 1973-2008 and is currently Professor Emeritus at Australian National University, Canberra, and La Trobe University, Melbourne. Since 2009 he has been a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He co-authored Cell Phone Nation (2013) with Assa Doron. He and Doron are currently writing a book about garbage and waste in India. His other books include The Decline of Nayar Dominance: Society and Politics in Travancore, 1847 - 1908, Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a "Model" and India's Newspaper Revolution: Capitalism, Politics and the Indian-Language Press, 1977-99, which has since been translated in Malayalam and Hindi.
  • Leela Gandhi
    Leela Gandhi is John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English at Browne University. Gandhi is a literary and cultural theorist whose research and teaching focus on transnational literatures, postcolonial theory and ethics, and the intellectual history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She received her B.A. from the University of Delhi, her M.Phil. and D.Phil. from Oxford University, and before coming to Brown she taught at the University of Chicago, Delhi University, and La Trobe University. Gandhi is a founding co-editor of the journal Postcolonial Studies and editorial board member of Postcolonial Text. She is a Senior Fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. Her books include Common Cause: Postcolonial Ethics and the Practice of Democracy 1900-1955, Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought and the Politics of Friendship, England Through Colonial Eyes in Twentieth-Century Fiction, Measures of Home: Poems and Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction.
  • Nayanjot Lahiri
    Nayanjot Lahiri established her reputation as an accessible historian of Indian antiquity with Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was Discovered (2005). Her books include Marshalling the Past: Ancient India and its Modern Histories (2012) and The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes (1993). Her biography of India's most famous ancient emperor has been recently published in 2015 as Ashoka in Ancient India (Permanent Black and rights outside South Asia with Harvard University Press). She won the Infosys Prize 2013 in the Humanities - Archaeology, and is Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi.
  • Upamanyu Chatterjee
    Upamanyu Chatterjee is an Indian civil servant who currently serves as Joint Secretary to Government of India on the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board. He is a 1983 batch Indian Administrative Service officer from Maharashtra Cadre. His best-selling novel, English, August: An Indian story (subsequently made into a major film), was published in 1988 and has since been reprinted several times. The novel follows Agastya Sen - a young westernised Indian civil servant whose imagination is dominated by women, literature and soft drugs. It is a much-acclaimed vivid account of "real India" by the young officer posted to the small provincial town of Madna. His second novel, The Last Burden, appeared in 1993. This novel recreates life in an Indian family at the end of the twentieth century. The Mammaries of the Welfare State was published at the end of 2000 as a sequel to English, August. His fourth novel, Weight Loss, a dark comedy, was published in 2006. His fifth was Way To Go, a sequel to The Last Burden published in 2010. His most recent work is Fairy Tales at Fifty, published in 2014, another kind of dark comedy that combines the fantasy of fairy tales and reality. Chatterjee has also written a handful of short stories of which "The Assassination of Indira Gandhi" and "Watching Them" are particularly noteworthy. In 2009, he was awarded Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his "exemplary contribution to contemporary literature" Earlier in 2004, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Mammaries of the Welfare State. The novel Way To Go was shortlisted for the The Hindu Best Fiction Award in 2010.
  • Namita Gokhale
    Namita Gokhale has written six novels, a collection of short stories, and several works of non-fiction, all in English. Her first novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, 1984, a satire upon the Mumbai and Delhi elite caused an uproar due to its candid sexual humour. Gods Graves and Grandmother- an ironic fable about street life in Delhi was adapted into a musical play. Gokhale was diagnosed with cancer when she was just thirty-five and her husband died a few years later. The experience of illness and loss has informed her later books, A Himalayan Love Story, The Book of Shadows and Shakuntala, the play of memory. Gokhale has written two books of non-fiction. Mountain Echoes which deals with the Kumaoni way of life through the eyes of four highly talented and individualistic women. The Book of Shiva is an introduction to Shaivite philosophy and mythology. She had retold the Indian epic, The Mahabharata, in an illustrated version for young and first time readers. In Search of Sita - Revisiting Mythology, co-edited with Dr Malashri Lal, presents fresh interpretations of this enigmatic goddess and her indelible impact on the lives of Indian women. Gokhale's recent Priya: In Incredible Indyaa, resurrected some unforgettable characters from her debut novel Paro. A collection of short stories, The Habit of Love, was published in January 2012. Publishing is Gokhale's other love. The Namita Gokhale editions, a signature imprint published in association with Roli Books, introduced some notable titles including Rashna Imhasly Gandhy's The Psychology of Love and Neelima Dalmia Adhar's biography of her father, R K Dalmia. She has conducted two memorable writers' retreats in Landour, with Roli Books, for the Namita Gokhale editions. Gokhale is passionately committed to showcasing and translating the best of Indian writing and engaging the vibrant Bhasha languages of the Indian sub-continent in a creative dialogue with each other and the rest of the world. She is one of the founder directors of Yatra Books which co-publishes with Penguin Books in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and other Indian languages including in English in a ground breaking series. Namita Gokhale conceptualised the famous International Festival of Indian Literature, Neemrana 2002, and also The Africa Asia Literary Conference, 2006. She has worked on groundbreaking seminars on Translating Bharat, and Textile Narratives with the literary consultancy Siyahi. She is a founder-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival along with the author, William Dalrymple, which started in 2006. She is also festival adviser to Mountain Echoes: A Literary Festival in Bhutan and the Kathmandu Literary Jatra, a first of its kind literature festival in Nepal.
  • Boria Majumdar
    Boria Majumdar is an acclaimed sport historian, writer and journalist. He is currently Consulting Sports Editor, India Today Group, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire and Adjunct Professor, School of Journalism, Australian and Indigenous Studies, Faculty of Arts at Monash University, Melbourne. In 2014, he co-authored Sachin Tendulkar's best-selling autobiography, Playing it My Way. His other books include Olympics: The India Story, Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and the Commonwealth Games, Twenty Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket. Majumdar, a Rhodes scholar, has a B.A. in History from Presidency College, Calcutta University, M.A. in Modern History from the same university and went to St John's College, Oxford University to do a D.Phil. he has taught at the Universities of Chicago, Toronto and La Trobe where he was first distinguished Visiting Fellow in 2005. He was also the first Indian to be awarded a fellowship to work at the International Olympic museum archives in Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • Urvashi Butalia
    Urvashi Butalia is a publisher and writer. Co-founder of Kali for Women, India's first feminist publisher, and now director of Zubaan, she is also author of the award-winning oral history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.
  • Manu Joseph
    Manu Joseph's is a writer, senior journalist and columnist. His first novel Serious Men was translated into several languages and won him The Hindu Literary Prize and the American PEN/Open Book award. This Illicit Happiness of Other People is his second novel. He writes a 'Letter from India' column for the New York Times, a regular column for Hindustan Times and is former editor, Open magazine.
  • Devdutt Pattanaik
    Devdutt Pattanaik is a renowned author, mythologist, and leadership consultant, whose work focuses on deriving management insights from mythology to reveal a very Indian approach to modern business. He has authored over 30 books, many of them best-sellers like Myth = Mithya, Business Sutra, The Pregnant King, and Jaya: An illustrated retelling of the Mahabharata. Many of his books have been translated in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati and Marathi. Trained in medicine, Devdutt spent 15 years in the healthcare industry, with companies such as Apollo Health Street and Sanofi Aventis, before joining Ernst & Young as Business Advisor. All this while, he continued to study and write on mythological stories and symbols, drawing rich insights about business, leadership, and modern life. His columns on management and culture appear regularly in The Economic Times (Corporate Dossier supplement), Mid-Day, Speaking Tree and the DailyO (India Today website). Devdutt was the Chief Belief Officer of Future Group and is now a sought-after public speaker and culture consultant for corporations and business leaders. He consults Reliance on matters related to culture and Star TV on various mythological serials. Devdutt's parents migrated from Odisha to Mumbai over 50 years ago. He was born and educated in Mumbai, and he lives in Mumbai.
  • Ashwin Sanghi
    Ashwin Sanghi is an Indian writer who has been hailed as the Indian Dan Brown. He is the author of three best-selling novels: The Rozabal Line, Chanakya's Chant and The Krishna Key. All his books have been based on historical, theological and mythological themes. He is one of India's best-selling conspiracy fiction writers and is an author of the new era of retelling Indian history or mythology in a contemporary context. Forbes India has included him in their Forbes India Celebrity 10. He wrote his first novel in 2006 and thereafter continued to pursue dual careers, as a businessman as well as writer. In 2013, Ashwin Sanghi and James Patterson announced that they would be co-writing an India-based thriller called "Private India" within Patterson's "Private" series,the book was subsequently released in July 2014. Sanghi completed his schooling at the Cathedral and John Connon School, graduated with a BA (Economics) from St. Xavier's College and has an MBA from the Yale School of Management. He is part of the overall trend of young professionals and businessmen turning to writing as a parallel career.
  • Ravi Subramanian
    Ravi Subramanian is India's numero uno thriller writer, having written six bestselling books. An alumnus of Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore), he is currently head of a leading financial institution. A career banker and financial services professional, Ravi has worked with various multinational banks (Citibank, ANZ Grindlays Bank and HSBC) for over eighteen years. As a result of his extensive background in foreign banks, writing about banking comes quite naturally to Ravi. Each one of his books thus far have been set in the backdrop of a foreign bank. He is the award winning author of six bestselling books : If God was a Banker (2007), I Bought the Monks Ferrari (2007), Devil in Pinstripes (2009), The Incredible Banker (2011), The Bankster (2012), Bankerupt (2013). His 7th book, GOD IS A GAMER, releases on September 5th 2014. If God was a Banker won him the Golden Quill readers choice award in 2008. He also won the Economist Crossword Book Award for The Incredible Banker in 2012. "The Bankster", released in 2012 won him the Crossword Book Award in 2013. Ravi currently lives in Mumbai with his biotechnologist turned banker wife, Dharini and his daughter Anusha.
  • Tansen Sen
    Tansen Sen is Professor of Asian History at Baruch College, New York received his MA from Peking University and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in Asian history and religions and has special scholarly interests in India-China interactions, Indian Ocean trade, Buddhism, and Silk Road archeology. He has done extensive research in India, China, Japan, and Singapore with grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Japan Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore). He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2003) and co-author (with Victor H. Mair) of Traditional China in Asian and World History(Association for Asian Studies, 2012). He has editedBuddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Cultural and Intellectual Exchange (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014) and guest-edited special issues of China Report("Kolkata and China," December 2007; and "Studies on India-China Interactions Dedicated to Ji Xianlin," 2012). With Wang Bangwei he has co-edited India and China: Interactions through Buddhism and Diplomacy: A Collection of Essays by Professor Prabodh Chandra Bagchi (Anthem Press, 2011). He is currently working on two book projects, one examines cross-cultural trade in Asia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the second is titled India, China, and the World: Networks of Exchange and Interactions. He is also the co-director (with Brian Tsui) of a collaborative research project entitled "Beyond Pan-Asianism: China-India Connections, 1911-1949." He serves on the Governing Board of the Nalanda University, India.
