Writers

Abhishek writes on technology trends, gadgets and SMBs, and has over a decade of experience—both as an industry watcher as well as a participant. He quit Microsoft in 2011 to become an independent digital consultant, and to write more, travel randomly, watch a lot of movies and wake up late on weekdays.

Aditi Rao is a writer, teacher and potter. She is the founder of Tasawwur, an arts-for-social-change programme for teenagers in Delhi, the author of two collections of poetry, The Fingers Remember (2014) and A Kind of Freedom Song (2019), and the “happy” in HappyMess Ceramics. She also teaches creative and academic writing, and splits her time between New Delhi and Shimla.

Anahita Mukherji is an independent journalist based in Silicon Valley. She was earlier an assistant editor at The Times of India, where she wrote on a variety of subjects, including the environment, child rights, education and the Right to Information Act. For The Morning Context, Anahita will cover immigrant narratives and stories at the intersection of technology and society from the heartland of US tech. Write to her at anahita(dot)mukherji(at)gmail(dot)com.

Anirban, a microbiologist by training, is the author of COVID-19: Separating Fact From Fiction.

Arati is an early childhood education specialist who is passionate about working with young minds in their formative years. Before joining the education sector in 2015, she had stints in the corporate world and was a full-time parent briefly. Currently, she is handling the school excellence function at a leading pre-school chain, where she helps build curricula, trains teachers and audits centres, besides conducting parenting workshops.

Ayaskant Das has been a journalist for 15 years. His interests include environment, mining, coal and thermal power, land acquisition, human displacement, and forests and wildlife. He has reported extensively on how local communities in India’s hinterlands face the worst onslaughts of mining and industrial projects.

Bhasker is an award-winning journalist who has been reporting at the intersection of climate change, energy, land, natural resources and society in India for over 10 years.

Cyriac Abby Philips is a highly cited, acclaimed and award-winning liver disease specialist and clinician-scientist based at The Liver Institute, Rajagiri Hospital, Kochi. His seminal research includes the introduction of healthy donor stool transplant for patients battling severe alcohol-related liver disease. He has also authored disruptive peer-reviewed publications on Ayush-related liver injury and herbal and dietary supplements.

Devendra is an independent journalist based in Rajasthan covering issues related to caste, politics, governance, hate crime, religion, minorities and environmental crime. His bylines have appeared in The Caravan, Al Jazeera, Article 14 and Fifty Two, among others.

Divya Siddarth is a researcher focusing on building, testing and studying impactful technology in India. She is particularly interested in the future of work, digital democracy and cooperation and collectivization. She’s also equally invested in musicals, sunsets, skateboarding and the perfect cup of chai. She has worked with organizations such as Microsoft Research and the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford.

Flavia is an environmental journalist based in India. She reports on climate change, biodiversity, energy and other allied subjects. She is currently a German Chancellor Fellow with the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation working on gender and energy transition.

Frankie Huang is a Chinese American cultural writer, illustrator and strategist based in Shanghai. Her work has appeared in publications such as Foreign Policy, The New York Times and SupChina, and explores feminism, diaspora identity, and social issues in China and beyond. You can follow her on Twitter @ourobororoboruo.

Gaurangi is an applied economist whose interest is identifying patterns in the economy and what people say about it. Having worked as a quantitative economist in evidence-based policy design, she usually won't believe you if it didn't come from a well-conducted survey or the Bible.

Janice is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories and Seahorse: A Novel. She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013. Her most recent novel, The Nine-Chambered Heart, has been translated into ten languages. Her work has featured in a wide selection of national magazines and newspapers. She teaches at Ashoka University, and lives in Delhi with a cat of many names.

Jayadev Calamur is based in Pune and has over 14 years of journalism experience. His work has appeared in The Times of India, DNA, Mumbai Mirror and The Free Press Journal. He primarily writes on sustainable living, the environment and healthcare. When he isn't writing news, he attempts to write fiction, doodle and go on runs with his wife and dog. His hobbies include collecting graphic novels by independent writers.

With over a decade of experience in business development and strategy, Kabeer Chawla is chief operating officer and co-founder at Sancus Networks, a tech-enabled sales and distribution company. He has worked with companies like Jabong and CupoNation in the past, managing operations, strategy and sales. Currently based in Geneva, Kabeer will tell stories at the intersection of technology, retail and entrepreneurship. Reach out to him at kabeerchawla(at)gmail(dot)com.

