Archives: Authors

A passionate banker who takes complete ownership and pride in whatever she does and with a career of over thirty-seven years with the State Bank of India (SBI), Arundhati Bhattacharya has many amazing firsts to her name. She is the first woman chairman of the 209-year-old SBI, a Fortune 500 company. She is the only Indian banker featuring in the list of 100 most important active public intellectuals, ‘The Leading Global Thinkers of 2014’. She is the only banker to be simultaneously recognized as the Most Powerful Woman in India by Business Today, Forbes Asia and Bloomberg, apart from being crowned as an outstanding leader by CNBCTV18. She is the only Indian banker to be on the board of fourteen SBI associates and subsidiaries (including the SBI), six financial institutions and on eleven committees formed by the Government of India to promote country-to-country business initiatives among others. Arundhati is the only public-sector banker to have been awarded EY Entrepreneurial CEO of the Year._x000D_

Ajay Banga is president and chief executive officer of MasterCard and a member of its board of directors.
Prior to joining MasterCard in 2009, Mr Banga was chief executive officer of Citigroup Asia Pacific, responsible for all businesses in the region, including institutional banking, alternative investments, wealth management, consumer banking and credit cards. He joined Citigroup in 1996 and held a variety of senior management roles in the United States, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa. He was also responsible for Citi’s brand marketing and from 2005 to 2009 oversaw its efforts in microfinance.
Mr Banga began his career at Nestlé, India, where for thirteen years he worked on assignments spanning sales, marketing and general management. He also spent two years at PepsiCo, where he was instrumental in launching its fast-food franchises in India as the
economy liberalized. Mr Banga is a member of the board of overseers of the Weill Cornell Medical College and a member of the board of governors of the American Red Cross. Mr Banga is a member of President Obama’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves on the US–India CEO Forum and is chairman of the US–India Business Council. Mr Banga is also a member of each of the following: the executive committee of the Business Roundtable, the international business council of the World Economic Forum, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York and the Business Council, on which he is a vice chair. Mr Banga serves on the board of directors of the following organizations: the Financial Services Roundtable—where he is chairman-elect, the New York City Ballet and the Partnership for New York City. He also serves on the International Advisory Board of the Moscow School of Management (SKOLKOVO). He is a fellow of the Foreign Policy Association and was awarded the Foreign Policy Association Medal in 2012. From 2007 to 2012, Mr Banga served on the board of directors of Kraft Foods. He has also served on the board of trustees of the Asia Society, the New York Hall of Science and the National Urban League, among others. He received a BA in Economics from Delhi University where he graduated with honours and is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad.

Nisid Hajari is the Asia editor of Bloomberg View. He had earlier spent a decade as foreign editor and then co-editor of Newsweek. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Urvashi Butalia is co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house. She has been active in the women’s and civil rights movements in India, and writes on issues relating to women, media, communications and communalism. She is co-editor of Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays and In Other Words: New Writing by Women in India.

Meena Kandasamy is an anti-caste activist, poet, novelist and translator. She has written books of poems such as Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2017), and Exquisite Cadavers (2019). Her novels have been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Hindu Lit Prize.

She has been a fellow of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Kent and a fellow of the Berlin-based Junge Akademie. In 2022, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL), United Kingdom.

Her op-eds and essays have appeared in The White Review, Guernica, The Guardian and The New York Times, among other places.

RAM PUNIYANI is currently the chairman at the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, and was a professor of biomedical engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. He has been involved in the field of human rights, workers’ rights and various secular and democratic initiatives for the past two decades. His publications include Fascism of Sangh Parivar, The Other Cheek: Minorities under Threat and Communal Politics: An Illustrated Primer.

Meera Nanda writes on science and religion. She is a philosopher of science with initial training in biology. She has received research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the John Templeton Foundation, USA. She is a visiting fellow (2009-10) at the Jawaharlal Institute of Advanced Studies, JNU. She is the author of the award-winning book, Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodernism, Science, and Hindu Nationalism.

A.R. VENKATACHALAPATHY is professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. An accomplished writer, he has published widely on the social, cultural and intellectual history of Tamil Nadu. His publications include In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History; The Province of the Book Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilnadu; and, as editor, Love Stands Alone: Selections from Tamil Sangam Poetry. Venkatachalapathy is the winner of the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize (2007).

Suhel Seth is the Managing Partner of Counselage India, the only strategic brand management and marketing consultancy in the country advising chairpersons and CEOs on branding and marketing. His clients include R.K. Krishna Kumar of the House of Tata, S. Ramadorai of TCS, Analjit Singh of Max Hospitals, Pawan Munjal of Hero Honda, Sanjiv Goenka of the RPG Group, and Prannoy Roy of NDTV. Suhel writes columns in The Financial Times, Hindustan Times, The Telegraph, and The Indian Express on current affairs and has co-authored two books on Calcutta with Khushwant Singh and R.K. Laxman.