Abhilash Pillai (Prof. and Dr.) is an alumnus of the School of Drama, Calicut University; National School of Drama, New Delhi; and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London: A Ph.D. from JNU, New Delhi he is a play director, pedagogue and scholar of contemporary Indian theatre, who has directed several plays in Indian and international languages. Prof. Pillai is credited as one of the initiators of digital theatre in Modern Indian Drama. His works draw on a array of material ranging from the traditional and classical to the modern, all presented in a modern aesthetic style. He has contributed articles on theatre to leading national and international publications, and has attended seminars and conducted workshops in India and abroad. He has been involved in several international and national collaboration and initiated the first-ever collaboration between NSD and the Grand Circus, Kerala, which culminated in Clowns and Clouds, a production directed by him. He is also the author of C.N. Sreekantan Nair: A Vision and Mission of a Theatre Activist, published by the Central Sahitya Akademi. Besides, he was a member of various visiting faculties in Indian and foreign institutes, and of the board of studies at different universities in Delhi and Kerala. He was the Professor of Acting and Direction and In-Charge of the Cultural Exchange Programme at NSD for nearly 20 years. Recently, he was also the Executive Director of the Asia Theatre Education Centre (ATEC) Central Academy of Drama, Beijing, China. Presently, he is the Director of School of Drama and Fine Arts at University of Calicut in Thrissur. Among his many awards are the Sanskriti Award 2002-03, National School of Drama’s Manohar Singh Smriti Purskar 2009, and the Kerala Sangeet Natak Award 2012 for his achievements in the field of theatre.
Amandeep Sandhu hails from Odisha and is the author of two novels: Sepia Leaves (2008 Rupa) and Roll of Honour (2012, Rupa). His non-fiction work, Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines (Westland/Amazon, 2019) is part-reportage, part-memoir, part-contextual history. The book was long-listed for the NIF-Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Award 2020 and short-listed for the Atta Galatta-BLF Non-Fiction Prize 2020. His essays and short stories have appeared in various anthologies, magazines and websites. Amandeep was a Fellow, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany (2013 to 2015) and is currently a Homi Bhabha Fellow (2022-24) working on a book tentatively titled The Outliers: Sikhs Who Live Outside Panjab, In India. He lives in Bengaluru and writes for Caravan, Scroll, The Hindu and The Hindu BussinessLine.
ANITA RATNAM is a celebrated performer of dance and theatre. As choreographer, writer, speaker and mentor her impact on the Indian performing arts has been recognised with awards and honours. As a culture catalyst, Anita’s work traverses a wide range — academia, youth outreach, motivational speaking and digital creation.
Apar Gupta is a lawyer and writer, who specialises in the intersection of technology and democratic rights. He has a Master’s degree from Columbia Law School, and over 15 years of experience as a lawyer. He has worked on cases related to technology and civil rights, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India and Justice Puttaswamy v. Union of India. He is also co-founder of the Network Neutrality campaign SaveTheInternet.in and the data protection campaign SaveOurPrivacy.in. He serves as the Executive Director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, for which he was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship. His writings have appeared in Indian Express and The Hindu, and he conducts courses at NLS and NLU.
Dr Arunabha Ghosh is an internationally recognised public policy expert, author, columnist, and institution builder. He is the founder-CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), one of Asia’s leading policy research institutions and among the world’s 20 best climate think tanks. Arunabha advises governments, industry, civil society, and international organisations around the world. He currently serves on the Government of India’s G20 Finance Track Advisory Group and advises the Sherpa Track for India’s G20 Presidency in 2022-23. In 2022, the UN Secretary-General appointed him to the High-level Expert Group on the Credibility and Accountability of Net-Zero Announcements by Non-State Actors.
Avijit Mukul Kishore is a cinematographer and filmmaker based in Mumbai, working in documentary films and interdisciplinary moving-image practices in films and digital media. He worked as a broadcaster on Doordarshan (1987-91), and studied cinematography at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. He is involved in cinema pedagogy as a lecturer and curator of film programmes. His films have been shown at Documenta 14, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Berlinale, Sheffield Docfest, Chicago Architecture Biennial and Dhaka Art Summit.
