Field of Study India: Journalism and Mass Communication

Tanaya Singh

Ms. Tanaya Singh has been a writer, editor, and content strategist for 12 years, and has extensively reported on individuals developing solutions to challenges in their communities. Most recently, she served as Chief Editor at The Better India, Asia’s largest solutions-based publication, where she led a team of journalists covering changemakers, unsung heroes, and development initiatives, with particular emphasis on human rights, social justice, and gender equity. Previously, Tanaya was the Executive Editor at Youth Ki Awaaz, a media platform empowering young citizens to voice their concerns.

Through her work, Tanaya has seen transformative stories reach millions around the world. These reports showcase the good in India shaped by civil society interventions. She has designed editorial strategies in collaboration with organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and EkStep Foundation on topics such as sustainability, girls’ education, and women empowerment. She played a key role in shaping content strategies that foster collaboration within India’s early childhood development ecosystem, other than hosting discussions on ‘Bringing Girls Back to Schools after COVID-19’, and ‘Women at Workplaces’.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Tanaya is expanding her understanding of the first principles of reporting and communication for social change. She is interested in exploring how solutions journalism can be shaped as an ethically grounded and socially responsible field in India, while reviving its nuances and potential for impact. She aspires to contribute to the training of young journalists in this field, especially in Indian media.

Midhun Vijayan

Hailing from Kerala, Mr. Midhun Vijayan has been working for the last four years as a video journalist and producer at Down To Earth magazine in New Delhi. Apart from producing reports on science, technology, agriculture, health and public policy, he has travelled across India to make documentaries on climate change adaptation and mitigation from the perspective of rural communities.

Midhun has been honored with a Special Jury Mention at the India International Science Film Festival for a report that explored the solid waste management practices of India’s megacities. He was part of the team that received the Ramnath Goenka Award for Broadcast Journalism in the Environment and Science category, one of the highest journalism honors in the country.

Midhun has more than five years of experience producing documentaries, explainers and ground reports for India’s traditional media, new media as well as not-for-profit organizations. Based on his extensive experience, he was chosen to be a part of PSBT’s prestigious Doc_Commune cohort in 2024-25. He started his video production career with The Better India, Bangalore after graduating from the Mass Communication Research Department of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, with a university rank and gold medal.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Midhun is working to expand his craft to explore complex concepts of empathy, duty, morality and social justice in the backdrop of contemporary news topics. In the long run, he aims to contribute to the new wave of documentary culture in India through mentorship programs for India’s youth.

Pragyan Srivastava

Ms. Pragyan Srivastava is the founder of Chalat Musafir – India’s first travel journalism media house. She initially ideated a multimedia platform bringing together travel writers, photographers, video bloggers, historians, cultural artists and experts to create high quality, high impact, culturally rooted, undiscovered stories of India. She bootstrapped funds to on-board 10 partners (3 Directors, 7+ colleagues) & over a thousand contributors, and set-up a website. She established a unique & thriving community with over a million followers across 3 social media streams, traveled across and stayed in all states of India to capture the real essence of her culture, and forge partnerships with socio-cultural-political leaders, curating over ten thousand impact driven, convergent stories covering topics across domains.

Chalat Musafir has curated original travel and exploration related content, with a sharp focus on frugal travel especially for women, spurring an increased interest among domestic women travelers leading to over fifty percent of stories being contributed by them. Additionally, her team has been redefining the role of travel in journalism through covering impactful, socially relevant stories of change-makers. They also successfully recommended Dr. Yogi Aeron, a philanthropic surgeon from rural Himalayas for the Padma Shree award, the fourth highest civilian award in India; the story catalyzed a lot of public interest in his endeavor of over ten thousand surgeries.

Ms. Srivastava has pursued a postgraduate diploma at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC). She has more than seven years of experience working in Indian media. A Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship would allow her to learn from and emulate the bold and transformational work of trailblazing U.S. journalists like Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohay and build an ecosystem of next generation journalists across India and the US who would enrich democracies by giving purpose to and building bridges among diverse people across the world.

Aananth Daksnamurthy

Mr. Aananth Daksnamurthy is currently pursuing writing, translation, and title acquisitions as a freelancer. As a literature connoisseur, he is closely following the broad contours of Indian vernacular publishing.

His foray into writing happened when he joined the founding team of a Delhi-based news organization, The Print. In his professional journey, he has gathered various experiences in the publishing industry, from a business analyst to a contributing journalist. For a brief period, he was also engaged by the Editors Guild of India. As part of the team that built India’s first academic fellowship for lawyers, he has dabbled in the Indian higher education space for a while. In his latest stint, Mr. Daksnamurthy was a consultant with the Government of Tamil Nadu, leading their media team for the Industries Department. On several occasions, he has also had the privilege of drafting speeches for the Chief Minister and senior bureaucrats.

Born in Tiruchirappalli, Mr. Daksnamurthy graduated with a B. Tech in mechanical engineering from SASTRA University. He also has a postgraduate diploma in liberal arts from Ashoka University as a Young India Fellow. He is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and a Climate Reality Leader.

A graduate program in publishing as a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow will not only help Mr. Daksnamurthy excel in key publishing business functions but also open doors to a vast network of industry executives, publishers, and editors. His objective is to build a space for vernacular languages in public discourse within India and the world.

Pallavi Khare

Ms. Pallavi Khare works in the field of strategic communications with a focus on community empowerment from 2019. Ms. Khare started her career as an arts and culture curator at Godrej India Culture Lab. The Godrej India Culture Lab is a cultural space and a multimedia online network that sought to amplify marginal voices across the intersections of gender, class, and region through innovative public programing. Here, Ms. Khare curated cultural events around globally pertinent issues of gender and sexuality rights, environmental conservation and community rights, and cultural place making in contemporary India. She then went on to lead community impact and public scholarship initiatives at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore such that the valuable research produced at IIMI could positively enable the local and national community, businesses, academia, and entrepreneurial endeavors.

Ms. Khare has master’s degree in media and cultural studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Delhi. While at TISS, she produced two documentary films: Ghutan, which documented the plight of communities displaced because of developmental projects in Mumbai as well as Aamchi BEST, which showed the impact of privatization of public transport and its repercussions on public accessibility and mobility.

Through her Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Ms. Khare aims to learn to leverage the potential of the multi-dimensional, dynamic, and evolving global media scape to drive social and cultural transformations.

Amrutha Sai Anju Kosuru

Amrutha Kosuru is an independent journalist from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, presently stationed in Hyderabad, Telangana. In 2022, she worked as a fellow at the People’s Archive of Rural India, where she delved into multifaceted subjects such as agriculture, art and crafts, climate change, food, public policy, and gender through her insightful reporting in the rural regions of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Recognized for her exceptional work, Amrutha was honored with a Jury Appreciation Citation at the Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity in 2023. She received this recognition for her compelling article on the lives of widows of manual scavenging workers and the challenges they face. Specializing in rural and literary reportage, Amrutha is a firm believer in the transformative power of compelling storytelling.

Amrutha has more than three years of experience in ground reporting and editing for both print and digital media. She has previously worked with and written for The Hindu, The New Indian Express, and NewsMeter. She has a Post Graduate Diploma in journalism from the Asian College of Journalism.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Amrutha is working on her journalistic skills which will allow her to expand the scope of her reportage in India, and help her delve deeper into narrative journalism, serving as a powerful tool to address integral issues plaguing India.