  • Siddharth Varadarajan
    Siddharth Varadarajan is a Founding Editor of The Wire, an independent new digital news venture in India. He was earlier the Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, one of the country's largest English-language newspapers. An award-winning journalist, he has also taught economics at New York University and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the book, Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy on the 2002 massacre of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat. He also anchors a popular show on Rajya Sabha TV, India's leading public broadcaster.
  • Malvika Singh
    Malvika Singh is a publisher of Seminar, a prestigious monthly magazine of ideas and alternatives, founded in 1959 and a columnist for The Telegraph. She is also Editorial Consultant at Harmony magazine. She has written numerous books such as Perpetual City: A Short Biography of Delhi, Aleph, 2013; Bhutan: Through the Lens of the King (Text for the book), Lustre Press, Roli Books, 2012; New Delhi: Making of a Capital, Roli Books, 2009; Delhi: India in One City, Academic Foundation, 2008 and Snowdon's India. She edited Delhi: The First City; Chennai: A City of Change; Hyderabad: A City of Hope; Kolkata: A Soul City; Lucknow: A City Between Cultures; Mumbai: A City of Dreams.
  • Ananya Vajpeyi
    Ananya Vajpeyi is a scholar and writer based at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. She is the author of Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India (2012), which received the 41st Thomas J Wilson Memorial Award from Harvard University Press, the Crossword Award for Non-Fiction (2013) and the Tata First Book Award for Non-Fiction (2013). She is a Global Ethics Fellow 2014-2017 with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, New York. Vajpeyi writes regularly for The Hindu newspaper, and edits one issue of the journal Seminar: The Monthly Symposium annually. She is working towards a life of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.
  • Raghu Karnad
    Raghu Karnad is the author of Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War. He works as a journalist and has written for Granta, n+1, the Financial Times and the Caravan, and is a contributing editor at The Wire.
  • Jaishree Misra
    Jaishree Misra has written eight novels published by Penguin and Harper Collins and has also edited an anthology of writings on motherhood, published by Zubaan, as a fund-raising campaign for Save the Children India. Her first novel, 'Ancient Promises' was commissioned by Penguin UK and went on to become a best-seller; film rights have been recently sold. It is now a prescribed text for the BA Course in English Literature in Kerala University. Her versatility showed up in her second novel, 'Accidents Like Love & Marriage', a comedy of manners, while the third book, 'Afterwards' is a moving story told from the point-of-view of a young man who loses his wife. Jaishree's fourth novel was a big historical romance called 'Rani' which was inspired by the story of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. Subsequent to that, Jaishree was commissioned by Harper Collins in the UK to write a series of commercial fiction books featuring glamorous locations and characters. The three books that emerged were 'Secrets & Lies' which celebrates female friendship, 'Secrets & Sins' which studies infidelity and 'A Scandalous Secret'which features an adopted girl who travels to India in search of her biological mother. Jaishree's most recent novel, 'A Love Story for My Sister', is part-commercial and part-historical, telling the twin stories of Margaret Wheeler, a real character from the 1857 uprising in Kanpur, and Tara Fernandez, a Delhi schoolgirl, both of whom were kidnapped but went on to live with their captors. Jaishree has an MA in English Literature from Kerala University and two post-graduate diplomas from the University of London, in Special Education and Broadcast Journalism. Until recently she worked at the British Board of Film Classification in London.
  • Rohan Murty
    Rohan Murty founded the Murty Classical Library of India (MCLI) to showcase the rich Indian intellectual history to the world. He was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard and an undergraduate degree from Cornell.
  • Santosh Desai
    Santosh Desai is one India's best known social commentators. He is MD and CEO of Futurebrands India Ltd and has been the President of McCann-Erickson, India. Besides being a leading ad. Professional, he writes the "City City Bang Bang" column in the Times of India which looks at contemporary Indian society from an everyday vantage point. It covers issues big and small, tends where possible to avoid judgmental positions, and tries instead to understand what makes things the way they are. The desire to look at things with innocent doubt helps in the emergence of fresh perspectives and hopefully, of clarity of a new kind. His writings have been published in the book 'Mother Pious Lady'.
  • Sudeep Sen
    Sudeep Sen is widely recognized as a major new generation voice in world literature and 'one of the finest younger English-language poets in the international literary scene' (BBC Radio), 'fascinated not just by language but the possibilities of language' (Scotland on Sunday). He received a Pleiades Honour (at the Struga Poetry Festival, Macedonia) for having made "a significant contribution to contemporary world poetry". Sen's prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Distracted Geographies, Rain, Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Ladakh, The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor), and Fractals: New and Selected Poems|Translations 1980-2015. A new book, Blue Nude: New Selected Poems (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize) is forthcoming. His poems, translated into twenty-five languages, have featured in major international anthologies; and his words have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, Herald, Harvard Review, Hindu, Hindustan Times, Times of India, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on BBC, PBS, CNN IBN, NDTV, AIR and Doordarshan. Sen's newer work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta), Language for a New Century (Norton), Leela (Collins), Indian Love Poems (Knopf/Random House/Everyman), Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe), and Initiate: Oxford New Writing (Blackwell). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and the editor of Atlas. As a photographer and graphic artist, his work is part of many professional print portfolios, magazine and newspaper pieces, book jacket covers, private and public collections some include: Hindu, Deccan Chronicle, New Indian Express, Swagat, Gallerie, Biblio, Prairie Schooner, Molossus, World Literature Today, Indian Design and Interiors, and others; plus books covers for publishers such as HarperCollins, Peepal Tree, Mulfran, Wings Press, Women Unlimited, Gallerie, Aark Arts, UPL, Bengal Gallery, and many others. He has also published two books of photography, Prayer Flag and Postcards from Bangladesh. His photography is professional represented by ArtMbassy in Berlin. Sen was the first Asian to be honoured with an invitation to participate at the Nobel Laureate Week in St Lucia in 2013, where he delivered the Derek Walcott Lecture and read his own poetry. A special commemorative limited edition, Fractals: New and Selected Poems|Translations 1978-2013, was released by the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott himself. The same year, the Government of India Ministry of Culture's awarded him the senior fellowship for "outstanding persons in the field of literature/culture".
  • Deborah Baker
    Deborah Baker is a biographer and essayist. Her first biography, written in college, was Making a Farm: The Life of Robert Bly, published by Beacon Press in 1982. After working a number of years as a book editor and publisher, in 1990 she moved to Calcutta where she wrote In Extremis; The Life of Laura Riding. Published by Grove Press and Hamish Hamilton in the UK, it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1994. Her third book, A Blue Hand: The Beats in India was published by Penguin Press USA and Penguin India in 2008. In 2008-2009 she was a Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis C. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at The New York Public Library. There she researched and wrote The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism, a narrative account of the life of an American convert to Islam, drawn on letters on deposit in the library's manuscript division. The Convert, published by Graywolf and Penguin India, was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award in Non-Fiction". She has two children and is married to the writer Amitav Ghosh. They divide their time between Brooklyn and Goa.
  • Aakar Patel
    Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist. He is a former newspaper editor, having worked with the Bhaskar Group and Mid-Day Multimedia Ltd. He has edited and translated, Why I Write: A Collection of Essays by Saadat Hasan Manto.
  • Pawan Verma
    Pawan Verma joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1976. His career as a diplomat has seen him serve in several countries, including New York and Moscow. In New York, he was with India's Permanent Mission to the United Nations. He also served as Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the Group of 77. In Moscow, he was the Director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cultural Centre in the Indian Embassy. He has also been High Commissioner of India to Cyprus as well as Director of the Nehru Centre in London. His assignments in India include that of Press Secretary to the President of India, Spokesman in the Ministry of External Affairs, Joint Secretary for Africa and Director General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi, Indian Ambassador to Bhutan. Pavan K. Varma took voluntary retirement from the Indian Foreign Service in 2012 to enter public life and is presently a Member of the Rajya Sabha. He is the author of several books, including The Great Indian Middle Class, Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will Be India's, Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity, and Chanakya's New Manifesto to Resolve the Crisis within India.
  • Sudheendra Kulkarni
    Sudheendra Kulkarni is an Indian politician and columnist. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Kulkarni joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1996 and served as a speech writer, media adviser and political aide to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He.also worked closely with Lal Krishna Advani.. He quit the BJP in 2009 but rejoined in 2012. He has been Chairman of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) Mumbai is the author of the "MUSIC OF THE SPINNING WHEEL: Mahatma Gandhi's Manifesto for the Internet Age".
  • Navtej Sarna
    Navtej Sarna studied Commerce and Law at Delhi University and joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1980. He is presently India's Ambassador to Israel and has earlier served as a diplomat in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Tehran and Washington DC as well as most recently at Delhi as the Foreign Office Spokesperson. His books include: "The Exile": a novel based on the life of Maharaja Duleep Singh (Penguin India,2008); "We Weren't Lovers Like That"; "The Book of Nanak": non-fiction; and "Folk Tales of Poland": non-fiction.
  • Dileep Padgaonkar
    Dileep Padgaonkar is a former Editor of the Times of India. He currently serves as a Consulting Editor of the paper and as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of The WorldPost/Huffington Post. He also holds the R.K. Laxman Chair at the Symbiosis International University in Pune.
  • Dr Bhawna Sirohi
    Dr Bhawna Sirohi is head of medical oncology at Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre, Narayana Health, Bengaluru.
  • Ira Trivedi
    Ira Trivedi is the bestselling author of What Would You Do to Save the World? (2006), The Great Indian Love Story (2009) and There Is No Love on Wall Street (2011). Her latest book and first work of non-fiction is India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st century, a landmark book on India's new social revolution in marriage and sexuality. Ira's books have been published by leading publishers like Penguin and Aleph and have been translated into several languages including Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Greek. Ira contributes to a wide variety of publications including Foreign Affairs, Hindustan Times Brunch, Forbes, Outlook, Daily News & Analysis (DNA), The Asian Age, the Telegraph (India) amongst many others. She graduated from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA with a BA in economics from and gained her MBA from Columbia Business School, where she won the prestigious Feldberg Fellowship. In addition to her career as a writer, Ira is also a certified teacher of yoga. She lives in New Delhi with her family.