D I ARAVINDAN is a journalist, writer, critic and translator. He is now Features Editor in The Hindu Tamil. He has published 10 books including novels, short-story collections, and critical essays. He has also written the Mahabharata for kids. Aravindan attended a workshop in Wales, the U.K. to bring Welsh literature to Tamil through English. He has also written a book on the writer Sundara Ramaswamy’s life and literary works for Sahithya Akademi. As a journalist, Aravindan’s primary interests revolve around social issues, women’s issues, literature and cricket.
Deepan Sivaraman is a theatre director, scenographer, dramaturge and educator based in Delhi. He is the founding Artistic Director of Oxygen Theatre Company in Kerala, and Performance Studies Collective in Delhi. He has directed and designed over 70 theatre productions for various companies and academic institutions in India and Europe. Some of his notable works have been performed in festivals such as Avignon, Alameda, Edinburgh, ULICA-Krakow, Wuzhen-Shanghai, Prithvi, ITFOK, META and Bharat Rang Mahotsav. He was awarded the Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship in 2003, The Kerala Sangeet Natak Academy Award for theatre direction in 2012, and Mahindra Excellence National Theatre Awards in 2010 and 2018, for Spinal Cord and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari respectively. Deepan’s works represented Indian scenography at the Prague Quadrennial in 2011, and he served as the artistic director of International Theatre Festival of Kerala in 2013. His notable works are Khasakkinte Ithihasam, Spinal Cord, Peer Gynt, Lord of the Flies, Kamala, Dark Things, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nationalism Project and Ubu Roi. Deepan teaches at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University, Delhi.
Deepti Naval is an Indian actor, director, writer, painter and photographer, A multifaceted personality, Deepti has carved a distinct niche for herself, winning critical acclaim for her ‘sensitive and close to life’ portrayals that emphasised the changing role of women in India. A graduate of the Hunter College, City University of New York, Deepti has a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, studying painting as her major subject along with psychology, astronomy and American theatre. Her knife work with oil on canvas is distinctly expressionistic. Deepti made her film debut in 1980 with Ek Baar Phir, and has done over 90 films, including Chashme Baddoor, Katha, Saath Saath, Kamla, Ankahi, Main Zinda Hoon, and Mirch Masala. She has received the best actor award at several national and international film festivals for her roles in Leela, Firaaq, Memories in March, Listen Amaya, NH-10, The Boy with the Top Knot, and others. In 2010 she also won the Best Screenplay award at the New York Indian Film Festival for her directorial film, Do Paise Ki Dhoop Chaar Aane Ki Baarish. She has three books to her credit: her first collection of poems, Lamha Lamha (1981), Black Wind and Other Poems (2004), and The Mad Tibetan: Stories From Then and Now (2011). Her latest book is A Country Called Childhood (2021).
Dhanya Rajendran is a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of The News Minute, a digital publication that covers South India. In a journalism career spanning 19 years, Dhanya has a body of work focussing on politics, human rights, gender-based violence, and disaster coverage, driven by ground reporting and storytelling. Dhanya was named one of the best entrepreneurs in the country in Fortune’s 40 under 40 list. The News Minute and she have won several awards for their sensitive and courageous reportage. Dhanya had earlier worked as the South India head for Times Now, reporting extensively from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. She is a graduate of the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ).
G.R. Gopinath (Capt.) is the founder of Air Deccan, India’s first low-cost airline, and the founder and Chairman of Deccan Charters and Aviation, a helicopter company in the private sector. A graduate of the National Defence Academy, Captain Gopinath was commissioned as an officer in the Indian Army in 1971 when he served during the Indo-Pak War, and also in Kashmir, Bhutan, Assam, Sikkim and other parts of India. He is known to have used environmentally- conscious farming techniques in his agricultural ventures, and in 1996, was awarded the Rolex International Award for Enterprise for breaking new ground with his project Ecological Silk Farming to Improve Living Standards. He is the recipient of the Rajyotsava Award from the Government of Karnataka, and the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur from the French government. His autobiography Simply Fly was translated into Kannada, and was made into a Tamil film (Soorarai Pottru) starring Suriya. His other books are You Cannot Miss This Flight, and Our India: Reflections on a Nation Betwixt and Between. He writes for print and online media houses on issues concerning economics, enterprise, politics, governance and society.
