Archives: Authors

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.

Dr Madan Kataria, popularly known as the guru of giggling, is the founder of the laughter yoga club movement that started in 1995. Dr Kataria, who is from Mumbai, is a sought-after keynote, motivational and inspirational speaker for corporations and organizations across the world. He has conducted seminars and workshops for UBS, Emirates Bank, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, YPO (Young Presidents’ Association), SAS, Emirates Airlines, Volvo, Glaxo SmithKline Pharmaceuticals, the ministry of manpower and social welfare, the government of Singapore, Parliament of Western Australia, HRD Congress Malaysia and the Dubai Wellbeing Show, among others. He has also featured on television and radio programmes across the world and is associated with an increasing number of medical research projects analysing the benefits of laughter.
Dr Kataria, having retired from medical practice, devotes all his time to writing, teaching, coaching and training
laughter leaders in order to foster the spread of laughter clubs. He is also the creator of the immensely popular World Laughter Day which is celebrated on the first Sunday of every May. For more information, you can visit www.laughteryoga.org.

Kalidasa, perhaps the most extraordinary of India’s classical poets, composed seven major works: three plays, two epic poems and two lyric poems. According to legend, he lived at the end of the fourth century, and was one the ‘nine jewels’ in the court of the Gupta king Chandragupta II. Although very little is known about his life, Kalidasa’s popularity has endured for centuries.

Anirudh Krishna is the Edgar T. Thompson Professor of Public Policy and professor of political science at Duke University, USA. Before taking up academic life, he spent fifteen years in the Indian Administrative Service. Krishna has made a home in a village in central India, to which he returns for a few months every year.

Shivshankar Menon is a former Foreign Secretary of India and was National Security Advisor to prime minister Manmohan Singh. He is the author of Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy (Penguin, 2016).

Yasser Usman is a journalist by tribe, a television producer by creed and a film commentator by caste. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for excellence in journalism and the NT (News Television) Awards thrice over. A master’s in environmental science, he remembers more films and songs than classroom theories. He has worked for over a decade in leading TV news organizations and is currently with ABP News (formerly Star News). He is also a bilingual columnist for Dearcinema.com and News today. An IIMC New Delhi alumnus, he lives in Delhi NCR and is ever available on www.yasserusman.com.

Dr Mahima Bakshi is a renowned woman and child/adolescent wellness expert in Delhi-NCR. She has worked at Apollo Cradle Royale, Fortis Escorts, Faridabad, Birthright and Rainbow Children’s Hospital, New Delhi. She started a mother and child wellness programme, Preggo, for Apollo Cradle, India. She is a strong supporter of breastfeeding and launched the first lactation clinic in Faridabad at Fortis Escorts Hospital to guide mothers on lactation challenges. Dr Bakshi alsoconducts workshops on adolescent health, believing that care for adolescents’ health starts from the preconception stage, for Times of India NIE initiatives in various schools in Delhi-NCR.

Arun Kumar is the country’s leading authority on black economy and has written, studied and lectured extensively on the subject for nearly four decades. He studied at Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Princeton University, USA, and taught economics at JNU for three decades till 2015.
His areas of interest include public finance, development economics, public policy and macroeconomics. Kumar has written widely on these subjects, both in the popular press and for academic journals. At present, he is the Malcolm S. Adiseshiah Chair Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.

Anurag Tripathi is an investigative journalist with sixteen years of experience spanning print, electronic and digital media. He has worked as editor, reportage, at Newslaundry, and senior associate editor, Tehelka. He started his career with the Hindustan Times, Lucknow, and has worked with the Times of India, Aaj Tak, India TV and NewsX.

In the course of his career, besides Operation Jhootha Sauda, Anurag’s investigations have included busting an AK-47 arms racket in western Uttar Pradesh, exposing corruption in the power sector
in Andhra Pradesh, unravelling a drug racket run by an MLA in Lucknow, and bringing to light the issue of fake caste certificates in Uttar Pradesh-and these have had on-the-ground impact in the form of official inquiries and government action.

Taslima Nasrin is an eminent writer and secular humanist who has been subjected to forced banishment and multiple fatwas. Her writings have been deemed controversial time and again because of their unflinching preoccupation with gender and communal politics. She has been living in exile since 1994.