  • Mridula Garg
    Mridula Garg is an Indian writer who writes in Hindi and English languages She has published 30 books in Hindi - novels, short story collections, plays and collections of essay - of which she has rendered three into English. She is a recipient of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award. Mridula Garg is one of the most widely read Hindi writers today. She has published 27 books in Hindi - novels, short story collections, plays and collections of essay - of which she has rendered three into English. She took her Masters in Economics in 1960 and taught economics in Delhi University for three years.
  • Basharat Peer
    Basharat Peer is a Kashmiri journalist, author and script writer. He has worked as an Assistant Editor at Foreign Affairs and was a Fellow at Open Society Institute, New York. He has written extensively on South Asian politics for Granta, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, FT Magazine, The New Yorker, The National and The Caravan. He is the author of Curfewed Night, an eyewitness account of the Kashmir conflict, which won the Crossword Prize for Non-Fiction and was chosen among the Books of the Year by The Economist and The New Yorker. Peer was also the script writer along with Vishal Bhardwaj for the Bollywood film Haider.
  • Nivedita Menon
    Nivedita Menon is a Professor of Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Prof. Menon is a noted feminist, author, translator and activist. Often considered as one of the pioneers of feminist theory in India, she has written widely acclaimed books and papers in Indian and international publications. She writes on current issues in The Economic and Political Weekly, Kafila.org and is an active commentator on contemporary issues in newspapers. Menon has been involved in a wide range of political and social movements. Her books include: Seeing like a Feminist and Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law.
  • Saad Z Hossain
    Saad Z Hossain writes in a niche genre of fantasy, science fiction and black comedy which, on the balance of it, very few people actually want to read. Due to the stunning unpopularity of his writing he has been forced to work in various industries. This includes drilling holes, making rope, throwing parties, operating an illegal sports book and failing to run a restaurant. He wrote the novel Escape from Baghdad!, published in the US by Unnamed Press and in India by the awesome Aleph Book Company. His short stories have appeared in some anthologies, including Six Seasons Review, and the Apex Book of World SF 4, as well newspapers and magazines back home in Dhaka.
  • Ronnie Screwvala
    Ronnie Screwvala is a first generation entrepreneur who pioneered Cable TV in India, built one of the largest toothbrush manufacturing operations and went on to create a Media & Entertainment conglomerate - UTV - spanning Television, Broadcasting, Digital, Mobile and Motion Pictures, which he divested to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. Demonstrating an innate ability to merge creativity with commerce, Newsweek termed him the Jack Warner of India, Esquire rated him one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st Century and Fortune as Asia's 25 most powerful. Onto his second innings, Ronnie is driven by his interest in championing Entrepreneurship - authored a book on Entrepreneurship titled Dream With Your Eyes Open, and is also focused to build his next set of ground up businesses in high growth and impact sectors. These include U Sports focused on Kabaddi, Moto Sports and Football; U Education under the brand UpGrad that zeroes in on Online Education - in Higher Studies, Post Graduation and Specialization courses; and U Digital under the brand Arre to target the core 15-34 age group in all things digital for the 21st century. Ronnie is also passionate about Social Welfare and is active along with his wife Zarina as Founder Trustees of The Swades Foundation, which operates with the single minded focus of empowering one million lives in Rural India every 5-6 years through a unique 360 degree model with verticals in Water, Sanitation, Health, Nutrition, Community Mobilization, Education, and most importantly Agriculture & Livelihood, to lift them out of poverty permanently.
  • Suhel Seth
    Suhel Seth is Managing Partner of Counselage. India's only strategic branding and marketing advisory. He sits on various corporate boards; is an author, actor and public speaker. He is also deeply involved with philanthropy.
  • Ravish Kumar
    Ravish Kumar is executive editor, NDTV India and the host of 'Prime Time'. He has what he calls a 'Compulsive Blogging Disorder' and needs this disorder to keep himself in order. His blog Qasba is a place where he keeps his own permanent records of himself. Unplanned writing is his way of coping with living in unplanned Delhi. He lives in chaos and finds that life becomes much simpler whenever he comes out of chaos. Ravish is the author of 'Ishaq Me Shehar Hona', published by Rajkamal Prakashan. He finds that the unknown Delhi is the only really known city to its lovers. It is lovers who truly explore the city and they have explored Delhi for his book.
  • Vesna Pericevic Jacob
    Vesna Pericevic Jacob is an Author, Pilates and Wellness expert, Motivational Speaker, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Healer and CEO of Chhoo Mantr Wellness Angels Home Spa service with social cause, providing skill development and career opportunities to young women from the North Eastern part of India. Vesna is the first person from India (as well as Bosnia) to graduate in Functional Applied Science under Grays Institute of Functional Applied Science (USA, MI, Adrian) as a part of GIFT Fellowship program. She is the author of two highly successful books, "Work It Out Without a Workout" and "Fit to Fight" published by Random House India, and is currently writing her third book. She has just opened her new studio "Vesna's alta celo" (means higher purpose in Esperanto) which is a unique blend of restorative and rehabilitative movement work with elements of fun fitness while being strongly rooted in holistic approach to health, fitness and wellness. Her passion for sports started at the tender age of 5 with the practice of gymnastics followed by athletics. She then took up basketball and became a national level player in her native country of Bosnia, but a serious knee injury ended her career in 1995. Over the past 20 years, she learnt and developed her knowledge of fitness techniques as well as of Pilates and began teaching 12 years ago. Vesna has richly used her time in India to understand fitness and health issues first hand and finding a correlation between most physical issues and postural alignment. This combining of techniques and postural awareness has evolved her into a unique and highly effective fitness expert. She took Pilates philosophy and Pilates Principles and created her own unique "Vesna's 3D Pilates" which is based on Postural Alignment Fundamentals along with Functional Science Principals and now applies her philosophy to increase the efficacy of other exercising techniques of both fitness professionals and enthusiasts. She writes extensively on fitness for leading newspapers and magazines including The Financial Chronicle, Hindustan Times, Men's Health, Women's Health, Prevention magazine among others, and has appeared on many television channels, CNN-IBN, NDTV, Headlines Today, Times Now, VOI and Sahara TV. She was involved as a FitnessandWellness Expert for NDTV and Fortis Campaign HEALTH4U. She has been the Fitness Expert for CNN IBN covering the first International Day of Yoga. Vesna has been involved with Adidas performance clothing brand as Performance Consultant since 2009.
  • Arun Maira
    Arun Maira is a thought leader and writer on the subjects of transformational change and leadership. He is a frequent speaker at international forums on the future of India. He has been writing for management and business journals for two decades. His recent books are Transforming Capitalism: Improving the World for Everyone; Discordant Democrats: Five Steps to Consensus; Remaking India: One Country, One Destiny; Shaping the Future: Aspirational Leadership in India and Beyond; and Redesigning the Airplane While Flying: Reforming Institutions. He was a member of the Tata Administrative Service and served in several senior executive board level positions in the TATA Group in India and abroad for 25 years. He worked with Arthur D.Little Inc, the international management consultancy, in the USA from 1989 to 1999, and consulted with companies across the world on issues of growth strategies and transformational change. He returned to India in 2000 and was Chairman of The Boston Consulting Group in India until 2008 and a Member of the Planning Commission of India from 2009 to 2014. Arun Maira is Chancellor of the Central University of Himachal Pradesh. He was Chairman of the Quality Council of India, Save the Children India, and the Axis Bank Foundation. He has served on the National Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry for many years and chaired several of its national committees. He has also served on the boards of several large corporations, the UN Global Compact, and several social work organizations and educational institutions in India and abroad. Arun Maira was born in Lahore in 1943. He has a Masters degree in Physics from St. Stephens College, Delhi University.
  • Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
    Shamsur Rahman Faruqi is a leading poet, Urdu critic and theorist. He has written criticism, literary history, poetry and fiction, has translated from and into Urdu, and is known throughout the Urdu world as a major modernist, a leading theorist of literature, an innovative poet, and the author of some unique pieces of fiction. He is a lexicographer of note and has also written on the theory of lexicography. He has written extensively on applied and theoretical prosody. He also published, with his wife's support, the famed Urdu literary journal Shabkhoon from 1966-2005. His novel, Ka'i Chand the Sar-e Asman, was published in 2006, in both India and Pakistan and was hailed as an event of unique importance. Aslam Farrukhi, the noted Pakistani critic, has described this novel as "Urdu fiction's greatest achievement". The novel was published in Hindi translation to unprecedented acclaim in the Hindi world. Its English version, made by Faruqi and called The Mirror of Beauty, has won wide acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2015 D.S.C. Prize. A volume of his stories translated by him into English, was published recently with the title "The Sun Rose From the Earth" and is already being described as a minor classic. It has won acclaim in its Hindi translation.
  • Naina Lal Kidwai
    Naina Lal Kidwai is Executive Director on the board of HSBC Asia-Pacific and Chairman India. She is Non-Executive Director of Nestle S.A. and Past President of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). She is a member of The Governing Board of National Council of Applied Economic Research, the National Institute of Bank Management, Global Advisor Harvard Business School and the Chair of its India Advisory Board, and one of the government's representatives on the BRICS Council. Her interest in Water and the environment and empowerment of women are reflected in her board positions of not-for-profit institutions like Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, The Energy Resources Institute, International Advisory Council of the Inquiry of United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Co- Chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council for Water, Commissioner for the Global Commission on Economy & Climate, Chair of FICCI's Water Mission and FICCI's Inclusive Governance Council and Chair of the India Sanitation Coalition. An MBA from Harvard Business School, she makes a regular appearance on listings by Fortune since 2002 and others of international women in business. She has received many awards and honours in India and was awarded the Padma Shri, for her contribution to Trade & Industry, from the Government of India in 2007. She has edited two books Contemporary Banking in India and 30 Women in Power: Their Voices, Their Stories.
  • Ezekiel Malekar
    Ezekiel Malekar is Honorary Secretary of the Judah Hyam Synagogue New Delhi, a scholar of Judaism, a noted human rights activist and a Deputy Registrar (Law) with the National Human Rights Commission in India.
  • Jeet Thayil
    Jeet Thayil was born in Mamalasserie, Kerala, and educated in Bombay, Hongkong and New York. His four poetry collections include English and These Errors Are Correct, which won the 2013 Sahitya Akademi Award for poetry. He is the editor of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets and is a visiting professor of poetry at the University of Goa. As a musician and songwriter, he is one half of the contemporary music project Sridhar/Thayil. His Delhi-based band is Still Dirty. Jeet Thayil's novel Narcopolis won the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for five other prizes, including the Man Booker prize, the Man Asian Literature Prize and the Commonwealth Prize.
  • Dr Ashwini Chopra
    Dr Ashwini Chopra is an eminent physician and gastroenterologist of Delhi who also believes in spiritual healing. He launched Aashlok Hospital in 1984. His interest in medicine is not limited to modern medicine but is also an expert in alternative disciplines of health and healing.