Gaur Gopal Das is an electrical engineer, having studied at the College of Engineering, Pune. After a brief stint with Hewlett Packard, he decided to upgrade his career to be a life coach. Ever since, he has been speaking at various prestigious academic institutions and corporate firms in India and abroad for over two decades, and even at the United Nations and the British Parliament. He has spoken at many charity events to raise funds for social initiatives in education and rural development. His motivational videos are viral, having reached around one billion views. He is known as the urban online monk, with over 17 million followers across all social media platforms. His debut book Life’s Amazing Secrets, (2018, Penguin), is an Indian national bestseller having sold half a million copies. His second book Energise Your Mind (Penguin) was published in January 2023. He has been the recipient of several awards including the most prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival award, Lokmat’s most stylish international life coach award, an Honorary Doctorate by KIIT university, and many more. Based on the timeless wisdom coming down from ages, his talks make the audience think deeper and find simple solutions to difficult problems.
Geetanjali Shree is the winner of the International Booker Prize for 2022 for Tomb of Sand, the English translation of her Hindi novel Ret Samadhi. The French translation (Au-dela de la frontiere) was short-listed for the Emile Guimet Prize. She has authored five novels: Mai (translated into English, Serbian, French and German), Khali Jagah (translated into English, German and French), Hamaara Shahar Us Baras (translated into English), Tirohit (translated into English), and Khali Jagah (translated into English, German and French). Geetanjali has also published five collections of short stories: Anugoonj, Vairagya, March Ma aur Sakura, Pratinidhi Kahaniyan, and Yahan Hathi Rehte The. Many of her short stories have also been translated into different languages in India and abroad. Geetanjali writes playscripts for theatre-performances, and non-fiction in English and Hindi.
Gideon Haigh is in his 40th year as a journalist and has contributed to over 100 newspapers and magazines, and published 45 books, mainly on cricket, but also on business, social history, cultural history and true crime. He is a committeeman and life member of South Yarra CC, for whom he recently played his 350th game.
GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI is Distinguished Professor of History at Ashoka University, Sonepat, Haryana. His working career has been in public administration, diplomacy, and the exercise of constitutional responsibility. His published works include Refuge, a novel; Dara Shukoh, a play in English verse; The Oxford India Gandhi (ed.); The Tirukkural, a rendering in contemporary English verse of G.U. Pope’s translation of the Tamil classic; Abolishing the Death Penalty; Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: Restless as Mercury (ed.); I am an Ordinary Man: Gandhi (1914-1948) (ed.). He has also translated Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy into Hindustani.
Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul was born on December 26, 1958. He did his schooling at Modern School New Delhi, and graduation in Economics (Hons.) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, in 1979. Justice Kaul obtained his LL.B. degree from The Campus Law Centre, Delhi University, in 1982. He enrolled as an Advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi in July 1982 and practiced mainly in the Commercial, Civil, Writ, Original and Company jurisdictions of the High Court of Delhi and the Supreme Court of India. Justice Kaul remained Advocate-on-Record of the Supreme Court of India from 1987 to 1999 and was designated as a Senior Advocate in December, 1999. He was elevated as Additional Judge of the High Court of Delhi in 2001 and appointed as a permanent Judge in 2003. He has been Acting Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court in 2012 and Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2013. He assumed charge as Chief Justice of the Madras High Court in 2014 and was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2017. Justice Kaul is deeply interested in theatre, music and golf.
K C VIJAYA KUMAR K.C. Vijaya Kumar, The Hindu’s Sports Editor, has been a journalist for more than 25 years. He primarily writes on sport besides doing book reviews cutting across genres, and features dealing with lifestyle, arts, tour-diaries and city-specific nostalgia pieces. An alumni of Loyola College, Chennai, Vijay did his Masters in English Literature, besides a PG Diploma in Journalism, from Asian College of Journalism, when it was based in Bengaluru. Previously he has worked with Tata Motors, Mumbai, and The Asian Age, Bengaluru. An avid reader with interests that include non-fiction, short stories, poetry, environment, regional literature and the good old murder mystery, Vijay believes in the power of the written word laced with elegance and mystique.
K. Srilata is a writer, translator and academic. Her latest book This Kind of Child: The ‘Disability’ Story (Westland), brings together first-person accounts, interviews and short fiction on the disability experience. Her books include five collections of poetry, the anthologies The Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry, Short Fiction from South India (OUP), All the Worlds Between: A Collaborative Poetry Project Between India and Ireland (Yoda), and Lifescapes: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers from Tamil Nadu (Women Unlimited). Srilata’s novel Table for Four (Penguin) was long- listed in 2009 for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Formerly a Professor of Literature at IIT-Madras, Srilata is now Professor and Director, Centre for Creative Writing and Translation, Sai University, Chennai.
