0000-0002-2617-520X About
Visiting Fellow, Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Centre (LAHRI), University of Leeds, UK.
PhD, School of History, University of Leeds, UK.
Thesis title - Social Movements, Leadership and Agency: Contesting Power in Independent India.
Supervisors Prof William Gould and Prof Sanjoy Bhattacharya .
Research interests: Environment, social movements, climate change, environment, communal violence, political representation, movements of Scheduled Castes and Tribes and women, leadership of movements and intersectionality
Teaching experience - Mentor for Lumiere Foundation, 2024-. Global Empires module, School of History, University of Leeds. 2022
Faculty: Xavier Institute of Communication- 2015-2019
St Paul's Institute for Communication Education, Mumbai : 2015-2020
Books - Riots and After in Mumbai ( Yoda Press New edition 2024)
A Frayed History: The Journey of Cotton in India( with Uzramma) (OUP 2017) Reporting Pakistan (Penguin Random house 2017)
Organic Cotton Reinventing the Wheel (2004).
Essays
The Grass is Greener This Side, The Green Pen, Environment Journalism in India and South Asia, edited by Keya Acharya and Frederick Noronha, Sage 2010. All Smoke and No Play, Dharavi, The City Within edited by Joseph Campana HarperCollins Publishers, India, 2013. On the Trail of the Girl Child: co-authored with Sharmila Joshi, Books for Change, 1998.
Papers/presentation
1.Displacement and Resistance; A case study of the anti-POSCO movement in Odisha, India, Newcastle Post Graduate Forum, March 24, 2021.
2.From the Paika rebellion to the Anti- POSCO movement in Odisha, India- Cambridge Politico Intellectual History Workshop on Twentieth century India June 17, 2021.
3. Social movements, leadership and agency at the annual BASAS conference. I also proposed the panel on social movements and agency and chaired the panel discussion and five presentations. April 1, 2022
4. Leadership and social movements, presentation at the School of History, University of Leeds, May 17, 2022 and Social Movements and the Local State, in November, 2022
5. Paper presented at the South Asia Anthropologists’ Group (SAAG) Conference, Edinburgh, September 2022
6. Paper presented at the Indian Association for South Asian Studies (IASAS) Conference Varanasi, India, November 2022
7. Paper presented at the British Association for South Asian Studies conference, University of Leeds, April 6, 2023.
5. I was part of the six- member organising committee for the annual White Rose Conference on South Asia in 2020-21 which was held online. This meant sifting through over 90 abstracts and planning the schedule and hosting the day-long conference on Zoom.
6. I was part of the steering committee for the Annual BASAS conference at the University of Leeds, April 2023
Lectures and literature festivals
28th Smt Nabadurga Banerji Endowment Lecture at the Asiatic Society of Mumbai on December 8, 2017 on The Journey of Cotton in India: A Historical Account.
Distinguished Public Policy lecture series on Pakistan, with Tridivesh Singh Maini at the National Law School, Bengaluru, December 2018
Fellowships
In October, 1991, I was selected for the International Visitor Programme of the US government. It was a 40- day programme in the USA at the invitation of the US government for exposure to study environment issues.
In 1993, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi, media fellowship. The project involved writing a detailed report on the water situation in Kutch and the efforts of an NGO in regenerating ground water and helping farmers to become self-reliant. An abstract of the report was carried in the magazine “Down to Earth”.
The Panos Institute, London, Fellowship on the theme “Water”. This helped me travel in and around Maharashtra and study the problems of sugarcane cultivation with relation to drought, apart from new irrigation techniques and watershed management. These reports were published in The Times of India apart from a magazine called “Panoscope”, London. The Rotary Club of Bombay North awarded me a fellowship for Environmental Journalism in 1996.
In November, 1996, media research fellowship from the National Foundation for India, New Delhi. My topic of research was prostitution and trafficking of women. I wrote 13 articles, many of which were published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine. In February, 1999, fellowship from the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, to study the watershed management and education guarantee schemes in Madhya Pradesh. I was also part of an environment journalist’s programme which looked at inter- country water disputes in Nepal, Bangladesh and India in 1999.
In June, 2001, media fellowship to write articles on the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP), from the ministry of environment. In September, 2001, I was part of a five-member team from Southern countries to analyse sustainable development in Germany, in view of the Rio plus ten meeting.
Employment
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The Hindu Group (India) Bureau chief/deputy editor2004 - 2015
Education
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University of Leeds PhD2020 - 2024
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University of Mumbai M A1983 - 1985
Projects & Funding
Projects & funding information is unavailable.
Publications (4)
- Mobilisation of social movements and the local state in Independent India Save
- A Frayed History (co-authored) Save
- Reporting Pakistan Save
- Riots and After in Mumbai Save