  • Darain Shahidi
    Darain Shahidi is a leading dastangoi (story-telller), journalist and news presenter. He previously been a leading anchor on BBC, Star TV, NDTV and IBN7.
  • R Gopalakrishnan
    R Gopalakrishnan (Gopal to his friends) studied physics at St Xavier's Kolkata, engineering at IIT Kharagpur and attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He is a past president of the All India Management Association. Gopal has been a corporate leader for long: 31 years in Unilever and 17 years in Tata. He served in Jeddah as Chairman of Unilever Arabia, in Bangalore as Managing Director of Brooke Bond Lipton and Vice Chairman of Hindustan Lever, and in Mumbai as Executive Director of Tata Sons. Gopal has wide corporate and board experience over the last 25 years. Apart from serving as a director of Tata Sons, the parent board, and several Tata companies, he serves as an independent director of listed companies, Akzo Nobel India, Castrol India, and Hemas Sri Lanka. Gopal is an accomplished public speaker and is actively engaged in both instructional and inspirational speaking. Over the last three years, he has spoken at Hong Kong, Hangzhou, and Kuala Lumpur in Asia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the Middle East, as well as Brussels, Paris, Philadelphia. These are in addition to extensive speaking engagements in India. Gopal's subjects concern India, Marketing, Governance, Strategy, Organizational Transformation, People Management, and Innovation. He delivers modules of 3-hour Master Classes for managers on subjects relating to Leadership and Innovation. He relies on practical examples, rich with anecdotes rather than theory or analytical frameworks. He draws a lot from his published books and his unusual course at B-Schools, titled 'LWNT-Learning what's Not Taught'. Gopal is the author of four best-selling books; some of them have been translated into Chinese, Hindi, Marathi and Tamil.
  • Jairam Ramesh
    Jairam Ramesh is a Rajya Sabha MP and member of the Congress Party. He is a former union minister, having held, at various points, diverse portfolios such as commerce, power, environment, rural development and drinking water and sanitation. He is the author of 'To the Brink and Back: India's 1991 Story', an inside account of India's adoption of economic reforms from his perspective as officer on special duty to then-Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. He is also the author of 'Green Signals: Ecology, Growth, and Democracy in India.'
  • AP Maheshwari
    An alumnus of SRCC, Dr Anand Maheshwari has authored nine books on diverse dimensions of life in conflict ridden societies. He has focussed his writings on some poignant facets of human life. Recipient of the Govind Vallabh Pant award for his publications, his latest book, Into the Oblivion, narrates the real life story of a cancer patient and related life style management issues. As a police officer, he has also been conferred the President's Police medal for Distinguished Service and Police medal for Gallantry. He belongs to 1984 batch of Indian Police Service.
  • Shekhar Gupta
    Shekhar Gupta is chairperson of Mediascape. Mediascape is an exciting new start-up in Indian news media, and is currently under development. He is a prolific columnist, with his highly influential columns translated into Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati and Marathi. He is a senior prime-time anchor at NDTV. Over the past two decades, Shekhar's weekly column, National Interest, has been regarded as the sharpest, most perceptive analysis of current events as they unfold. His columns were recently collected in the bestselling book, Anticipating India. Currently, National Interest appears in Business Standard every Saturday. He also writes a fortnightly column for India's leading Hindi newspaper, DainikBhaskar. Shekhar hosts "Walk the Talk" on NDTV 24x7 every week. A collection of his news-making interviews will be published soon. He has now started a second weekly show in Hindi, "Chalet Chalte", telecast on NDTV India. During a 38-year career, Shekhar has reported on key Indian and international events, including the Nellie massacre in Assam, Operation Blue Star, the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Gulf War from Baghdad, the first "jihad" in Afghanistan, and the many twists and turns in the troubled 1983-1993 decade in Sri Lanka's Tamil North. In June 2014, Shekhar concluded a 19-year stint at the Indian Express and the Express Group of publications. As Editor-in-Chief, he led the country's largest network of award-winning journalists.
  • Nilanjana Roy
    Nilanjana S Roy grew up in Delhi and Calcutta, and has lived mostly in Delhi for the last 20 years with her husband; they are owned by three cats. Her first novel, The Wildings (Aleph, 2012), won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award; the sequel, The Hundred Names of Darkness, came out in 2013. The Girl Who Ate Books, essays on reading, will be published soon by HarperCollins. She writes on the reading life for the Business Standard, has contributed columns on gender and cultural politics to the New York Times, and has written on free speech and censorship for several journals."
  • Gurcharan Das
    Gurcharan Das is an author, commentator and former CEO of Procter & Gamble India. His latest book, India Grows at Night: A liberal case for a strong state, was on the FT's best books for 2013. His much-acclaimed The Difficulty of Being Good is 'a riveting examination of governance and corruption in the modern world,' said Newsweek. His international bestseller, India Unbound'is a quiet earthquake' according to the Guardian, and available in 17 languages and filmed by BBC. Gurcharan Das studied philosophy at Harvard University and later attended Harvard Business School (AMP) where he is featured in three case studies. After heading Procter & Gamble India and South East Asia, he became Managing Director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide (Strategic Planning). At 50, he took early retirement to become a full time writer. He writes a regular column for five Indian newspapers, including The Times of India, and contributes to Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and the New York Times. He is a speaker to some of the world's largest corporations and has served on the juries of the Templeton Prize, Milton Friedman Prize and the McKinsey Award. His other literary works include a novel, A Fine Family, a book of essays, The Elephant Paradigm,and an anthology, Three Plays, consisting of Larins Sahib, a prize-winning play about the British in India, which has been presented at the Edinburgh Festival; Mira, which was produced off-Broadway to critical acclaim from New York critics; and 9 Jakhoo Hill which has been performed in major Indian cities. He is presently editing for Penguin The Story of Indian Business in 15 volumes, of which six have already appeared. He lives in New Delhi with his wife.
  • Vikas Singh
    Vikas Singh is Assistant Executive Editor of the Times of India. His first book, In The Know of Things, was a brief history of knowledge, co-authored with Derek 'O'Brien, Jug Suraiya and Bunny Suraiya. He also wrote India's first cricket thriller, The Big Fix, based on murder and spot fixing in a T20 tournament. His new bestseller, Bhima: The Man In The Shadows, retells the Mahabharat from the perspective of the second Pandava.
  • Anand Neelakantan
    Anand Neelakantan, age 41 years, is author of three best selling books, story writer for STAR TV's mega series, SIYA KE RAM, consultant for various TV channels for mythological content, cartoonist, columist and corporate trainer. He is arguably the author who invented a new genre in Indian writing- the counter telling of mythology. Anand's books are subaltern and thought-provoking and deal with logically viewing the well-known stories through a new prism. Anand's debut work Asura Tale of the Vanquished was a surprise bestseller of 2012, breaking into the top seller charts within a week of its launch. Asura, tale of the Vanquished became the number 1 best seller of 2012 as per Crossword list and CNN IBN. The critically acclaimed, Ajaya series, consisting of two books - Book I - Roll of the dice and Book II- Rise of Kali explores Mahabharata from Duryodhana's perspective. Roll of the dice was best seller number 1 across all charts for 16 continous weeks since its release in December 2013. The book was shortlisted for Crossword Popular award 2014. Rise of Kali, released in July 29, 2015 is dominating best seller charts as on date. All the books have been translated to more than 9 languages and are best sellers in the respective languages. Anand Neelakantan was chosen as one of the six most remarkable writers of 2012 by DNA. Anand Neelakantan has written columns for Deccan chronicle, Asian Age, The New Indian Express, The Wall Street Journal, Speaking Tree etc.
  • Rajesh Kalra
    Rajesh Kalra is the Chief Editor of Times Internet and business head for the non-English languages properties. A journalist for two decades, he also tried his hands at entrepreneurship in between. Although he has written on several subjects, he has a weakness for IT and telecommunications. He is an avid sportsman, a trained high-altitude mountaineer, a passionate mountain biker and a marathoner.
  • Rega Jha
    Rega Jha is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed India. She was formerly a writer for BuzzFeed in New York, and has also spent time working with Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and Vogue. She began her writing career as a 14-year-old intern at the Times Of India in Chennai.
  • Jeff Koehler
    Jeff Koehler is an American writer, photographer, traveller and cook. His most recent book is Darjeeling: A History of the World's Greatest Tea(Bloomsbury, 2015). Other books include Spain: Recipes and Traditions, named one of 2013's top cookbooks by the New York Times, andMorocco: A Culinary Journey with Recipes. His work has appeared in Saveur, Food & Wine, NPR.org, NationalGeographic.com, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Afar, Tin House and Best Food Writing 2010. After doing post-graduate work at King's College London, he moved to Barcelona, where he has lived since 1996.
  • Vineeta Rai
    Vineeta Rai joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1968 and during a career spanning about 40 years she worked in various sectors in different parts of the country including Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and Chandigarh. She also worked in the Union Ministries of Home Affairs, Health, urban development and Finance ....she was the first woman to be appointed Revenue Secretary.She had a 5 year stint in the UN system where she was the regional Advisor on Gender , Population and Development for South and Central Asia and Iran. Post retirement she was member secretary of the Second Administrative Reforms Commision and thereafter as a member of the National Consumer a Disputes Redressal Commission."
  • Nandini Varma
    Nandini Varma is a spoken word poet and educator. She cofounded Airplane Poetry Movement, a platform to discover and develop spoken word poets in India. She is currently also working as the Content Curator for one of Asia's largest talent discovery and collaboration platforms, Campus Diaries where she works on curating learning and development projects for student communities.
  • Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan
    Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of five books, most recently Before, And Then After (a collection of short stories) and Split (a YA book dealing with divorce, one of India's first teen books to tackle that subject.) She also is a columnist, writing about feminism for The Week, and a freelance writer. Ms Madhavan has been running her popular blog Compulsive Confessions for over a decade now, and finds inspiration in stories of urban India.
  • Valmik Thapar
    Valmik Thapar has spent 40 years working with the forests and wildlife of Idnia, especially wild tigers and is at the moment writing his 30th book. His most recent book, Saving Wild India-A Blueprint for Change, is based on his experience and with central and state governments and spells out a new structure for governing wild India. Valmik has also presented more than 14 films for international channels on Indian wildlife and tigers. He is campaigner for Wld India.
  • TK Arun
    TK Arun is columnist and opinion editor at the Economic Times.