Kavitha Muralidharan is a bilingual journalist from Tamil Nadu with two decades of experience, covering a, range of issues from politics to culture and cinema. Joining News Today, a Chennai-based evening paper in 1998, she has worked with major publications including The Hindu Group, India Today and The Week. She was part of the team that launched The Hindu Tamil, heading its reporting section. She is currently an independent journalist contributing to major print and online news magazines. Kavitha volunteers with People’s Archive of Rural India as a translation coordinator and is also a PARI senior reporting fellow.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a humour writer, columnist, screenwriter, novelist, playwright and illustrator/cartoonist. His novels include Ice Boys in Bell-bottoms, a 1970s bildungsroman; Jump Cut, a serio-comic thriller set in the Tamil film industry; and the comic The Sentimental Spy: The Family Bond. His other works include a humorous epistolary play, Dear Omana: Notes on how to be a Literary Sensation, against the backdrop of the Indian publishing industry, and a book of non-fiction, How to be a Literary Sensation. He has co-edited Madras On My Mind: A City in Stories, and writes regularly for The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle, and Scroll, among other journals. He is now working on a detective series for the web, and a feature film. His forthcoming books include The Artful Dodger: How I Side-stepped Life With Movies, Books & Music, and a sequel to his first novel Rally Days & Disco Nights. His play Dear Omana (presented by The Madras Players and Chennai Art Theatre) has been staged in Chennai and Bengaluru, and will be travelling to Hyderabad, Goa and other cities in 2023.
Mandira Nayar is a journalist with two decades of reporting experience. She writes on books, foreign affairs and culture. She is currently the deputy bureau chief at The Week. She has worked with The Hindu and The Telegraph and is a Charles Wallace scholar.
Mini Krishnan is the co-ordinating editor of the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation’s plan to support English translations of Tamil works through 14 publishers. She has edited literary translations for Oxford University Press (2001-19) and for Macmillan India Ltd (1992-2000). She was the Founding Editor of the South Asia Website for Women Writers hosted by the British Council; Member, Translation Mission; and Member, Indian Literature Abroad. She writes for The Hindu, the English portal of the Mathrubhoomi, and selects translated fiction for Frontline. Over her four-decade-long career, she has edited 135 full-length translations — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and short stories — from 15 Indian languages, been and worked on educational texts prescribed at school and university levels.
N. RAM, former Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu and other Group publications, is a political journalist with literary interests. A former Chairman and a former Publisher of The Hindu Publishing Group, he is currently a Director in the Group. Ram has written on a range of socio-political subjects, including media freedom and responsibility, and specialised in investigative journalism. His areas of special journalistic interest include Indian politics; aspects of India’s foreign policy and nuclear policy; external pressures on India’s economic and political sovereignty; issues of corruption and abuse of power; the challenge of communalism and fundamentalism in India; the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis, the Tamil question, and India’s interaction with it; India-China relations; freedom of expression issues; and the role of media in society. He is a co-biographer, with Susan Ram, of the writer, R.K. Narayan. He was elected president of the Contemporary India Section of the 72nd session of the Indian History Congress (2011). Honours and awards include the Padma Bhushan (for journalism), 1990; the Sri Lanka Ratna (2005); the Asian Investigative Journalist of the Year Award from the Press Foundation of Asia (1990); the B.D. Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism (1989); XLRI’s first JRD Tata Award for Business Ethics (2002); the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism’s Alumni Award (2003); and the Raja Ram Mohan Roy Award for contributions to journalism from the Press Council of India (2018).
N. Ravi is the Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd, the holding company of The Hindu Group, and was earlier the Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu. He was Chairman of the Board of Press Trust of India, and the President of the Editors’ Guild of India. He is the Chairman of the India Chapter of the International Press Institute, and has been a member of the Executive Board of the International Press Institute, Vienna. Mr Ravi is presently Chairman of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Chennai Kendra. He was a member of the National Integration Council, Government of India, and from 2006 to 2008 of the National Security Advisory Board. He has a Master’s degree in Economics, and a degree in Law, and has won several academic awards including a gold medal in Constitutional and International Law. He was a Fellow at the Harvard Law School in 2000, and Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in 2004. In 2013, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University.
