Archives: Authors

Ornit Shani is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa. She is the author of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the making of the Universal Franchise, which won the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay New India Foundation Prize (2019).

Fergus Nicoll has been a journalist with the BBC World Service since 1988. He has travelled frequently in South Asia and the Middle East, and has written several books and articles on the religious uprising in Sudan in the late nineteenth century. He has a BA in Sanskrit from the University of Oxford and a PhD in history from the University of Reading. He is married with two adult children and lives in North Wales.

Vinod Rai
Vinod Rai served as the eleventh comptroller and auditor general (CAG) of India. He is credited with some scathing audit reports on the allocation of spectrum (2G) and coal blocks, and inefficiencies in the preparation of the XIX Commonwealth Games. He is presently a distinguished visiting research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies in the National University of Singapore and a trustee on the IFRS Foundation Board. He has been entrusted by the Supreme Court of India with the mandate to put in place a credible and transparent management structure in the Board for Control of Cricket in India. His autobiographical account Not Just an Accountant is a widely acclaimed book.
Amitendu Palit
Amitendu Palit is senior research fellow and research lead (trade and economic policy) at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) in the National University of Singapore (NUS). An economist working on trade policies, regional developments, China-India relations and political economy, he is a columnist for Financial Express and a regular contributor for various global media. His books include The Trans Pacific Partnership, China and India, China-India Economics and Special Economic Zones in India. He appears as an expert on the BBC, Bloomberg, Channel News Asia, CNBC, Doordarshan (India) and All-India Radio.

Amitendu Palit is senior research fellow and research lead (trade and economic policy) at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) in the National University of Singapore (NUS). An economist working on trade policies, regional developments, China-India relations and political economy, he is a columnist for Financial Express and a regular contributor for various global media. His books include The Trans Pacific Partnership, China and India, China-India Economics and Special Economic Zones in India. He appears as an expert on the BBC, Bloomberg, Channel News Asia, CNBC, Doordarshan (India) and All-India Radio.

Ziya Us Salam is an associate editor with Frontline. A noted literary and social commentator, he is involved in building bridges of commonality through a study of the Vedas and the Quran.

He has served on the jury of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and been a part of the jury for Best Writing on Cinema in 2008. He has also been on the preview committee of IFFI (world cinema). His book Delhi 4 Shows: Talkies of Yesteryear, a study based on the cinema halls of Delhi, was released in 2016. In 2012, he edited a book titled Housefull: The Golden Age of Hindi Cinema.
Adopting a multilayered approach, he writes about literary and cinematic developments regularly and has contributed to anthologies published by the publications division of the ministry of information and broadcasting and the British Council, among others. His book Of Saffron Flags and Skull Caps will be out soon.

Viswanatha Satyanarayana is regarded as one of the most important writers and poets of the Telugu canon. He was the first Telugu writer to win the Jnanpith Award in 1971. He was also awarded the Padma Bhushan.Velcheru Narayana Rao is a renowned scholar and translator. His previous translations include, among many others, Gurajada Apparao’s Girls for Sale and Chaso’s Doll’s House (with David Shulman), both for Penguin Classics.

Premchand (1880-1936) is one of the most celebrated writers of the Indian subcontinent, widely praised for his contribution to modern Hindi-Urdu literature. A writer of numerous short stories, plays and novels, his work has shaped the landscape of Hindi literature in particular. His novel Godaan is still considered the greatest Hindi novel ever written. Several of his stories and novels have been adapted for film and television.

M. Asaduddin is a renowned author, critic and translator. His work has been recognized with the Sahitya Akademi Prize, and the Katha and A.K. Ramanujan awards for translation. Most recently, his translation of Ismat Chughtai’s A Life in Words:Memoirs, published in Penguin Classics, won The Economist Crossword Book Award 2013 for Best Indian Language Translation.

Tathagata Roy was appointed the Governor of Tripura in 2015. He has written and been published extensively, both in English and in his native Bengali, on subjects of social and political importance. A civil engineer by training, he was employed with the Indian Railways and later taught at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1990 and rose to be the state president of the party for West Bengal and a member of the BJP national executive.
He is married, with two daughters, and has lived most of his life in Kolkata. He now lives in Agartala.

MADIHA AFZAL is a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an adjunct assistant professor of global policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She was previously an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. Her research lies at the intersection of development, security, and political economy, with a focus on Pakistan. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 2008, specializing in development economics and political economy.

Afzal is the author of a number of essays, journal articles, and policy reports, and has also contributed to several books. She writes regularly for Pakistani and international publications, and consults for the World Bank. She has also consulted for the Department for International Development. For her writing on education in Pakistan, she was named to Lo Spazio della Politica’s list of Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013.

Daisy Khan is the founder and executive director of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE), a global organization that works on behalf of women’s rights in Islam and initiated the creation of the first global women’s shura (advisory) council, which advances women’s rights through scriptural interpretation. After finding herself at the centre of a national debate surrounding the Ground Zero controversy, Khan emerged as a leader in the public eye. She served as executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, where she spent eighteen years creating groundbreaking intra- and interfaith programs based on cultural and religious harmony and interfaith collaboration. She has won numerous awards for her work as an advocate for Muslim women’s rights around the world and is a frequent media commentator. She lives with her husband in the New York City tri-state area.