Kapil is a journalist, book critic and author. His first book, Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India (2019), was published to critical and commercial acclaim in India, the UK and the US. He has written from South Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East—including Syria, Pakistan and Palestine—and his work appears, among other publications, in The New York Times, The Critic, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Economist, TIME, CNN, The Guardian and Le Monde diplomatique. He is a frequent contributor to The Spectator and an international affairs panellist on Monocle24 radio.

Karan Manral is a co-founder of organic farming ventures Green Essentials and New Farmer. After dabbling with technology media, communication and marketing, and some kitchen gardening simultaneously, he (and his partner Yogita Mehra) took the plunge into organic farming full time a decade ago and has since been trying to make growing food more accessible for novice urban farmers.

Krithika is an independent lawyer and researcher working on environmental law and policy issues. She previously worked with communities affected by environmental injustices, particularly in Gujarat and Odisha. She also works on labour rights issues affecting workers in the informal economy.

Lavanya Mohan is a chartered accountant and writer from Chennai.

Mahima Jain is an award-winning independent journalist reporting on environment, gender, health, and socio-economic issues. Her features, longform stories and podcasts for Indian and global publications cover systemic issues from across India and Europe. She has bylines in the BBC, The Guardian, The Caravan Magazine, Foreign Policy, Der Spiegel and others. Her work is supported by grants and fellowships from the International Women's Media Foundation, Earth Journalism Network, Medicine Sans Frontiers and others.

Meenakshi is an independent researcher based in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. Her bylines have appeared in The Third Pole, Article 14, Mongabay-India and Caravan, among others. Her interests include the environment, land and agrarian policies.

Mohit M. Rao is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru. His bylines have appeared in CNN, The Washington Post, The Third Pole, Article 14, Mongabay-India and FiftyTwo, among others. He previously worked with The Hindu. His interests include the environment, human rights and agrarian policies.

Monika is an independent journalist who writes about science, sustainability and the environment.

Natasha is a writer, filmmaker and communications coach. She is the author of the popular memoirs My Daughters’ Mum and Immortal for a Moment. Her columns have appeared in publications such as Mint Lounge, The Hindu, Outlook, The Globe and Mail, The Indian Express, the Hindustan Times and Quint.

Nilanjana is a columnist and author of two award-winning fantasy novels (The Wildings and The Hundred Names of Darkness), and a collection of essays on reading (The Girl Who Ate Books). Over nearly two decades in media and publishing, she has written for various national and international publications. Her third novel, Black River, is due out in late 2021.

Paranjoy is a writer, speaker, anchor, interviewer, teacher and commentator. His main areas of interest are the workings of the political economy and the media in India and the world, on which he has authored/co-authored books and directed/produced documentary films.

Prachi is based in Mumbai and has been a features writer for over a decade. Her work has appeared in publications such as Scroll, Huffington Post India, Open magazine and The Ken. She has written on subjects ranging from the performing arts and culture to South Indian cinema. Occasionally she is piqued by a business trend that marks a shift in current culture. When not tracking trends she can be found blending her own perfumes.

Pragathi is an independent journalist from India covering climate justice, energy transitions and natural resource management. She has received grants from the Pulitzer Centre, the Earth Journalism Network and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Sundeep Khanna has, in a career spanning three decades, donned multiple hats across corporate and editorial roles, and is one of the foremost chroniclers of business in India. In his last assignment, he was executive editor of the financial daily Mint; for The Morning Context, he will write on corporate governance in India every fortnight in his newsletter, Friction.

Prem Panicker has been a journalist for over 30 years. From daily newspapers to weekly magazines and digital news portals—he was one of the seven journalists who were part of the Rediff.com start-up team—he has written and edited features extensively across mediums and publications. Since quitting his job at Yahoo in 2014, he has been working as a freelance writer and editor, as well as teaching narrative journalism.

Quratulain Rehbar is a freelance multimedia journalist from Kashmir. She writes on human rights, gender, employment, legal rights, hate crimes and health in Kashmir and across India. Her work has been published in Nikkei Asia, Aljazeera, Vice World, TRT World, The Wire, The Caravan, Firstpost, Article 14 and others.

Ravi is a journalist affiliated with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the lead author of “Rafale Deal: Flying Lies? The Role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India's Biggest Defence Scandal”, co-authored by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

Rejimon Kuttappan is an independent journalist and the author of Undocumented: Stories of Indian Migrants in the Arab Gulf (Penguin, November 2021).