NANDINI KRISHNAN is the author of Hitched: The Modern Indian Woman and Arranged Marriage and Invisible Men: Inside India’s Transmasculine Networks. She is also the award-winning translator of Perumal Murugan’s Estuary and Four Strokes of Luck and Other Stories. Her translation of Kalki’s magnum opus Ponniyin Selvan is being released in 10 parts. She has translated Charu Nivedita’s Conversations with Aurangzeb: A Novel. Nandini’s novel-in-manuscript won the Writers of the World Festival prize, 2014. Her translation of Sajjad Haider Yaldram’s Save Me from My Friends was shortlisted for the Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-English Translation 2022. Nandini lives with dozens of animals, thousands of books, and a varying number of humans in Madras.
Navtej Sarna’s most recent work is the novel, Crimson Spring. His earlier books include The Exile and We Weren’t Lovers Like That; the short story collection Winter Evenings; works of non-fiction Second Thoughts, The Book of Nanak, and Indians at Herod’s Gate; and the translations Savage Harvest and Zafarnama. He is a prolific commentator on foreign policy and literary matters, contributing regularly to media platforms in India and abroad. A professional diplomat for nearly four decades, Sarna was India’s Ambassador to the United States, High Commissioner to the U.K., and Ambassador to Israel. He has also served as Secretary to the Government of India and as the Foreign Office Spokesperson. His earlier diplomatic assignments were in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Tehran, Geneva and Washington DC. More details at www.navtejsarna.in
Nikhila Kesavan has been working as an actor and director in English theatre for over two decades. As a director, she is known for her original stage adaptations of Jhumpa Lahiri’s A Temporary Matter, Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, Shandana Minhas’s Tunnel Vision, and two novels of Manu Joseph — Serious Men and Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous (the play was called Laila and Jamal). She adapted seven stories of R. Chudamani into a play titled Chudamani. Most recently, she adapted and directed Dear Omana: Notes on how to be a Literary Sensation, a play by Krishna Shastri Devulapalli. Two of her plays — Five Point Someone and Laila and Jamal — have been featured at The Hindu Theatre Fest.
Palagummi Sainath is founder-editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), a unique online site wholly dedicated to rural India. A journalist and reporter for over four decades, he has covered rural India for over 30 years and worked with UNI, The Daily, Blitz and The Hindu. His new book, The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom (2021, Penguin), is about the last fighters in India’s struggle for Independence. His previous book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought (1996, Penguin) is now in its 60th reprint. He has won over 60 national and international awards including the Fukuoka Grand Prize 2021, the World Media Summit award 2014, the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2007, UNFAO’s Boerma Prize, Amnesty International’s Global Human Rights Reporting Prize, the European Commission’s Lorenzo Natali Media Prize, and the Ramnath Goenka Journalist of the Year award. He teaches journalism at Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai and Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.
Peter Lalor is senior cricket correspondent for The Australian and has been a journalist for the best part of four decades. He first visited India in 1991, but covered his first Indian cricket series in 2004, and has done six in total in these parts. Peter has written on a wide range of subjects including a history of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, an award-winning true crime novel, and sports biographies. He has also ghosted books for a number of cricket identities including Mitchell Johnson, Tim Paine, Jim Maxwell, Damien Fleming, and helped Ricky Ponting complete his. Peter also works as a broadcaster on radio and television, and is Gideon Haigh’s other half in the Cricket Et Cetera podcast.
Prabha Sridevan is a former Judge of the Madras High Court, and former Chairman of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board. Her judgments include cases dealing with freedom of speech and the worth of the homemaker’s work, the Novartis case, and the compulsory licence case. Her translations include two volumes of short stories of Chudamani — Seeing in the Dark (OUP) and The Echoes of the Veena (Ratna). The latter won a translation award at the Valley of Words Literature Festival 2019 and was adapted to a theatrical presentation by the Madras Players. She has also translated short stories of Ravikumar, Sornavalli, Vaasanthi, Seetha Ravi, Thoppil Mohammed Meeran, Imayam and K. Chandrasekaran, and the essays of U.Ve.Sa (along with Pradeep Chakravarthi).
