Nalin Mehta
Nalin Mehta is a leading Indian social scientist, journalist and writer. He is Associate Professor at Shiv Nadar University;[1] Consulting Editor with The Times of India;[2] and Founding Editor of the international journal South Asian History and Culture (Routledge) as well as the Routledge ‘South Asian History and Culture’ book series.[3] He is also Co-Director of Times LitFest Delhi [4] and has previously been Managing Editor of India's Today Group's English TV news channel, Adjunct Professor at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and held senior positions with the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland, and UNAIDS.[5]
Early Life and education
Mehta studied at the prestigious Scindia School, Gwalior, where he finished as School Captain and editor of the Scindia School Review.[6] A Commonwealth-DFID scholar, he obtained an MA in International Relations from University of East Anglia and a Ph.D in political science from La Trobe University in Melbourne.[7]
Career
Star TV CEO Uday Shankar has called Mehta "probably the best media academic in India" [8] and the media guru Robin Jeffrey has described his work as "remarkable for being both a distinguished academic and an experienced journalist".[9] Mehta's latest book Behind a Billion Screens: What Television Tells Us About Modern India, long-listed for Business Book of the Year by Tata Literary Live 2015 [10] is a highly acclaimed [11] national non-fiction bestseller.[12]
Mehta's first book India on Television, widely acclaimed as a seminal, "impeccably researched" [13] and "authoritative scholarly study" of the politics and business of television in India,[14] was awarded the Asian Publishing Convention Award for Best Book in 2009.[15]
His social history of Indian sport, Olympics: The India Story co-authored with historian Boria Majumdar, was welcomed as a "pioneering, long awaited"[16] work of history in the press and as a "triumph of Olympian proportions".[17] 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".[18]
Mehta and Majumdar joined together again to write Sellotape Legacy, a detailed account of the politics, economics and disaster of the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010. Former Indian sport 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.".[19]
Mehta's other major work includes Gujarat Beyond Gandhi, a jointly edited anthology of critical essays which looked at 60 years of politics and social change in Gujarat.[20]
Mehta has been Managing Editor of India Today's English news channel (2013–14),[21] Deputy News Editor and prime-time anchor with Times Now.[22] and a political correspondent and anchor with NDTV.[23] For NDTV, he covered the 2002 Gujarat violence[24] and subsequent state assembly elections,[25] the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, the assassination of the royal family in Kathmandu and several Indian state elections including Chhattisgarh and Punjab.[26]
Alongside leadership positions in the media industry and international development agencies, Mehta has held several visiting appointments at universities and institutions in Australia, Switzerland, Singapore and India. These include National University of Singapore, Australian National University, Canberra, La Trobe University, Melbourne, and the International Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.[27]
Awards and Recognition
- Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media/Society for India on Television, 2009.[28]
- Government of Australia Alumni Excellence Award for Media and Entertainment, 2010.[29]
- 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 [30]
Books
- 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"[31]
- India on Television: How Satellite TV Has Changed the Way We Think and ActItalic text (Harper Collins, 2008). Winner of Asian Publishing Award 2009 for Best Book [32]
- Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and the Commonwealth Games 2010, with Boria Majumdar (Harper Collins, 2010).[33]
- Olympics: The India Story, with Boria Majumdar (Harper Collins, 2008, 2012), republished as India and the Olympics (Routledge, 2009)[34]
- Television in India: Satellites, Politics and Cultural Change (Editor. Routledge, 2008, 2009)[35]
- Gujarat Beyond Gandhi: Politics, Conflict and Society, with Mona G. Mehta (Editor. Routledge, 2010, 2011).[36]
- The Changing Face of Cricket: From Imperial to Global Game, with Dominic Malcolm & Jon Gemmell (Editor. Routledge, 2010).[37]
References
- ^ Shiv Nadar University, School of Humanities and Social Sciences Staff Pages, 2016 Shiv Nadar University
- ^ Times of India author profiles
- ^ Routledge South Asian History and Culture Series
- ^ Times Lit Fest Delhi official website
- ^ Nalin Mehta's official website
- ^ Nalin Mehta, "The Computer Man", "Qila Quotes: the Scindia School Quarterly", July 2009, p.9
- ^ Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne, Argumentative Indian conference: speaker profile, [1], 2012
- ^ Faculty in spotlight: profile on Nalin Mehta's Behind a Billion Screens published by Shiv Nadar University [2]
- ^ Quoted on backjacket of Behind a Billion Screens
- ^ Tata Literary Live
- ^ New York Times, 14 May 2015
- ^ SNU Faculty in Spotlight, 2015
- ^ Amulya Gopalakrishan, "Catch The Waves", "The Indian Express", 13 July 2008
- ^ Financial Express, 7 Sep. 2008
- ^ IANS, "Marketing Campaign for 'The White Tiger' Wins Asian Prize, 17 July 2009
- ^ K. Arumugam, "Olympics: The India Story", "The Hindustan Times", 4 August 2008
- ^ Gulu Ezekeil in New Indian Express, 10 Aug. 2008
- ^ Ashis Nandy, quoted on back cover of Olympics: The India Story. New Delhi, HarperCollins, 2012, 3rd edition
- ^ Mani Shankar Aiyar, "A Pratfall, Mr Kalmadi?", "Outlook", 4 October 2010
- ^ V. Venkatesan, "Enigma of Gujarat", "Frontline", 5–18 Nov 2011
- ^ SNU Faculty in Spotlight, 2015
- ^ Routledge, 2013 Author profile in Routledge books
- ^ Ajitha GS, "Small wonder", "Time Out", July 2012
- ^ Amita Malik, "Mauling the Media", "The Tribune", 8 March 2002
- ^ Nalin Mehta, "Modi and the Camera: The Politics of Television in the 2002 Gujarat Riots, "South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies", Dec. 2006, see footnotes on pages 405,408,411,413
- ^ Amita Malik, "On the Election Trail", The Tribune, 15 February 2002
- ^ Shiv Nadar University
- ^ IANS, "The White Tiger Campaign win the Asian multimedia publishing awards 2009", 20 July 2009
- ^ Government of Australia press release "Inaugural Australian Alumni Excellence Awards Presented", 9 October 2010
- ^ Tata Literary Live, 2015
- ^ Shiv Nadar University, 2015
- ^ [3]
- ^ Outlook
- ^ Outlook
- ^ Routledge
- ^ Routledge
- ^ Routledge