Rohit Chandra is an assistant professor at IIT Delhi’s School of Public Policy and also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. Primarily a political scientist and economic historian, his academic work spans the areas of energy policy, state capitalism and infrastructure finance; he has spent the last decade studying the coal and power sectors.

Rohit is a professor of communication at Santa Clara University. His research centres on global media and culture, online communities and the relationship of media, memory and violence. He is the author or editor of four books, most recently, The Gita for a Global World: Ethical Action in an Age of Flux (Westland 2021). His current book projects focus on disability in global culture and media and media representations of the 1992-93 communal riots in Mumbai. His writing has been featured in Time, The Conversation, South China Morning Post, Scroll, The Wire and The Caravan. You can find out more about him at www.rohitchopra.com.

R. Ramakumar is an economist and a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Samarth is a reporter and computer programmer. He writes The Interval, a fortnightly newsletter. His reportage has appeared in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, Mint and Quartz.

Sandhya Ravishankar is an investigative journalist based in Chennai. She won a Ramnath Goenka award in 2018 for her sustained expose of corruption, illegality and the state-police-miner nexus in the beach mineral mining industry in Tamil Nadu, and has partnered with France-based Forbidden Stories in global investigations such as The Pegasus Project, The Cartel Project and The Green Blood Project. Sandhya has multiple exposes to her credit including the arithmetic error in Jayalalithaa's acquittal and the delay in opening the Chembarambakkam reservoir which led to the 2015 Chennai floods. She has authored an unofficial biography of a former chief minister M. Karunanidhi, titled "Karunanidhi: A Life In Politics". When she is not investigating corruption and threats to the environment, she enjoys the company of her dogs and travels extensively.

Sibi Arasu is an award-winning journalist who has covered issues pertaining to extreme weather events, climate change adaptation and mitigation, industrial pollution, conservation and conflict between people and wildlife as well as on the rights of the Adivasi or indigenous people of India. As an independent journalist, he has written for multiple news organizations both in India and internationally, including the National Geographic, the BBC, the New Internationalist, the Hindustan Times, Scroll, The Wire, Mongabay and Caravan magazine.

Sidin Vadukut is co-founder and CEO of All Things Small, a non-fiction focused content company. ATS’s latest productions include Mission ISRO, a Spotify Original podcast hosted by Harsha Bhogle, and FiftyTwo.in, a digital publication that tells one great piece of cinematic journalism each week.

Sneha is an environmental economist with research interests in biodiversity conservation, environmental governance and policy, and socio-economic inequalities. She is currently an associate professor at the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru.

Snigdha is a journalist and writer. Her first book, Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing The World, won 2018’s Crossword Award for nonfiction. She has reported on national affairs for The Hindustan Times in Delhi. Her journalism has also appeared in Scroll, The Times of India, The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy and the Financial Times.

Srishti is an award-winning independent journalist based in India. She has written on a variety of subjects, such as politics, tech, rural connectivity, maternal health, human rights, and governance for national and international publications including The Caravan, Newslaundry, Vice World News and Al Jazeera.

Suhas is a corporate lawyer and legal entrepreneur with an interest in the law, technology, startups and all things innovation. A graduate of the National Law School, Bengaluru, he is also the founder of ContractReader AI, a technology platform for the review of contracts.

Surbhi is an independent researcher based in Mumbai. She is currently a data fellow with Equal Measures 2030 and the Tableau Foundation. She has been a data journalist at Mint, where she told stories with numbers and visuals, and a policy researcher at the Finance Research Group, Mumbai.

Sushant Singh is a lecturer at Yale University. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and deputy editor of The Indian Express. A winner of the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2017 and 2018, he had earlier served in the Indian Army for two decades. He is also the author of Mission Overseas and co-author of Note by Note: The India Story.

Sushmita is an award winning journalist, researcher, multimedia artist and former engineer with over 15 years of experience across sectors. She works on climate change, environment, forests, gender-based violence and more. She can be reached at sushmitaw@protonmail.com.

Tapasya is a journalist with The Reporters' Collective and the associate lead of the Wall of Grief project. They write about policy and governance and have previously written for The Wire, Article 14, Newslaundry and The Third Pole.

Vardhan Koshal was adventurous enough to pursue a master's in economics after his engineering education in the late 2000s. He started his career with Citibank US, working on their credit scoring team, and then started a ride-sharing startup that was sold to Carzonrent in 2015. He has held India leadership positions with Udacity and Tripadvisor and has consulted for multiple startups on product and growth. He is now working on a post-COVID-19 personal finance solution.