Ramesh Inder Singh is a distinguished civil servant of the Punjab Cadre, and was awarded the Padma Shre e in 1986, at the age of 36, for his notable contribution in the field of public administration. He was district magistrate, Amritsar from 1984 to 1987, and dealt with the turbulence in Punjab from close quarters. The various army operations against militancy, including Operation Blue Star, Operation Woodrose and Operation Black Thunder 1 were conducted during this period. Later he served as principal secretary to Chief Minister, Punjab, Chief Secretary Punjab and Chief Information Commissioner, RTI. Before joining the IAS, he taught political science at Delhi University, and has also worked with World Bank as a consultant. He is the author of Turmoil in Punjab, Before and After Blue Star: An Insider’s Story. (2022).
Ramya Kannan has over 25 years in journalism, anachronistically in these times, all of them at The Hindu. She is the newspaper’s Tamil Nadu bureau chief, but does not allow the job to be restrictive — continuing to be passionate about health and development issues, which she has reported on steadily through quarter of a century. If the last couple of years have turned the world on its head, then the endeavour has been to make sense of things within this new paradigm. Besides that, she is trigger happy, shooting pictures; has a green thumb, and is always trying to keep up with her effervescent 11-year-old daughter, and only sometimes succeeding.
RANVIR SHAH is a businessman, philanthropist, and cultural activist. He is the founder of The Prakriti Foundation. For over a decade, the Foundation has provided a sturdy platform for scholars, researchers, artists, critics, poets and filmmakers to exchange ideas and to promote a serious discussion of their work and of our cultural heritage. Ranvir’s interest in the arts also led him to direct several plays, with his debut being a dramatisation of classical Tamil poems. He has been part of the Chennai Citizens’ Run since its inception, and assists in promoting awareness about small non-governmental organisations that deserve recognition.
Rosella Stephen is the editor of The Hindu Magazine and Literary Review. She was earlier editor of Weekend, the Saturday magazine at The Hindu, and launched Indulge, a lifestyle magazine at The New Indian Express in 2006. She has served on multiple panels on entertainment, art appreciation, luxury and leadership at various organisations, including The British Council, Biennale of Contemporary Sacred Art (BACS), IndiEarth Xchange, FDCI and Lakme Fashion Week. Culture is at an important inflection point, she says, and the access provided by digital, video and social makes this an interesting time to be documenting it.
Sahana Ghosh is Contributing Editor at Mongabay-India, the India bureau of the global news platform mongabay.com. She reports on biodiversity, climate change, environmental health, and gender. As a member of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, she leads her team in developing frameworks for improved reporting on climate change in India and South Asia, focusing on events attribution and scientific accuracy. In her free time, she dabbles in pottery and heritage walks.
Shawn Sebastian is a filmmaker and independent journalist. He is the co-founder of Drokpa Films, a production house specialising in development-centred multimedia content. Over the last six years, Shawn has directed several documentaries for various state governments, non-profit organisations, and for news platforms such as Discovery+ and IRIN. He was a LAMP fellow in 2011–12, and is an alumnus of St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and the University of Hyderabad.
Shrayana Bhattacharya trained in Development Economics at Delhi University, and the Harvard Kennedy School. Since 2006, she has worked on research projects with the Institute of Social Studies Trust, SEWA, and Centre for Policy Research on gender and labour. She is now a Senior Economist at World Bank. Her first book of non-fiction Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence (HarperCollins) was published in November 2021, and by Liberty Books in Pakistan in August 2022. Shrayana recently won the Atta Galatta BLF Book Prize for Best Non-Fiction for 2022. She has also won the Times of India JK Paper AutHer Prize for Best Non-Fiction Author for 2022, and the SKOCH Economic Forum Prize for literature.
Suhrith Parthasarathy practises at the Madras High Court in Chennai, India. He holds a degree in law from the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, and in journalism from Columbia University, New York. He has contributed chapters to many books, including Dignity in the Legal and Political Philosophy of Ronald Dworkin, and Appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court of India: Transparency, Accountability, and Independence, (OUP). Suhrith is a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of The Hindu. His writing has also appeared, among other places, in Caravan magazine, Open magazine, The Indian Express, The Economic and Political Weekly, and on the websites of The New Yorker, The New York Times and ESPN Cricinfo. Suhrith’s writings are collated at http://suhrith.net.
Sumanth C. Raman is a senior television anchor, political analyst, sports commentator and quizmaster. Over the last three decades, he has anchored over 3000 television shows, and has also been involved in making over 50 documentaries. He has been a regular during election coverage on national and regional channels, and appears on debates on national and regional television. He has an MD in Internal Medicine, and has worked as a medical consultant, and extensively in the field of Healthcare IT with a global top 10 IT firm for over 21 years.
