India Fellows Years: Indian Fellows 2022-2023

Anupam Banerjee

Prof. Anupam Banerjee is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur since November 2021. Prior to this, Anupam was a postdoctoral researcher at Niigata University, Japan. Anupam pursued his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Ramananda Chakrabarti at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and was conferred the degree in 2018. He received an MSc in Geology from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2011 and a BSc in Geology from Presidency College Kolkata, University of Calcutta, in 2009.

Prof. Banerjee’s research interest lies in the applications of radiogenic, and non-traditional stable isotopes of magmatic rocks to understanding both Earth’s surface and deep interior processes. He has published several research articles in peer-reviewed international journals. Prof. Banerjee is a recipient of the Institute Medal from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore for the best PhD thesis. He is also a recipient of several grants for attending international conferences which include the SERB Travel support, Student Travel Grant from the American Geophysical Union, GARP Travel Grants from IISc .

Prof. Banerjee’s research during the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship is aimed at elucidating Earth’s deep carbon cycle using novel Mg and Zn stable isotopic compositions of carbon-rich magmatic rocks, called carbonatites. Important corollary questions that will be addressed in this project are: (i) How did Earth’s interior maintain the inventory of carbon with time? (ii) When did Earth’s carbon inventory establish and how did it change over geological time?

Chanchal Yadav

Ms. Chanchal Yadav, an Indian Administrative Service officer, belongs to the 2008 batch of the Arunachal, Goa, Mizoram, and Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre. A postgraduate in political science from the University of Delhi, she is known for her innovations in public service delivery systems. She has diverse experience working in various capacities in the Union Territory of Daman, the border state of Arunachal Pradesh, the capital city of Delhi and the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

As Secretary, New Delhi Municipal Council, she brought substantial improvement in civic services delivery, leveraging technology. She successfully steered the organization towards becoming the first municipal body in country to go cashless. Her concerted efforts towards the cleanliness of the city resulted in NDMC becoming the first Open Defecation Free (ODF) urban local body of Delhi; the organization continuously remained amongst the top cities in the Swachh Sarvekshans by the Government of India.

Under her leadership, the district administration of Changlang more than doubled its annual revenue collection, successfully rolled out livelihood missions and registered a steady decline in insurgency-related incidents. She was conferred the Governor’s Gold Medal for her meritorious public service. As Special Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor, Delhi, she effectively coordinated with agencies responsible for the civic administration of the capital and contributed to the drafting of Delhi’s Master Plan Document 2041.

Ms. Yadav is passionate about urban governance and as a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, she aims to gain specialization in the sector and orient her civil services career around it. She loves to be in nature and gardening is her favorite hobby.

Rajan Vishal

Mr. Rajan Vishal worked in the Reserve Bank of India after receiving his Master of Business Economics degree from the University of Delhi in 2005. Driven by his commitment to improve public service delivery at the cutting-edge level, he joined the Indian Administrative Service in 2008. He received the gold medal for the best study in rural development from the National Academy of Administration.

He has worked as District Collector in four districts for more than six years. As an administrator, he has worked in insurgency affected and the least developed areas of the country, implementing welfare programs, steering government campaigns for the marginalized and managing relief programs during natural calamities. He was awarded the Best Electoral Practices Award by the Election Commission of India in 2015, for increasing female voter turnout in Parliamentary Elections 2014 by 25 percent in Jalore District, with women from some villages having voted for the first time.

He also has experience in policy formulation in the health, cooperative, urban development, and finance sectors. He has played an important role in the formulation of impactful policies that have improved nutrition and health, strengthened the legal rights of women, empowering them as decision makers in Rajasthan.

A graduate program in public administration from a U.S. university will provide Mr. Vishal with the skills, knowledge, networking, and approaches needed to design potent policies to address the complex developmental challenges facing India. After completing the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship, he would work on a range of issues: health, public finance management and women empowerment.

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.

Garima Shekhar

Ms. Garima Shekhar is the founder of Evolving Being, a liberal arts-focused admissions consultancy (www.evolvingbeing.org). TechnoServe India, in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, selected her amongst the top 30 women entrepreneurs for an Accelerator Program in 2021.

In the past, she was a core member of the Founding Projects team that launched the undergraduate batch of Ashoka University, a pioneering Indian liberal arts and sciences university in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Stanford University among others. She was on the interview panel, along with the founders and faculty of the university, to shortlist students for the undergraduate and postgraduate program, Young India Fellowship. She has also offered consultancy to the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). She has traveled extensively, met students from different walks of life, and discovered the transformative power of quality education.

Ms. Shekhar has studied Economics at Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi. She received full scholarship to pursue the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University. At Welham Girls’ School, she scored the highest aggregate marks in grade XII and received several accolades: Academic Excellence Award by the Governor of Uttarakhand, the Khandelwal Shield for the Highest Aggregate, and the Faculty Trophy for Sustained Academic Excellence. When she gets time off work, she enjoys going on long treks, doing yoga, and learning new languages.

Through a graduate program in Education Leadership, Organization, and Entrepreneurship as a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, she hopes to support students around the globe in achieving their higher education goals.

Manasi Sahay Thakur

Ms. Manasi Sahay Thakur is an Indian Administrative Service officer with close to 13 years of experience. She is a mechanical engineer from the College of Engineering in Pune. After a brief stint in the private sector, she joined the Indian Administrative Services in 2009.

As Deputy Commissioner of Bilaspur, she successfully led a campaign against female feticide. She conceptualized and coordinated Muskan, an animated film on girl child rights, which has had over a million views on YouTube and has received awards and recognition at different international forums. Ms. Thakur also led a nine-day long rescue operation for rescuing trapped laborer in an under-construction tunnel in Bilaspur.

