Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

Aesha Datta

Ms. Aesha Datta graduated in English literature from Hindu College, University of Delhi in 2008 and went on to study journalism at the Asian College of Journalism. She has been a journalist for over 12 years and has worked with publications such as ET Prime, The Hindu Business Line and the India Today Group. Her writing has focused on the intersection of the climate crisis and its impact on society. In her last stint as an Assistant Editor – Environment with ET Prime, she single-handedly steered the environmental and climate coverage for the publication.

In 2017, she was awarded the WWF-India Young Media Climate Fellowship, during which she reported from the Sundarbans and Ladakh on climate-linked migration and community-led climate adaptation.

Her experiences with climate impacts as an environmental journalist, and prior to that as a volunteer for organizations such as Greenpeace India, drives her to keep a people-first approach to her writing and to connect the dots between climate science, policy, economics, and community impact.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow at Columbia University, she is studying the convergence of climate science, equity, policy, law, and business. Upon returning to India, she intends to continue to communicate the ever-intensifying climate crisis and expects that her master’s degree will both improve her understanding of the subject and her ability to articulate the same. She wants to combine her years of practical, on-ground experience with the academic training she receives to work in the public policy and advocacy space.

Zubin Dash

Mr. Zubin Dash is an advocate practicing at the Supreme Court, various High Courts, and Tribunals in India since 2016. He has been involved in constitutional and criminal litigation for the enforcement of fundamental rights and civil liberties. He is the youngest researcher to have been awarded the prestigious Lok Sabha Research Fellowship by the Speaker of Parliament and has authored a book on privacy laws in India. He appeared before a Parliamentary Committee, submitted reports, and assisted Parliamentarians with legislative-drafting and policymaking in the areas of privacy law, data-protection, and surveillance-reforms. Previously, Mr. Dash was consulted by the government for suggesting legislative amendments relating to national security. He also worked as Research Assistant to a former Supreme Court Judge.

Mr. Dash graduated from the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) with a gold medal for successfully representing India at the Jessup International Moot-Court Competition, Washington DC, USA and was adjudged ‘Best Speaker’ at a similar competition. He has completed courses from the Hague Academy of International Law and ISIL and is a member of the American Society of International Law and the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association. He was on the editorial boards of the NUJS Law Review and the National Police Academy Criminal Law Review and has seven publications to his credit.

During his LLM at Columbia University, Mr. Dash will focus on constitutional law, civil liberties, and criminal justice. In particular, he plans to study how technology impacts the enjoyment of rights, the changing relationship between the state, citizens, and corporate entities, and comparative constitutional theory.

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.

Megha Bahl

Ms. Megha Bahl has been practicing criminal law in Delhi for the last seven years. Through research and litigation, she has engaged with the legal issues underlying incidents of custodial violence, sexual offenses, the stifling of journalistic freedoms, and the criminalization of the lives of indigenous people and manual scavengers, among others. She has worked with teams on the prosecution and defense sides of the criminal justice system, acquiring an in-depth understanding of the functioning of institutions like courts, police, and prisons.

Before this, Ms. Bahl obtained her master’s degree in sociology from the prestigious Delhi School of Economics. This academic training and her long engagement with organizations working on issues concerning the democratic rights of people have helped her identify the socio-political reasons for the occurrence of crimes. She has also understood the operation of power that determines access to justice and the availability of rights to victims and accused persons.

After completing her training under the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship, Ms. Bahl intends to start a research and litigation clinic in India focusing on interventions that impact the constitutional rights of accused persons and victims in the criminal justice system. A synthesis of academic discourse, courtroom observation, and the lived experiences of people will help generate and disseminate meaningful ideas towards developing more humane jurisprudential practices in India.

Soumya Anakkavur Katchi

Ms. Soumya AK graduated in 2018 from National Law University, Delhi. She worked in a leading all service firm before shifting to a criminal justice reform and litigation center, Project 39A where she has worked for over two years on issues pertaining to mental health and criminal justice in India. As part of her work, she has also worked on death penalty cases with mental health concerns. She has also developed a first-of-its-kind course on forensic mental health in collaboration with Monash University at Australia. Currently, she is working on an empirical study on the insanity defense in India and leads the communications and outreach work at Project 39A.

At Columbia University, she is specializing in the domain of criminal justice and human rights, with a specific focus on examining institutional barriers and development of access to justice mechanisms for the vulnerable and marginalized, from the perspective of the right to a fair and just trial. On returning to India, she intends to continue with her focus on these issues and expects that the master’s degree will inform and enable both her research on these issues as well as advocacy and capacity building with the stakeholders in the criminal justice system.

V.S. Alagu Varsini

Dr. V.S. Alagu Varsini is a board-certified dental surgeon and a civil servant. As an Indian Administrative Service Officer, she has worked in multiple capacities in the Government of Telangana. As Director, Indian Institute of Health and Family Welfare, she has been working at the forefront of mitigating COVID-19.

Born and brought up in the beautiful rural town of Pollachi, her passion has been inclusive growth. Since her school days, she has worked towards an inclusive society and participatory development. She has organized various camps to educate peers about civil rights and responsibilities enshrined in the Constitution of India. With the guidance of her parents, Dr. Varsini achieved her position in the civil services, eventually earning the distinction of being a gold medalist and TeX Award winner in Public Administration. Her contribution towards challenged children, the inclusion of impoverished women in social sector schemes, girl child education, and natural resource management has created perceived change in societal institutions, thereby encouraging inclusive growth.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, she wishes to acquire academic rigor and understand the utilization of data for a favorable policy outcome. She looks forward to imbibing a more significant global picture to poise herself at the crucial juncture of transformation from policy implementor to policy framer. On her return to India, she looks forward to working with the Government of India in policy formulation capacities for achieving the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Harssh A. Poddar

Mr. Harssh A Poddar is an officer of the Indian Police Service (IPS) borne on the Maharashtra cadre. He is an Oxford-educated lawyer and a Chevening scholar who has worked in corporate law with a magic circle law firm in London, before returning to India to pursue a career in law enforcement. He is presently posted as the Commanding Officer of the Maharashtra armed police in Amravati.

