Akhilesh Upadhyay

Akhilesh Upadhyay is the policy lead for the Center for Geostrategic Affairs at the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS), a Kathmandu-based think tank.

A Fulbright scholar, he received his MA from New York University, where he spent more of his time in South Asian and Hispanic working-class neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Queens in his attempt to find pan-South Asian voices. Akhilesh developed deep empathy for people unlike his own and documented stories, big and small, of ordinary immigrants for New York newspapers. In Nepal, he led the Kathmandu Post as editor-in-chief from 2008 to 2018. His multicultural New York experiences echo in his stories of borderlands.

Born in Bhadrapur, a town bordering the Indian Chicken’s Neck, Akhilesh’s childhood and adolescence traversed Kathmandu and Darjeeling. He is almost always subconsciously in a borderland state of mind. Akhilesh’s research, part reflected in his column View from the Himalaya for Hindustan Times, focuses on how China and India’s near-concurrent rise, the great Sino-US power rivalry, and Asian powers impact this region.
Akhilesh has written for New York Times, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Wire (India), ThePrint, Flipboard, MSN India, Kantipur and Kathmandu Post.