  • Srinath Raghavan
    Srinath Raghavan is Senior Fellow at Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is the author of War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years (2010) and 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh. Most recently, he has co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy (2015). His next book, India's War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939-45 will be published by Penguin/Allen Lane in early 2016. Srinath is a regular commentator on contemporary foreign and strategic affairs and has served on the National Security Advisory Board. Prior to joining academia, he spent six years as an infantry officer in the Indian Army."
  • Shubhashis Gangopadhyay
    Shubhashis Gangopadhyay is currently the Director of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shiv Nadar University and the Research Director of India Development Foundation. From 2009, he has been a Visiting Professor at Gothenburg University. In 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, he was appointed Advisor to the Finance Minister, Government of India. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in October 2006. In Sweden, he held the prestigious Malmsten Guest Professorship in 2007 and the Bertil Danielsson Guest Professorship in 2008. He got his PhD in Economics from Cornell University, USA, in 1983; his Bachelor's degree from Presidency College, Kolkata in 1978; and did his schooling in Calcutta Boys' School. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute as a lecturer in 1983 and was promoted to full professor in 1991. Between 2003 till 2008, he was the founder-director of IDF, an independent research organization. He is the Chief Editor of the Journal of Emerging Market Finance (Sage Publications) and has served on the Editorial Board of the Review of Financial Stability (Elsevier). He has been a member of the South Asia Chief Economist's Advisory Council of the World Bank. Currently, he is also an advisor to the Competition Commission of India and on the Board of the Centre for Analytical Finance, ISB. He is also the founder-President of the Society for the Promotion of Game Theory and its Applications. He has published widely in international journals, and has a number of books, in economics and finance. He has served on the Board of the Industrial Reconstruction Bank of India (IRBI) and as a member on the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Advisory Group on Bankruptcy Law as well as on the bankruptcy Task Force of IPD, Columbia University. He is currently on the Board of IDE-I. He has been a consultant to various Ministries including Finance, Planning, Industry and Rural Development. He has led important government research projects like the leading indicator of economic activity, the impact of steel de-control on SAIL, the optimum use of the Hajira-Bijapur-Jagdishpur gas pipe-line and on exit policy. As an adviser of the PSFT Task Force on the plantation sector, he has developed a new financial instrument for reducing the impact of price volatility on plantation growers. He has worked closely with industry both in India and abroad. He has lectured widely to foreign industry delegations coming to India, attended their world meets as a resource person and has held closed-door, one-on-one discussions with their management teams. He has a rich experience of advising students at the PhD level and has a number of students both in India and abroad.
  • Seema Alavi
    Seema Alavi is a professor of history at Delhi University, New Delhi, India. She specializes in early modern and modern South Asia, with an interest in the transformation of the region's legacy from Indo-Persian to one heavily affected by British colonial rule. She has written books on the military, religious and medical cultures of the region from the early modern to modern times. Her most recent book is Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the age of Empire published in March 2015 from Harvard University Press, USA. Alavi earned her PhD from Cambridge University, England. She has twice been a Fulbright Scholar and a Smuts Visiting Fellow at Cambridge, and was a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard. In 2010, she was at the Radcliffe institute at Harvard as the William Bentinck-Smith Fellow. She wrote Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India, 1770-1830 (Oxford University Press, 1995) and co-authored with Muzzafar Alam, A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: The I'jaz-i Arsalani (Persian Letters 1773-1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri Polier (Oxford University Press, 2001). In 2009 she wrote Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600-1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). She serves on the editorial board of several journals, including Modern Asian Studies, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and Biblio.
  • Satyanand Nirupam
    Satyanand Nirupam is the editorial director of Rajkamal Prakashan Group. He has also been associate editor with Delhi Press and editor (Hindi) with Penguin Books India. He is the creative director of Samanvay: IHC Indian Languages' Festival, the only literature festival dedicated to Indian languages and dialects. Known in the Hindi public sphere for introducing novelty in Hindi publishing, Nirupam launched the semi-literary non-academic imprint Sarthak in Rajkamal Prakashan, to keep Hindi language and literature relevant for today's youth. His aim is to connect diverse reading groups on a large scale and encourage the culture of reading in Hindi.
  • Sanjiv Shankaran
    Sanjiv Shankaran is a journalist who writes for the editorial page of Times of India. He has worked as a journalist for 18 years, writing primarily on economic and social issues.
  • Sanjay Srivastava
    Sanjay Srivastava is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. His key publications include Constructing Post-colonial India: National Character and the Doon School (Routledge, 1998), Passionate Modernity: Sexuality, Class and Consumption in India (Routledge, 2007) and Entangled Urbanism. Slum, Gated Community and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon (OUP, 2014). He has edited and contributed to Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes, Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia (Sage, 2004) and Sexuality Studies (OUP, 2013). He is the co-author (with David Birch and Tony Schirato) of Asia: Cultural Politics in the Global Age (Palgrave, 2001).
  • Rajiv Mehrotra
    Rajiv Mehrotra, was educated at St Stephen's College, Delhi and the universities of Oxford and Columbia. He is founding Trustee & Secretary of The Foundation for Universal Trustee, Producer & Commissioning editor of The Public Service Broadcasting Trust. He has produced & mentored 600+ independent documentary films. These have won 200+ awards, with 800+ film festival screenings worldwide Rajiv Mehrotra's ten books include The Mind of The Guru, Understanding The Dalai Lama, Thakur - a biography of Sri Ramakrishna and Conversations with The Dalai Lama. He has twice addressed plenary sessions at The World Economic Forum in Davos and served as a Judge for the Templeton Prize for Spirituality. A once familiar face on Indian television for 40+ years he was the host of the country's then longest running, and most widely viewed talk show - In Conversations.
  • Priya Dutt
    Priya Dutt is a mother, a social activist, a trustee of the Nargis Dutt Memorial Charitable Trust and a Member of Parliament. Through her foundation, she has been working for three decades in the area of health and education, specially cancer, creating awareness, equipping rural hospital and working with TATA memorial hospital and federation of blood banks to spread awareness and create a registry of platelet donors. Her foundation has recently adopted a tribal village in Palgarh, Maharashtra and is holistically developing it in Health, Education, Solar power and Women Empowerment. It is also supporting the education of approximately 100 meritorious children from financially needy families.
  • Supriya Nair
    Supriya Nair is an editor with the Caravan magazine in Delhi. Her writing has appeared in Mint, Vogue, Wisden and the New Republic.
  • Jai Arjun Singh
    Jai Arjun Singh is an independent writer and critic. His latest book is The World of Hrishikesh Mukherjee: The Filmmaker Everyone Loves, about the celebrated director of films like Anand, Chupke Chupke and Gol Maal. He has previously authored Jaane bhi do Yaaro: Seriously Funny Since 1983, about the cult comedy film, and edited the anthology The Popcorn Essayists: What Movies do to Writers. He writes the widely read culture blog Jabberwock.
  • Manisha Sethi
    Manisha Sethi teaches at the Centre for the Study of Comparative Religions, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and was a fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library between 2013 and January 2015. Sethi is Consulting Associate Editor, Biblio: A Review of Books. She writes on issues of gender, religion, law and terrorism, and is the author most recently of Kafkaland: Prejudice, Law and Counterterrorism in India (Three Essays, 2014). Sethi works with the civil rights group, Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Association.
  • Radhika Dhariwal
    Radhika R. Dhariwal grew up in India, Australia, South Africa, Hungary, the Philippines, and the United States, and currently lives between Dubai and Delhi. She has a Bsc in Psychology from Brown University and an MA in the same from New York University. The PetPost Secret is her first novel, and the first book in her middle-grade fantasy series for children from 8-12.
  • Daljit Nagra
    Critically acclaimed British poet Daljit Nagra performs extracts from his latest collection Ramayana: A Retelling. Daljit Nagra was captivated by the versions of the Ramayana his grandparents regaled him with as a child. Now an award-winning poet, he has chosen to bring the story to life in a vivid and enthralling version of his own. Accessible and engaging, and bursting with energy, Nagra's Ramayana is a distillation and an animation for readers of all ages. Nagra was born and raised in West London, then Sheffield, and currently lives in London where he works as a teacher. His first collection of poetry, Look We Have Coming to Dover!, won the 2007 Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. In 2008 he won the South Bank Show/Arts Council Decibel Award. His second collection, Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!, was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize in 2011 - as was his version of the Ramayana. He is now UK Radio 4's first ever poet in residence.
  • CP Surendran
    CP surendran is a poet (Portraits of the Space We Occupy, Canaries on the Moon, Posthumous Poems, Gemini II), and a novelist ( Hadal, Lost and Found, An Iron Harvest). He is also a screenplay writer ( Gaur Hari Dastaan ). He is the former editor-in-chief of DNA. He is currently working on a new collection of poems, Repeat Radio. He divides his time between Bombay and Delhi.
  • Ananth Padmanabhan
    Ananth Padmanabhan is the author of Play with me. Ananth is a photographer, dog lover and a bibliophile. He was born in Madras, now lives in Gurgaon and considers both places home. He works in publishing.
  • Meenal Baghel
    Meenal Baghel is the Editor-in-Chief of Mumbai Mirror, India's biggest tabloid paper. Her first book Death in Mumbai is a non-fiction tour-de-force chronicling the events leading to the sensational murder of 25-year-old television executive Neeraj Grover in 2008. The incident turned into a nationally-televised spectacle, after Maria Susairaj was cleared of the charge of culpable homicide and released. In the book, Baghel investigates the nuances of the crime and all those implicated, as well as the socio-cultural circumstances that culminated in Mr. Grover's death.
  • Gillian Wright
    Gillian Wright is a journalist and author living in New Delhi. She studied both Hindi and Urdu at London University and has translated two modern classics of Hindi literature, Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari and Rahi Masoon Reza's Adha Gaon (available as A Village Divided from Penguin India). Her other books include An Introduction to the Hill Stations of India, Sri Lanka, and Birds of the Indian Subcontinent. She has collaborated with Mark Tully on all of his books including No Full Stops in India, Heart of India and India in Slow Motion.
  • A S Dulat
    A S Dulat served as the Head of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) from 1999 to 2000. On superannuation, Mr. Dulat was re-employed as advisor on Kashmir in the Prime Ministers Office from January 2001 to May 2004. He joined the Indian Police Service (Rajasthan Cadre) in 1965 and after a short stint of couple of years in the state, he was seconded to the Ministry of Home Affairs (Intelligence Bureau ) in March 1969. Mr. Dulat served in the security service for 30 years and First Secretary in the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu (1976-80). He has been a member of the National Security Advisory Board. He is the author of Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years.
  • Shyam Babu
    D Shyam Babu is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. A former journalist, Mr Babu focuses on the intersection between economic development and social change. He is keen on exploring how caste is being transformed by fast-changing India and its impact on the day-today lives of Dalits. His work (in collaboration with Devesh Kapur and Chandra Bhan Prasad) on the subject resulted in "Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs" (Random House India, 2014).