Supriya Sahu is an Indian Administrative Service officer currently serving as the Additional Chief Secretary, Environment, Climate Change and Forest Department, Government of Tamil Nadu. She has over 30 years of experience, and has worked extensively in areas relating to Socio-Economic Development Administration, Health, Empowerment, Environment, Climate Change, Forests and Media. As District Collector of The Nilgiris in 2000, she is credited with launching a highly successful grassroots campaign, “Operation Blue Mountain” to eliminate single-use plastic from the district. The movement also led to the creation of a Guinness world record for the “largest number of trees planted in a day”. She has received the prestigious “Best Collector Award” and the “Green Award” by the Government of Tamil Nadu. In her present assignment, she has been instrumental in setting up India’s first Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company (TNGCC), a not-for-profit venture of the Government of Tamil Nadu to steer climate action in the State.
SUSHILA RAVINDRANATH joined Business India in Mumbai as a staff writer when business was still a bad word and and Business Week famously called the country an elephant on an oil spill. She moved to Chennai in the mid 1980s and has done stories on many South Indian groups, which were publicity-shy and had never been written about. She set up Business India bureaus in all the Southern cities. She helped launch Hansazone website, an entertainment portal for R K Swamy BBDO, before she moved to the New Sunday Express as its editor. She is now a consulting editor for Financial Express and is completing a book on post-liberalisation Tamil Nadu.
T.M. KRISHNA or Thodur Madabusi Krishna is a pre-eminent Karnatik vocalist and public intellectual who speaks and writes about issues affecting the human condition and matters of culture. Krishna has started and is involved with many organisations that work across the spectrum of music and culture. He has co-authored Voices Within: Carnatic Music – Passing on an Inheritance, a book dedicated to the greats of Karnatik music. A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story won the 2014 Tata Literature Award for Best First Book in the non-fiction category. His latest book Sebastian and Sons received the Tata Lit Live Award for the Best Non-Fiction book for 2020. In 2016, Krishna received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in recognition of ‘his forceful commitment as artist and advocate to art’s power to heal India’s deep social divisions’. He has collaborated with contemporary Tamil writer Perumal Murugan to bring his poetry onto the ‘classical’ stage and also brought the poetry of social reformer and philosopher, Sree Narayana Guru, into the Karnatik fold. In collaboration with Ashoka University, T.M. Krishna is now involved in The Edict Project, an attempt to reimagine Ashoka’s edicts in musical form.
Vidya Gajapathi Raju Singh, Princess of Vijayanagaram, is a Rotarian, and was the President of the International Women’s Association, and also the President of Soroptomist International. She runs Sumyog, a wedding planning company based in Chennai, and Senhati Eventz, an event management company that handles product launches, book launches, and fashion shows. She is a patron of the Karunnaii School for destitute mentally disabled children, and has organised several fund-raising events. Vidya captained the Madras University Tennis team and has won several medals in Masters Swimming Championships at the State and National Levels. She is an avid trekker and bicyclist. She has been a fitness columnist for the Economic Times, The Madras Plus, Eve’s Touch, Chennai Frappe, Apollo Life, B_ Positive and At a Glance. She has also contributed guest columns to newspapers like The New Indian Express. Vidya has been Brand Ambassador for ACE, Apollo Hospitals Centre for Excellence. She was featured in Vogue’s June 2013 issue, in the list of India’s 50 Best Dressed.
Wasim Akram, a former cricket player for Pakistan, is recognised as one of the greatest fast bowlers in history. He has also led the Pakistan Cricket Team as captain. Wasim, known as The Sultan of Swing, was included in the 2013 list of the World Test 11 greatest players of all time. Akram presently works as a sports analyst on television networks, and has also taken up commentary. He also serves as the head coach of Karachi Kings, the biggest team in the Pakistan Super League.
William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, the Hemingway and Kapuscinski Prize-winning Return of a King, and The Anarchy, (which was one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2019 and was shortlisted for Tata Literature Live Prize). A frequent broadcaster, he has written and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA. He has also won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards, and been awarded five honorary doctorates. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has held visiting fellowships at Princeton and Brown. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and the Guardian. In 2018 he was presented with the prestigious President’s Medal by the British Academy for his outstanding literary achievement, and for co-founding the Jaipur Literature Festival. William lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.