A recipient of the Best Officer Award and the Home Minister’s Award for National Integration during the IPS training, Mr. Poddar has strived to change the perception of citizens towards the police. His work has focused on youth empowerment and deradicalization. The Maharashtra Police Youth Parliament Project, conceptualized by him, created an outreach of over 200,000 youth for the Maharashtra Police. He is also credited with the launch of an innovative project, Udaan, that provided free career guidance to thousands of students in communally sensitive regions of the state.

In 2018, Mr. Poddar undertook an extensive campaign against mob violence prompted by misinformation in Malegaon. He also led an operation in which a family was successfully rescued from a violent mob in the city. As part of the SMART police initiative, he has been recreating rural police stations with a view towards providing urban standards of police service-delivery in interior Maharashtra. He has successfully headed the investigation of several organized crimes and has also authored a book on the law relating to investment frauds.

In recent years his work on pandemic law enforcement has become a case study in COVID policing. As the Superintendent of Police of Beed district, the effective implementation by his team of the national lockdown ensured that not a single case of infection was reported in the district during the lockdown. During the devastating second wave, the scientific measures he undertook in the armed police have become a template for protecting frontline workers in the face of a pandemic.

Pursuing a master’s in public administration as a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School will help Mr. Poddar to complement the fundamentals of law enforcement policy and global security with his experience in field policing and handling law and order. After completing the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s program, he intends to work at the federal and state level in areas relating to security and law enforcement.

Rakesh Vaid

Dr. Rakesh Vaid is Professor, Department of Electronics, University of Jammu, Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. He has more than 31 years of teaching and research experience. He is a member of various national and international professional organizations. He has served in various leadership positions at the University of Jammu. From 2013 to 2014, he was the general secretary of the Jammu University Teachers’ Association.

Dr. Vaid has received several awards and fellowships during his career, which includes the University Gold Medal for securing first rank in MSc Electronics, University of Kashmir. He has more than 100 publications in national and international journals. He has diverse research interests, which include nano devices, high k dielectrics, device modelling and simulation, carbon nanotubes, graphene-based devices, solar cells and others.

Institutional Statement: The University of Jammu is a state university established in 1969. It is currently ranked 56th in the University category in the 2022 National Institutional Ranking Framework, Ministry of Education, Government of India. The institute received an A-grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, the highest body in India responsible for quality assurance of higher education institutions. From the academic year 2005-2006, the University started admission of foreign students by offering few courses that would be of relevance to a global audience. The university offers undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programs and affiliates and recognizes colleges.

Chelliah Thangaraj

Dr. Chelliah Thangaraj was the Director of the National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research (NITTR), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, from April 2017 to May 2022. NITTR is an institution under the Indian Ministry of Education. At present, Dr. Thangaraj is an Honorary Distinguished Professor at the Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology and Research (VFSTR) in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. Before joining NITTTR, Bhopal, he was the Vice Chancellor at Vignan University. He was also the founding Vice Chancellor of Anna University of Technology, Chennai, a state public university in Tamil Nadu. He has been a Commonwealth Academic Fellow at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom; a DAAD Senior Fellow at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and a Visiting Scientist at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He started his research career in water-power system planning using different techniques, such as, parallel processing, remote sensing, and GIS technologies. His current focus is on real-time system planning using big-data tools and machine learning algorithms. As the Director of NITTTR, Bhopal, he studied the impact of new teaching techniques to improve staff and student performance and the effect of government policy on engineering education in India.

Home Institution: Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology and Research (VFSTR) was established in 2008 and is the third oldest university in the state of Andhra Pradesh. In 2015, the institution received an A-grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, the highest body in India responsible for quality assurance of higher education institutions. The University received the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) recognition for five undergraduate engineering programs and was ranked in the top 100 for the university category by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Indian Ministry of Education. The University offers undergraduate, MA and PhD programs in engineering, science, humanities, business, and pharmacy. Since 2020, the university runs an Institute of Law offering bachelor’s degrees and an integrated law degree.

Sulochana Shekhar

Dr. Sulochana Shekhar is the Head of the Department of Geography, and the Dean of the School of Earth Sciences, at the Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN), Thiruvarur, Tamil Nadu. Dr. Shekhar is the Registrar (in-charge) and has served as Coordinator of the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) and Presiding Officer of the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) at CUTN. Her field of research is urban geography and geographic information system (GIS) mapping. Her expertise is in applying geospatial technology in urban mapping, monitoring and management. She has guided five PhD research scholars in this area. She has participated in geography and geospatial science conferences in India and abroad, she has published more than 50 articles in national and international journals and authored three books.

Home Institution: The Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) was established in 2009. The vision of the institution is to pursue excellence in teaching and research in science and technology, humanities, law, languages, social sciences, performing arts and sports. In 2022, the university was ranked 85 by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Indian Ministry of Education. The institution has 27 teaching and research departments spread across 12 schools with 165 faculty members and 4 centers for teaching and research at its Main Campus in Thiruvarur. These schools offer 57 degrees, as well as a few diploma and certificate courses. Currently, the total number of students enrolled is 2,267 and there are 152 research scholars on campus.