  • Rakhshanda Jalil
    Rakhshanda Jalil is a writer, translator and literary historian. She runs Hindustani Awaaz, to position and promote Hindustani language, literature and culture. She has written extensively on the monuments of Delhi as well as the culture that was once known as Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. Her recent books include Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers Movement in Urdu (OUP), and A Rebel and Her Cause: The Life and Work of Dr Rashid Jahan, a feminist writer (Women Unlimited).
  • Assa Doron
    Assa Doron first traveled to India in the early 1990s. He has since visited the country regularly, as a tour guide, anthropologist and a wedding guest. He is the author of Life on the Ganga (2013), and is also co-author, with Robin Jeffrey, of Cell Phone Nation (2013), with whom he is currently writing a book about garbage and waste in India. He is Director of the South Asia Research Institute (SARI) and Associate Professor of Anthropolgy at the Australian National University, Canberra.
  • Chandra Bhan Prasad
    Chandra Bhan Prasad is widely regarded as the most important Dalit thinker and political commentator in India today. Prasad's writings include Defying the Odds- The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs (2014), co-authored with Devesh Kapur and D. Syam Babu; Dalit Diary, 1999-2003: Reflections on Apartheid in India; and Dalit Phobia: Do They Hate Us?
  • NK Singh
    N K Singh is a Member of the BJP and former MP (Rajya Sabha). He has held key bureaucratic assignments like Expenditure and Revenue Secretary. Secretary to Prime Minister, and Member of Planning Commission. Keenly engaged in the evolution of economic policy reforms beginning 1991. A regular columnist in leading newspapers like the Hindustan Times, Hindustan, Indian Express, The Telegraph. Authored three books - The Politics of Change, Not by Reason Alone, The New Bihar, Parivarthan Aur Rajneethi and Vivek ki Seema.
  • Githa Hariharan
    Githa Hariharan has written novels, short fiction and essays over the last three decades. Her highly acclaimed work includes The Thousand Faces of Night which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in 1993, the short story collection The Art of Dying, and the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master, When Dreams Travel, In Times of Siege and Fugitive Histories. Her most recent book is a collection of essays entitled Almost Home: Cities and Other Places.
  • Karthika V K
    Karthika V K is publisher and chief editor of HarperCollins Publishers India. She started her career in publishing at Penguin Books India in 1996 and moved to Harper in 2006 to head up the publishing programme in India. She has acquired and published several major writers of fiction and non-fiction. At HarperCollins she oversees a publishing programme that includes a vibrant poetry and graphic fiction (and non-fiction) list apart from a strong literary imprint in Fourth Estate and Harper Sport, the only imprint in India that's dedicated to sport books.
  • Chiki Sarkar
    Chiki Sarkar is an eminent Indian publisher. She has previously been publisher of Penguin Random House India. Her first role was as the editor-in-chief of the then newly-founded Random House India. She then became publisher of Penguin Books India in 2011 and held the same role at Penguin Random House India after 2014, when the two companies merged.
  • Ashok Chopra
    Ashok Chopra has occupied some of the hottest seats in the Indian book trade - executive editor of Vikas Publishing House, vice-president of Macmillan India, publishing director of UBS Publishers, executive director and publisher of the India Today Book Club and Books Today as well as chief executive and publisher of HarperCollins India. Currently he is the chief executive of Hay House Publishers India. He lives in Gurgaon, near Delhi. Presently he is working on his next book: The Ageing Loins.
  • Pramod Kapoor
    Pramod Kapoor founded Roli Books. It is one of India's leading publishing houses.
  • Ashutosh
    Ashutosh is a member and spokesperson of the Aam Aadmi Party. He is the author of The Gladiator, The Crown Prince and the Hope- Battle for Change and Anna- 13 Days that Changed India. Ashutosh was the editor of IBN7 and one of the best known faces of Hindi journalism. A respected journalist for 24 years, who began his career as a print journalist and went on to be a part of the original Aaj Tak team that revolutionized TV news, he quit it all to become a political activist. Writing remains his first love.
  • Madhu Kishwar
    Madhu Purnima Kishwar is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and Director of the Centre's Indic Studies project. She is also the founder of Manushi-A Journal about Women and Society and Manushi Sangathan, an organization working for democratic reforms that promote greater social justice. Kishwar has authored a number of books: Modi Muslims and Media: Voices from Narendra Modi's Gujarat, Manushi Publications (2014),Zealous Reformers, Deadly Laws: Battling Stereotypes, Sage Publishers (2008), Deepening Democracy: Challenges of Governance and Globalization in India, Oxford University Press (2005), Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women, Oxford University Press (1999), Religion at the Service of Nationalism and Other Essays, Oxford University Press, (1998), Women Bhakta Poets, Lives and Poetry of Women Mystics in India from 6th to 17th Century, Manushi Publications, (1997), Gandhi and Women, Manushi Publications (1986). Her edited works include The Dilemma and Other Stories, Manushi Publications, (1997) and In Search of Answers: Indian Women's Voices from Manushi, with Ruth Vanita Zed Books London, (1984).
  • Indrajit Hazra
    Indrajit Hazra is Editor Views, Economic Times. His attempt to comment on everything under the sun has made him a social menace in certain social media circles. He is the author of the novels The Burnt Forehead of Max Saul and The Garden of Earthly Delights, both of which have also been published in French. His latest book is Grand Delusions: A Short Biography of Kolkata.
  • Chinmayi Arun
    Chinmayi Arun is the Research Director of the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi. She is also an Assistant Professor of law at the university and teaches specialised courses on Internet Governance, privacy and media policy. She is the research coordinator of the Oxford India Media Law Research Project, a member of the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group formed by the Government of India for the India Internet Governance Forum, and one of the academic experts for the Internet and Jurisdiction Project's Observatory. She works with media regulation and internet governance, particularly in the context of the rights to free speech and privacy. Chinmayi has studied at the NALSAR University of Law, and London School of Economics and Political Science. At the LSE, she read regulatory theory and new media regulation, and was awarded the Bernard Levin Award for Student Journalism. She has worked with Ernst and Young and AZB and Partners, Mumbai in the past, and has taught at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences where she introduced courses on regulatory theory and communication regulation.
  • Harmala Gupta
    Harmala Gupta is a cancer survivor, pioneer and activist. In 1991 she founded the first cancer support group in India, 'Cancer Sahyog'. In 1996 she founded 'CanSupport', which has pioneered palliative care at home for people with cancer in North India. Besides being President of CanSupport, Harmala is also Founder-President of Cancer Care India, an umbrella organization of cancer support groups in India. She is on the Governing Body of the Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute in Delhi and is also a fellow of the UICC in Geneva. She has delivered talks at international and national forums, has been interviewed by the media both at home and abroad and has written extensively on cancer, survivorship and issues related to palliative care. She has also received many awards including one from the President of India for "outstanding contribution to social service" instituted by the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry. More recently, in February 2014, she was conferred the Governor General of Canada's medallion for "pioneering contributions to palliative cancer care in India."
  • Meena Kandasamy
    Meena Kandasamy is a poet, writer, activist and translator. Her work maintains a focus on caste annihilation, linguistic identity and feminism. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy(2010). Her first novel, The Gypsy Goddess was published by Atlantic Books (UK) and HarperCollins India in 2014.
  • Dr Saif Mahmood
    Saif Mahmood, PhD (Law) is Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and Founder of South Asian Alliance for Literature, Art & Culture (SAALARC). An aficionado of Urdu poetry, he remembers most of his Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz by heart, recites them effortlessly and translates them into English cautiously. His translations have appeared in a number of prestigious publications and his passionate recitations on varied platforms, of classic and progressive Urdu poets alike, have enthralled many an audience. Saif is associated with various Literature Festivals and blogs on besabab.wordpress.com where he has also authored a series on Urdu poets of Delhi titled "Dilli jo ek sheher tha" (soon to be published as a book).
  • Sadia Dehlvi
    Sadia Dehlvi is a Delhi-based media person, activist, writer and a columnist. She is popularly known for criticising radical interpretations of Islam and calls for a pluralistic understanding of Islam. Dehlvi has produced and scripted a number of documentaries and television programs, including Amma and Family (1995), which broke the stereotype portrayal of a Muslim family. Dehlvi co-produced and scripted the series, also playing one of the main roles. She is the author of "Sufism: The heart of Islam" and "The Sufi Courtyard: Dargahs of Delhi".
  • Sagari Chhabra
    Sagari Chhabra is a writer and film-director. Her latest book, 'In Search Of Freedom'- journeys through India and South-east Asia (Harper Collins 2015) is about India's unknown freedom fighters and the essence of freedom. Her other publications include, 'The Talking Tree' (Natraj Press 2014), 'The Gift' a play on the nuclear issue and 'The Professional Woman's Dreams' - a poetry collection. She has written, produced and directed fifteen documentary films and one fiction film which have won five awards. They include: 'Now, I will Speak' (awarded by the International Association of Women In Radio and Television, and two NIFA awards), 'Tatva' a fiction film (awarded a Rajat Kamal and selected in the Indian Panorama) and 'Global Warming' (awarded the World Food Day award by the United Nations). She is a journalist, broadcaster and educationist and lives in New Delhi.
  • Ajai Shukla
    Ajai Shukla is consulting editor and columnist with Business Standard on strategic affairs, defence and diplomacy. A former colonel who has commanded a tank regiment in the Indian Army, he has been a New India Foundation Fellow and anchor/editor with NDTV and Doordarshan. He has covered several conflicts including the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, strife in India's north-east and the Army's continuing deployments in internal insurgency.
  • Kingshuk Nag
    Kingshuk Nag is Resident Editor of The Times of India, Hyderabad. His books include The Double Life of Ramalinga Raju: The Story of India's Biggest Corporate Fraud (2012), Battlegrond Telangana (2012), The NaMo Story - A Political Life (2013) and The Saffron Tide (2014).
  • Ajoy Bose
    Ajoy Bose is a political commentator and has been regarded, in recent years, as the leading expert on Mayawati and her Dalit politics. For nearly four decades, he has been associated with a wide range of media. He is at present a senior political columnist and television commentator, published in leading newspapers and magazines in India and abroad and appearing on major channels. He began his journalistic career in the early 1970s with Patriot newspaper and Link magazine, going on to become Delhi correspondent of Sunday magazine, and in the 1980s started the Delhi edition of The Sunday Observer, India's first Sunday newspaper. In the 1990s he was with the Pioneer newspaper where he became the Executive Editor. He was also India correspondent of the Guardian, London from 1978 to 1996 and later the New Delhi representative for the Khaleej Times, Dubai. He has broadcast extensively on the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Nederlands. During the 1998 national elections he co-hosted along with Vinod Dua and Mark Tully the popular television poll programme 'Chunauv chunauti' for Sony television. In 2004, he produced a weekly foreign affairs television show Global Challenges on Doordarshan News. Bose is the author of For Reasons of State: Delhi under Emergency, Shah Commission and Behenji: A Political Biography Of Mayawati.
