Archives: Authors

Fali S. Nariman is a senior advocate, Supreme Court of India. He was appointed chairman of the executive committee of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Geneva, from 1995 to 1997. He was appointed a member of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) from 1988 to 2003. He was a member of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, Paris, and later, its vice-president for a continuous period of over fifteen years from 1989 to 2005. He was inducted as a member of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) from 1988 to 2003. He was elected president of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) from 1994 to 2002, and has, since then, been designated its honorary president. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in January 1991, for recognition of ‘distinguished services in the field of jurisprudence’, and the Padma Vibhushan (India’s second highest civilian award) in January 2007, for recognition of ‘exceptional and distinguished services in the field of public affairs’. He has actively served as a nominated member of the Upper House of India’s Parliament from 1999 to 2005.

Starting in 1978 with his Oscar-nominated short film, An Encounter with Faces, Vidhu Vinod Chopra has won countless awards over the years for his path-breaking work as director, screenwriter and producer. His unique approach to film-making is evident in films such as Parinda, Khamosh, 1942: A Love Story and in the films that can today be defined as the modern classics of our era, Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. and 3 Idiots. He lives and works in Mumbai.

In 1992, Abhijat Joshi wrote a critically acclaimed play, A Shaft of Sunlight, that Vidhu Vinod Chopra happened to see in Birmingham. Their subsequent encounter was the start of an enduring and fruitful collaboration resulting in films like Mission Kashmir, Eklavya, and most recently, Shikara. The team of director Rajkumar Hirani, writer Abhijat Joshi and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra has also helmed major blockbusters in recent years like Lage Raho Munna Bhai, 3 Idiots, PK and Sanju.

Saral Mukherjee is an associate professor in the production and quantitative methods area at IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA). He specializes in Operations Management and is involved in research, teaching and consulting in the areas of supply chain redesign, operations strategy, marketing-operations interface and managing platform businesses. He is a recipient of the Marti Mannariah Gurunath Outstanding Teacher Award at IIMA for seven successive years, from 2014 to 2020, and the SRK Distinguished PGPX Faculty Award at IIMA for 2017 and 2020. A production engineer from Jadavpur University, he worked on production shop floors before joining IIM Calcutta as a doctoral student. In an academic career spanning close to two decades at IIMA, he has taught core courses on Operations, Marketing and Ethics for MBA students as well as working executives.

Sonu Sood is an international film actor, producer, entrepreneur and social worker. He has won several awards for his work in films. He is also the recipient of the United Nations Development Programme’s SDG Action Award for his humanitarian work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The stories of his migrant rescue mission feature in school texts in Andhra Pradesh as lessons in ethics. A fitness enthusiast with exemplary people skills, Sonu is now a household name. He resides in Mumbai with his wife, Sonali, and their two sons, Eshaan and Ayaan.
Meena K. Iyer was the editor of Bombay Times, a film critic at the Times of India and edited DNA‘s ‘After Hrs’. She has been an active media professional for the last thirty-nine years. She co-authored Rishi Kapoor’s bestselling book, Khullam Khulla: Rishi Kapoor Uncensored. She resides in Mumbai and is currently heading a film company.

Pavan Soni is an innovation evangelist by profession and a teacher by passion. He is the founder of Inflexion Point, offering programmes on design, innovation and leadership. He has conducted over 600 workshops with 175 organizations in ten countries. Apart from being an adjunct faculty at ISB Hyderabad and IIM Bangalore, Pavan is a columnist at Mint, YourStory, Inc42, Entrepreneur and People Matters. His monthly newsletter, Inflexion Point, reaches over 20,000 enthusiasts across the world. Pavan was the only Indian to be shortlisted for the prestigious ‘FT & McKinsey Bracken Bower Award for the Best Business Book of the Year 2016’. He has been invited five times to speak at the TEDx, and is featured as one of the ‘100 Digital Influencers of 2020’ by YourStory. Pavan is a gold medalist from MBM Engineering College Jodhpur, and did his PGDIE from IIM Mumbai. He finished his doctoral studies from IIM Bangalore in the domain of innovation management. He is passionate about fitness, spirituality, guitar, chess, reading and writing.

Gautam Chikermane is a writer and the vice president at Observer Research Foundation (ORF). His areas of research are economics, politics and foreign affairs. His last book was 70 Policies that Shaped India (ORF, 2018). Earlier, he has held leadership positions in some of India’s top newspapers and magazines, including Hindustan Times, Indian Express and Financial Express. He serves as a director on the board of CARE India, was the new media director at Reliance Industries Ltd, and vice chairman on the board of Financial Planning Standards Board India. A Jefferson Fellow (Fall 2001), he is a student of Sri Aurobindo, the Mahabharata and dhrupad music.

NAMIT ARORA is a writer, social critic and the author of three books, including Indians and The Lottery of Birth. Trained in science and technology, he has spent over three decades educating himself in the humanities, history and other social sciences. His recent work of public history is a ten-part web series, Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization.

RAMESH KANDULA is a journalist based in Hyderabad. He holds an MA in English literature from Hyderabad Central University and an MA in politics from Andhra University. In a career spanning three decades across the media spectrum-print, television and the web-he has been associated with various organizations, including Eenadu, Deccan Chronicle and the Tribune. Kandula is presently CEO and chief editor of Mahaa News, a Telugu news channel, broadcasting from Hyderabad.

Mehr Afshan Farooqi grew up in Allahabad, India. A multiple gold medalist from Allahabad University, Farooqi is currently associate professor of Urdu and South Asian Literature at the University of Virginia. Her research publications address complex issues of Urdu literary culture particularly in the context of modernity. She is interested in bilingualism and how it impacts creativity. A well-known translator, anthologist and columnist, she is the editor of the pioneering two-volume work The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature (Oxford University Press, 2008).
More recently, she has published the acclaimed monograph The Postcolonial Mind: Urdu Culture, Islam and Modernity in Muhammad Hasan Askari (Palgrave and Oxford University Press, 2013). Farooqi also writes a featured column on Urdu literature of the past and present in the Dawn.