As Director, Women and Child Development, she was instrumental in drafting the first legislation in India dealing with the sensitive issue of early childhood care and education. She also functionalized the first One Stop Centre in Himachal Pradesh for women in distress.

As Director, Energy, Ms. Thakur helped improve the state’s revenue realization through power sale, spearheaded efforts for energy efficiency and successfully worked on policies to revitalize the dormant hydro sector. She has co-authored “The Power Tariff Case-A Tale of Two States” which is being used by the National Academy of Administration for training civil servants in Negotiation Strategy. She ensured steady supply chain of essential commodities during the Covid-19 lockdown and was also responsible for the safe transportation and evacuation of stranded migrants from Himachal Pradesh in Maharashtra and Goa.

By pursuing a master’s in public administration as a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, she aims to hone her policy making skills and better understand evidence-based decision making. She aspires to learn about global best practices along with leveraging of data and technology to become a more impactful professional and meaningful contributor back home.

Payoshi Roy

Ms. Payoshi Roy has practiced as a criminal defense lawyer since graduating from National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata in 2015. Her practice focuses on representing prisoners on death row and indigent persons sentenced to life imprisonment before the Supreme Court of India and the Bombay High Court. In defending activists and terror accused, she has contested state excesses and abuse of anti-terror legislations in India. She also represents victims in custodial death cases challenging police impunity to ensure prosecution of police officers. Outside of courts, she has taught courses on capital punishment and criminal law in law schools across India.

Through her master’s in law as a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, Ms. Roy is undertaking comparative interdisciplinary research on sentencing, abuse of anti-terror laws, and institutional reform.

Shivam Rawal

Mr. Shivam Rawal is a domain expert in education measurement, assessments and evaluation and has extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing several large-scale education projects in India. He exhibits a deep passion and commitment to serve the public sector using grassroots insights. Mr. Rawal’s first-hand experience of educational inequality inspired him to join the Teach For India Fellowship, where he taught over eighty students in a low-resource government school in India. Leveraging this experience and creating an impact at scale, he has worked with multiple state governments, nonprofits, and schools to improve student learning outcomes through assessments and the capacity-building of stakeholders at Central Square Foundation and Educational Initiatives. Shivam was nominated as a Global Girls Education Fellow in 2020 by Teach For All, where he learned about best practices in girls’ education as a part of the global cohort of fellows committed to improving educational outcomes for girls and women.

Through the graduate program in economics and education at Columbia University, Mr. Rawal aims to create more inclusive and equitable education systems by strengthening the evidence-based policy practice and processes in India. Learning about quantitative methods, experiments, and data analysis will provide him with a solid methodological grounding for rigorous policy evaluations to improve education programs and interventions. Ultimately, the direct beneficiaries of his work will be education practitioners and policymakers, but the fruit of this investment through the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship will trickle down to millions of students and teachers in India.

Taha Mughal

Mr. Taha Mughal completed his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University in 2015. In his six years of professional practice, he has held teaching, research, and professional roles in different organizations. He has been associated with organizations including the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) Srinagar, Prince Claus Fund (Netherlands) and Dara Shikoh Centre for the Arts.

Since 2016, he has been working as a Project Architect with INTACH Kashmir – an NGO that primarily works to conserve natural and built heritage in Kashmir. His prime responsibilities at the organization include research and architectural documentation and assisting different conservation and restoration projects in the region. His additional responsibility at the organization includes organizing community engagement programs for heritage promotion.

Mr. Mughal has been awarded the Charles Wallace India Trust Award (2021-22). He was also selected for the Chevening Awards (2021-22). Other awards and fellowships to his credit include the Effective Altruism Fellowship, Cambridge-UK 2021; the Kashmir Fellowship for Peace Building 2019 by The Bridge Institute UK; the Dara Shikoh Scholar’s Fellowship 2019; the International Art Residency Fellowship, 2015; and the International Art Residency Fellowship, 2013, by the Dara Shikoh Centre for the Arts.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellow, Mr. Mughal is pursuing a graduate program in historic preservation that provides interdisciplinary knowledge and skills in architectural history, preservation theory and practice, research, and documentation methodologies, building conservation, and architectural and urban preservation planning. After completing the program, he would like to return to Kashmir and integrate his learnings for the cause of conservation in the region.

Mir Mohammed Ali

Mr. Mir Mohammed Ali holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in political science. He was selected to the Indian Administrative Service in 2011 and assigned to the Kerala cadre.

Mr. Ali has served in various capacities in the state of Kerala. As Director of Land Records, he organized a first-of-its-kind collaboration between Google Maps and the state government to bring more than 60,000 public establishments online.

As District Collector of Kannur, he led 81 local governments in banning single-use plastics in 2016. When widespread misinformation derailed a vaccination program, he piloted ‘Satyameva Jayate’, an information literacy campaign that trained more than 100,000 students to consume information critically and disseminate it responsibly. During this time, he won five Kerala State e-Governance awards, including Best e-Governed District.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow at Harvard Kennedy school, he is focusing on acquiring the analytical skills needed for a career in evidence-based policy making. A firm believer in the capacity of information technology to make a difference, he seeks to interact with a global cohort to expand his understanding of positive technological interventions worldwide.

Mr. Ali is an avid cinephile who enjoys writing and directing short films. His film on Kannur Tourism was awarded the ‘Best Ad Film’ at an International Film festival. He also finds great joy in open-water swimming, kayaking and stand-up comedy.