  • Rohini Mohan
    Rohini Mohan is an award-winning journalist. Her literary non-fiction book The Seasons of Trouble, on three lives in postwar Sri Lanka, was published in 2014 in the UK, US and India by Verso Books and Harper Collins. She has written on politics and human rights for The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Caravan, Tehelka, The Economic Times and The Hindu, among others. She is based in Bangalore.
  • Gautam Chintamani
    A born cinephile, Gautam Chintamani has been writing on cinema for over a decade. He is the author of Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna. Gautam's writing has appeared in The Hindustan Times, India Today, Outlook, The Pioneer, The Tribune, The Asian Age, The Times of India, Deccan Chronicle, First Post, and Scroll.in amongst others. He's also had a weekly film based columns in The Hindustan Times Brunch and Dawn, Pakistan's most read English daily.
  • Lyndee Prickitt
    Lyndee Prickitt is Executive Producer of Digital Fables, creator of the award-winning weareangry.net (winner of the Transmedia Book of the Year Award at the Digital Book Awards, nominee for the Webby Awards, runner up at the New Media Writing Prize 2014). She is an American woman who has lived in India for nine years. She has previously been a producer for Reuters.
  • Ravinder Singh
    Ravinder Singh is a bestselling author. His debut novel I Too Had a Love Story has touched millions of hearts. Can Love Happen Twice? is his second book. After spending most of his life in Burla, a very small town in Orissa, Ravinder has finally settled down in Chandigarh. Having worked as a software engineer for several years at some of India's prominent IT companies, Ravinder has recently completed his MBA at the world-renowned Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. Ravinder loves playing Snooker in his free time. He is crazy about Punjabi music and loves dancing to its beat.
  • Shantanu Anand
    Shantanu Anand is a spoken word poet, and co-founder of Airplane Poetry Movement, a Project to empower and support spoken word poets in India. He also works with Campus Diaries, where he works to create an ecosystem of student innovators around the country."
  • Ram Gopal Varma
    Ram Gopal Varma is an Indian film director, screenwriter and producer, known for his works in Telugu cinema and Bollywood. He has directed film's across multiple genres, including parallel cinema and docudrama. In 2004, He was featured in the BBC World series Bollywood Bosses. In 2006, Grady Hendrix of Film Comment, published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York City cited Varma as "Bombay's Most Successful Maverick" for his works on Avant-garde cinema. Varma is regarded as the fountain head of new age Indian cinema. Varma wrote an autobiography titled Na Ishtam, which discusses his life experiences and philosophy. 'Naa Ishtam' was released in December 2010.
  • Mahendra Jakhar
    Mahendra Jakhar is an author, screen-writer and film-maker. THE BUTCHER OF BENARES is his first novel, a crime-thriller published by Westland Publications. The Butcher of Benares was rated as the Best Crime Fiction Debut Novel of 2014 and is the Amazon Rising Star of 2015. His latest book THE SWASTIKA KILLER too is published by Westland. He is an ex-journalist who took to writing for films and TV shows. He has written film scripts for Mahesh Bhatt, Tigmannshu Dhulia, Ketan Mehta, Ashwini Chaudhary and Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan. He has written various TV shows like CID, Maano Ya Na Maano, Seeta aur Geeta, Dwarikadhish and various documentaries for National Geographic and Discovery Channel. His latest film project, Manjhi - The Mountain Man directed by Ketan Mehta will soon be released by Viacom.
  • Maithili Rao
    Drifting on a stream of happenstance, Maithili Rao found anchor in Bombay and writing on cinema. She can't say when film criticism turned into a vocation from an engrossing hobby but started with foreign film reviews for The Sunday Observer and branched out into writing extensively on Indian films for national and international publications. She has contributed to half dozen books on cinema and finally, got down to writing the official biography of Smita Patil that is due to be released in October 2015.
  • TCA Srinivasa Raghavan
    TCA Srinivasa Raghavan is retired journalist who reads and writes a lot. He has worked for all the major newspapers in the country over the last 35 years, frequently reviewing books and writers. Currently, he writes a column on them called Kitabkhana in the Business Standard.
  • Amitabha Bagchi
    Amitabha Bagchi was born in Delhi and went to school there. The last few years of school was a blur of exams - Junior Science Talent Search, National Talent Search, Annual Maths and Physics Olympiads - and coaching classes to prepare for those exams. He finally found himself at IIT Delhi in the summer of 1992 thinking that the worst was over. It wasn't. Belying the expectations raised by his uninspriring performance at IIT, Amitabha got his PhD in Computer Science in 2002. Then, after loitering around for a couple of years with the nebulous designation of post-doc, he returned to IIT Delhi where he is currently employed as an assistant professor. He is the author of The Householder, Above Average and This Place.
  • Amrita Tripathi
    Amrita Tripathi is a novelist and senior journalist. The Sibius Knot, published in 2015, deals with the devastation of growing up in an emotional wasteland, as a group of friends find themselves at odds with everything, including their very environment. Ultimately a tale of love and redemption, The Sibius Knot is a book about how fragile relationships - and lives - really are. Her first novel Broken News tracks the dysfunctional side of life in the 24/7 news wheel. Fractured identities, fragile egos and misplaced priorities take centre stage, a direct counter-point to the high-adrenaline, glittering world of TV news.
  • Fahad Samar
    Fahad Samar is the best selling author of Scandal Point and Flash Point, the first two novels in his Mumbai trilogy published by Harper Collins in 2014 and 2015. He studied at Bombay International School and at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai from where he graduated with a degree in English Literature. He began his career as a filmmaker with Merchant-Ivory Productions in 1987. In 1993, Fahad established his company, Bombay Talkie and has since written, directed and produced scores of commercials, documentaries, corporate films and TV shows. A pioneer in youth culture programming in India, he has directed cult TV shows like BPL OYE!, Superhit Muqabla and The Poppadum Show. Fahad is a well-known social commentator and has contributed columns regularly to the Mumbai Mirror, DNA and the Indian Express over the past ten years. He also writes on food, wine and travel for Upper Crust magazine. Fahad's articles and essays have appeared in Elle, Harper's Bazaar and Conde Nast Traveller among other publications. He is also a film critic and presents a weekly TV show, Friday Double Bill on NDTV Prime and Filmology with Fahad Samar on Radio One 94.3FM. Fahad lives in Mumbai with his wife, Simone Singh.
  • Yashodhara Lal
    Yashodhara Lal graduated from IIM-Bangalore in 2002 and has over a decade of experience in the corporate world, across the FMCG and media industries. She lives in Gurgaon with her husband Vijay and the three children who they innovatively refer to as Peanut, Pickle and Papad. Yashodhara began her journey in writing with her blog, described as 'a serious attempt to take life less seriously', now at www.yashodharalal.com. She is the author of Just Married, Please Excuse and Sorting Out Sid.
  • Anuj Bahri
    Anuj Bahri is a bookseller, publisher and principal agent. He is CEO and Principal Agent, Red Ink Literary Agency, and runs Delhi's Bahrison's Bookshops chain. He believes there is no story that has not been written, but the love with which it is narrated makes all the difference. He graduated from the University of Delhi with a Bachelors in Commerce, and after wasting enough time with a few small but good management courses, joined the legendry booksellers - BAHRISONS at Khan Market, New Delhi. After having worked with the bookstore for 20 odd years under the tutorship of Balraj Bahri, he added a small publishing division (Tara Press) to the existing line of business as a bookseller. Six year ago, he set up the RED INK LITERARY AGENCY and is principal agent to Amish Tripathi, Anuja Chauhanand and several others.
  • Avirook Sen
    Avirook Sen is a journalist. He is the author of Aarushi: Anatomy of a Murder.
  • Christopher C. Doyle
    Christopher C. Doyle is the author of The Mahabharata Secret and the Mahabharata Quest. Before he finally embarked on his journey as a writer blending ancient legends, science and history, Christopher pursued a career in the corporate world, graduating from St. Stephens College, Delhi with a degree in Economics and studying business management at IIM Calcutta. Over the course of his corporate career, he has worked with leading multinational organizations like Coats Viyella, Hilton Hotels, IBM and The Economist Group, before setting up Dynamic Results India, a strategic consultancy in India in partnership with Dynamic Results LLC which is based in the US. Over the course of his corporate career, Christopher has written articles on management and business for Indian and international publications and is also a regular invited speaker for international conventions and conferences. He is a certified Executive Coach and now works with senior executives to help them achieve success and better results in their organisations. Christopher lives in Gurgaon with his wife, daughter and two dogs and enjoys writing, reading, swimming and tennis as well as travelling and meeting people. He is also a musician and lives his passion for music through his band called Mid Life Crisis which plays classic rock.
  • Avijit Ghosh
    Avijit Ghosh is a senior editor with The Times of India. He is the author of two books on cinema: Cinema Bhojpuri, which traces the history of Bhojpuri films and maps its growth over the past five decades and 40 Retakes: Bollywood Classics You May have Missed, which takes a second look at a bunch of outstanding films that failed to wow the critics and the moviegoers when first released. He has also penned a novel, Bandicoots in the Moonlight, which suffered the fate of an honourable art film: a critical success and a commercial failure. His second novel, set in Delhi of the late 80s, is scheduled for release in the summer of 2016.
  • Maria Khan
    Maria Khan promotes interfaith programs and does the Islam for Kids show on ETV. She is currently pursuing a Phd. from Jamia Hamdard University and is a member of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality.
  • Lt Gen Tajinder Shergill
    Lt General Tajinder Shergill, PVSM, is the co-author of The Monsoon War: Young Officers Reminisce - 1965 India-Pakistan War. He has served as General Officer Commanding in North East India and been Chairman of the Punjab Public Service Commission.
  • Sundeep Dougal
    Sundeep Dougal is Managing Editor of Scroll.in He has previously been editor of Outlook Online.
  • Tuhin Sinha
    Tuhin A. Sinha is an Indian author. He is known for the novels The Edge of Power, The Edge of Desire, Of Love and Politics, That Thing Called Love and 22 Yards. Tuhin has also scripted several popular TV shows. He has co-written one of the most popular soaps on Star Plus, Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai between November 2011 and April 2012. Some of the other serials on which he has worked include Pyar Ki Kashti Mein (Star One, 2004-5), Koi Dil Mein hai (Sony, 2004-5), Dekho Magar Pyar se (Star, 2005) andWaqt Batayega Kaun Apna Kaun Paraya (Sony, 2008) and Afsar Bitiya (Zee, 2012). A TV film, Phir Se, based on a story written by Tuhin and premiered on Sahara One, won the RAPA Award for the best telefilm in 2005.
