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Nalin Mehta
Indian journalist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Professor Nalin Mehta is a leading Indian political scientist, journalist and writer. He is currently Managing Editor, Moneycontrol,[1][2]Chief AI Officer, Network18 [3] and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.[4]
He is the author of several major books on Indian politics and society, media and social history. These include The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World's Largest Political Party,[5] which has been hailed as a "seminal", non-partisan revisionist account of the rise of the BJP in India.[6][7][8]Some of the world's leading scholars on India have called it a "classic",[9]praising it as an "indispensable" and "masterful account" of the rise of the BJP.[10]
The 'New BJP' remained No. 1 on Amazon’s bestseller lists for 26 consecutive weeks in 2022 and its findings ignited a major global debate on Indian politics and caste - with new caste data in the book challenging and disproving caste data and research by the French scholar Christophe Jaffrelot, the Belgian scholar Giles Verniers and Ashoka University's Trivedi Centre for Political Data.[11] About a year after the new caste data - collated in the The New BJP's Mehta-Singh Index - found significant flaws in the Trivedi Centre's data, [12] Ashoka University closed it as an entity, merging it with another body; even as Trivedi Centre's scientific board wrote an open letter of protest claiming that its director, Verniers was 'forced out'.[13]
Nalin Mehta's other major books
JioStar Vice Chairman Uday Shankar has called Mehta "probably the best media academic in India"[14] and the media guru Robin Jeffrey has described his work as "remarkable for being both a distinguished academic and an experienced journalist".[15] Mehta's major works include 'India’s Techade: Digital Revlution and Change in the World's Largest Democracy,' [16] and 'Behind a Billion Screens: What Television Tells Us About Modern India', long-listed for Business Book of the Year by Tata Literary Live 2015[17] and a national non-fiction bestseller.[18][19]
Mehta's first book India on Television was widely acclaimed as a seminal, "impeccably researched"[20] and "authoritative scholarly study" of the politics and business of television in India,[21] and won the Asian Publishing Award for Best Book in 2009.[22]
On sports history, he has co-authored 'Dreams of a Billion' (Ekamra Sports Book of the Year 2022),[23] 'Olympics: The India Story', 'Sellotape Legacy' and 'The Changing Face of Cricket' (co-ed).[24] a social history of Indian sport, Olympics: The India Story, which was welcomed as a "pioneering, long-awaited"[25] work of history in the press and as a "triumph of Olympian proportions".[26] India's most well-known sociologist Ashis Nandy called it " the first comprehensive, scholarly and yet lively account of India's experiences with the Olympics".[27]
He has also co-authored Sellotape Legacy, a detailed account of the politics, economics, and disaster of the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010. Former Indian sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar called it a "blazing expose" and a "thorough, well-researched, sober, and absorbingly well-written indictment of Everything You Wanted to Know about CWG [Commonwealth Games] but were Afraid to Ask."[28]
Mehta's other major work includes Gujarat Beyond Gandhi, a jointly edited anthology of critical essays that looked at 60 years of politics and social change in Gujarat.[29]
In media
An award-winning multi-platform journalist, Mehta has held leadership positions in major media companies and educational institutions; served as an international civil servant with the UN and the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland; taught and held research positions at universities and institutions in Australia (ANU, La Trobe University), Singapore (NUS), Switzerland (International Olympic Museum) and India (Shiv Nadar University, IIM Bangalore).[30] Most recently, Mehta has been Dean and Professor at the School of Modern Media, UPES University,[31] He has earlier been Group Consulting Editor, Network 18; Executive Editor, The Times of India Online,[32] managing editor, India Today (English TV news channel) and consulting editor of The Times of India.[33][34] He has also been associate professor at Shiv Nadar University;[35] founding editor of the international journal South Asian History and Culture.[36] and founding co-director of the Times LitFest Delhi[37]
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Early life and education
Mehta studied at the Scindia School, where he finished as school captain and editor of the Scindia School Review.[38] A Commonwealth-DFID scholar, he earned a Master of Arts in international relations from the University of East Anglia and a PhD in political science from La Trobe University in Melbourne.[39]
Early Career
Nalin Mehta was among the early first crossover generation of private sattelite TV journalists in India. For NDTV, he covered the 2002 Gujarat violence[40] and subsequent state assembly elections,[41] the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, the assassination of the royal family in Kathmandu and several Indian state elections including Chhattisgarh and Punjab.[42]
Awards and recognition
- Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media/Society for India on Television, 2009.[43]
- Government of Australia Alumni Excellence Award for Media and Entertainment, 2010.[44]
- Long-listed for Tata Literary Live Best Business Book of the Year, 2015, for Behind a Billion Screens: What Television Tells Us About Modern India[45]
Books
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- The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World's Largest Political Party (Westland Books, 2022; Routledge, 2024)
- India's Techade: India’s Techade: Digital Revolution and Change in the World’s Largest Democracy (Westland, 2023)
- Dreams of a Billion: India and the Olympic Games, (HarperCollins, 2020)the most comprehensive account of India’s Olympic journey."[46]
- Behind a Billion Screens: What Television Tells Us About Modern India, (HarperCollins, 2015), Longlisted for Business Book of the Year by Tata Literary Live, national non-fiction bestseller"[47]
- India on Television: How Satellite TV Has Changed the Way We Think and Act (HarperCollins, 2008). Winner of Asian Publishing Award 2009 for Best Book[48]
- Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and the Commonwealth Games 2010, with Boria Majumdar (Harper Collins, 2010).[49]
- Olympics: The India Story, with Boria Majumdar (Harper Collins, 2008, 2012), republished as India and the Olympics (Routledge, 2009)[50]
- Television in India: Satellites, Politics and Cultural Change (Editor. Routledge, 2008, 2009)[51]
- Gujarat Beyond Gandhi: Politics, Conflict and Society, with Mona G. Mehta (Editor. Routledge, 2010, 2011).[52]
- The Changing Face of Cricket: From Imperial to Global Game, with Dominic Malcolm & Jon Gemmell (Editor. Routledge, 2010).[53]
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References
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