  • Swaminathan Aiyar
    Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar is consulting editor of The Economic Times and a leading columnist and TV commentator in India, well-known for a popular weekly column titled "Swaminomics" in the Times of India. He is the author of Escape From The Benevolent Zookeepers - The Best Of Swaminomics (New Delhi: Times of India, 2008) and has been called "India's leading economic journalist" by Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution. He has been the editor of India's two biggest financial dailies, The Economic Times and Financial Express, and was also the India correspondent of The Economist for two decades. He has frequently been a consultant to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Swami spends part of the year in India and part in the USA. He holds a Master's degree in economics from Oxford University, UK.
  • Sumant Batra
    Sumant Batra is the founder and convenor of Kumaon Literary Festival, a not-for-profit annual literary festival to be held at Te Aroha in Dhanachuli in Uttarakhand. The first edition of the festival was held from 23-27 October 2015. He is a corporate and policy lawyer of global eminence; writer, poet and columnist; has authored various papers; and contributes articles to a number of publications including newspapers. His other initiatives include setting up of creative enterprises which include a boutique hotel and a museum. He is senior international consultant to IMF, World Bank Group and OECD, has worked extensively on policy matters in Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East and South Asia.
  • Sujata Parashar
    Sujata Parashar, is a novelist, poet, short story writer and activist. Her best - selling debut novel, 'In pursuit of infidelity,' (Rupa and co. 2009) explored the man - woman relationship outside the institution of marriage from a modern woman's perspective. The second in the series, 'In Pursuit of Ecstasy,' (Rupa and co. 2011) studied the youth -parent relationship in modern times and made an attempt to portray how the seeds of dissension between the two impacts society at large. The book was long listed for the Economist Crossword Book Award 2012. Her latest novel, the third in the "Pursuit" series, 'In Pursuit of a Lesser Offence,' was released in 2014 (Alchemy) and explores the relevance of institution of marriage in current times. Her first short fiction, 'Wake me only when the Sun is high,' (2011), and her first book of poems in the series, 'Poetry Out and Loud,' (2012) have won awards. She's currently working on her first collection of short stories, scheduled to be launched in December 2015.
  • Srijana Mitra Das
    Srijana Mitra Das holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University, UK. She works on the Times of India's Editorial Page where she writes on political and cultural topics and manages the Q&A interview section. She is keenly interested in Bollywood cinema, literature, music (classical piano, rock and jazz), cuisine, consumption and lifestyles - and the oft-overlooked ties these have with deeper economic movements, wider political change.
  • Shovon Chowdhury
    Shovon Chowdhury is an amateur humourist. His writes a popular blog, India Update, and is also the creator of The Trilokpuri Incident, a research project which investigates something no one can remember. He is the author of The Competent Authority.
  • Shivam Vij
    Shivam Vij is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. He has reported and written extensively on caste-based violence, affirmative action and politics. He has also reported on the Kashmir conflict and the India's Maoist uprising. His work has appeared in Tehelka, Open and Caravan and Himal South Asian, amongst other publications. He is a member of the South Asian team blog, Kafila.
  • Serena Chopra
    Serena Chopra is the author of 'Bhutan, A Certain Modernity', which was published in 2007. In her most recent project, Chopra is exploring the lives of residents of Majnu Ka Tilla, a Tibetan community in Delhi, where thousands of exiles have lived for nearly 40 years.
  • Sankarshan Thakur
    Sankarshan Thakur is The Telegraph's Delhi-based Roving Editor. He has extensively reported Kashmir, Bihar and socio-political conflict in the sub-continent. His books include The Brothers Bihari, Subaltern Saheb and Single Man.
  • Rajeev Gowda
    M V Rajeev Gowda is an Indian politician and academician. He is a member of parliament in the Rajya Sabha since July 2014 and a national spokesperson for the Indian National Congress. He was Professor of Economics and Social Sciences and the Chairperson of the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He served as the Director of the Central Board, Reserve Bank of India. His books include Judgments, Decisions, and Public Policy: Behavioral Decision Theory Perspectives and Applications, (Ed., with Jeffrey Fox), New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, and Integrating Insurance and Risk Management for Hazardous Wastes, (Co-editor, with Howard Kunreuther), Boston: Kluwer, 1990
  • Preeti Shenoy
    Preeti Shenoy is the author of five best-sellers, artist ( Portraits, Mixed media, paper quilling), poet, yoga-buff, ex-basketball player, blogger, dobe-owner, nature lover, Ted X speaker and a Mother. Her books include 'Life is what you make it', 'Tea for two and a piece of cake', 'The Secret wish list' and 'The One You Cannot Have'.
  • Vivek Menon
    Vivek Menon is a wildlife conservationist, environmental commentator, author and photographer with a passion for elephants. The winner of the 2001 Rufford Award for International Conservation for his work to save the Asian elephant, Menon is the Founder, Executive Director and CEO of the Wildlife Trust of India as well as Regional Director and Advisor to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Internationally, Menon is the Chair of the IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group (2013-2016) and member of the Species Survival Commission of the IUCN, on the International Jury of the Future for Nature Awards (Netherlands) and an Advisor of the Marjan Centre of Kings College, London. He is the author or editor of nine wildlife books including the recently published bestselling Indian Mammals, A Field Guide, scores of technical reports and more than 150 articles in various scientific and popular publications.
  • Vineet Kumar
    Vineet Kumar is a leading Hindi scholar of media, a popular blogger and teaches at Ambedkar University. His articles on the changing faces of media have appeared in Naya Gyanoday, Vasudha, Vak, Media Mantra aur Sanchar etc.
  • Prasoon Joshi
    Prasoon Joshi is a renowned Indian lyricist, screenwriter and ad-guru. He is CEO of McCann World group India and Chairman (Asia Pacific), a subsidiary of global marketing firm McCann Erickson. He is also a writer and award-wining lyricist and poet. He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India for his contribution towards the field of Arts, Literature and Advertising in 2015 and is a three-time winner of the Filmfare Best Lyricist Award.
  • Patrick French
    Patrick French is a British writer and historian, based in London and Delhi. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he studied English and American literature. French is the author of several books including: Younghusband: the Last Great Imperial Adventurer (1994), a biography of Francis Younghusband, The World Is What It Is (2008), an authorised biography of Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States of America,[ and India: a Portrait: an intimate biography of 1.2 billion people (2010).
  • Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
    Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an Indian journalist, political commentator, author and a documentary film maker. His works have appeared in print, radio, television and documentaries. His books include Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand, Media Ethics and Gas Wars
  • Narayani Ganesh
    Narayani Ganesh is a senior editor with The Times of India. She writes on issues concerning the environment, science and technology, travel and tourism, heritage, philosophy, and health. She edits The Speaking Tree Sunday newspaper and daily column of that name.
  • Satyarth Nayak
    Satyarth Nayak is an author and script-writer based in New Delhi. His debut novel The Emperor's Riddles released in 2014 became a bestselling thriller. Described as 'a history meets mystery' by Times of India, the book earned him acclaim from writers like Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi and comparisons with Dan Brown. Holding a Masters in English Literature from St. Stephen's, Satyarth's short stories have also won the British Council Writers Circle Prize while his latest story Elixir was published in Penguin's anthology Something Happened On The Way To Heaven - 20 Inspiring Real Life Stories. He is presently working on his next mystery thriller and also creating a coffee table book celebrating one of the most iconic films of Bollywood.
  • Vinita Dawra Nangia
    Vinita Dawra Nangia is a Senior Editor, Author and Columnist with The Times of India. With over two decades of experience in Lifestyle and Features Journalism, she specializes in society, relationships and life commentary. Vinita launched Page 3 and has also been a pioneering fashion journalist and a regular on talk circuits. She writes a weekly column in The Times of India, O-zone, on contemporary Living and Relationships. She has authored two books -- It's Your Life -- Reflections on Contemporary Living and Relationships and a coffee table book on fashion -- Fashion Fair -The Journey of 13 Contemporary Designers. Vinita recently conceptualized and is the Director of 'Write India', the country's biggest and first-ever platform for crowd-sourced writing. It is a Short Story Contest like never before, with 11 of the country's top selling authors joining hands to find a new generation of writers.
  • Rakesh Sood
    Ambassador Rakesh Sood is a Post Graduate in Physics and additionally in Economics and Defence studies. He has over 36 years of experience in the field of foreign affairs, economic diplomacy and international security issues. Before joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1976, Ambassador Sood worked for a couple of years in the private sector. Ambassador Sood initially served in the Indian missionsat Brussels, Dakar, Geneva and Islamabad in different capacities and as Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, later in his career. He set up the Disarmament and International Security Affairs Division in the Foreign Ministry, which he led for eight years till the end of 2000.During this period, Ambassador Sood was in charge for multilateral disarmament negotiations, bilateral dialogues with Pakistan, strategic dialogues with other countries including US, UK, France and Israel (especially after the nuclear tests in 1998), and dealt with India's role in the ASEAN Regional Forum, as part of the 'look East' policy. He then served as India's first Ambassador - Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations in Geneva. He also chaired a number of international Working Groups including those relating to negotiations on landmines and cluster munitions and was a member of UN Secretary General's Disarmament Advisory Board (2002-03). Subsequently, he was India's Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to early 2008, Ambassador to Nepal from 2008 to 2011 and to France from 2011 to March 2013. In September 2013, Ambassador Sood was appointed Special Envoy of the Prime Minister for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Issues; a position he held till May 2014. Since his retirement he has been writing and commentating regularly in both print and audio visual media on India's foreign policy, its economic dimensions and regional and international security issues. He is a frequent speaker/contributor at various policy planning groups and reputed think-tanks in India and overseas.
  • Rosalyn D'Mello
    Rosalyn D'Mello is a widely published freelance art writer based in New Delhi. Her debut non-fiction title, A Handbook For My Lover will be released in November 2015 by Harper Collins. Her art reviews and features have been published in Art + Auction, Modern Painters, Passages, Art India, Take on Art. She is a regular contributor to Vogue, Open, Mint Lounge, Art Review, Art Review Asia. She was the associate editor of The Art Critic, a 600+ page selection of the art writings of Richard Bartholomew, from the 50s to the early's. She was among five writers nominated for Forbe's Best Emerging Art Writer Award in 2014 and was also nominated for the inaugural Prudential Eye Art Award for Best Writing on Asian Contemporary Art in 2014.