Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

Prince Dhawan

Mr. Prince Dhawan, an IAS officer by profession and a development practitioner at heart, is committed to improving the living conditions of people in his country and to nation-building. Hailing from Chandigarh, he completed his dual degree (B.Tech. and M.Tech.) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in electrical engineering and ICT. He was the topper and the best all round-student of his class of 2011 and was awarded the Director’s Gold Medal as well as the Director’s Silver Medal. In 2012, he secured the third rank in the all-India civil services exam and is currently placed as the topper of his batch.

Over the last decade, Mr. Dhawan has served in three state and union territory governments, including the tribal areas of Arunachal Pradesh, where he was awarded the National e-governance Award, 2017-18, and the state gold medal for outstanding contribution to public service and use of technology. Under his leadership, the state IT Department was recognized as the best performing department in the state in 2018. Currently stationed in Delhi, Mr. Dhawan is using emerging technologies for proactive governance. As District Magistrate, West Delhi, he is also actively involved in rehabilitation of street children and in upskilling of youth. To be able to better discharge his responsibilities as a public servant in the years ahead, Mr. Dhawan would like to study the key ingredients of an effective policy for different problems and environments.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Mr. Dhawan is studying public administration and international development at Harvard university, which helps him gain a deeper understanding of complex developmental problems and acquire the right analytical tools to design and implement solutions for them. After completing his fellowship, he aims to contribute more meaningfully to his life’s mission: empowerment of underprivileged communities and transformation of public service institutions.

Radhakrishnan Balasubramanian

Mr. Radhakrishnan Balasubramanian is a postgraduate in microbiology from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Driven by his passion towards public service, he joined the Indian Administrative Service in the year 2008. He has served in various capacities in Maharashtra for the past 14 years and is currently the Municipal Commissioner of Nagpur Municipal Corporation.

Mr. Balasubramanian made many interventions to improve learning outcomes in government schools. His quality education initiatives served as a model for the rest of the state. As District Collector, he helped solve many complex land acquisition issues, implement land record digitization, and re-engineered the archaic fruit valuation policy of the state. He was awarded the Best District Collector Award by the Government of Maharashtra for his innovative practices in public service.

As a civic chief of Nagpur, Mr. Balasubramanian successfully implemented GIS mapping of land parcels and properties, which resulted in a substantial increase in the municipal corporation’s revenue. He planned and executed many Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects in the urban sector, such as managing the city’s drinking water supply, public transport, and streetlights.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Mr. Balasubramanian is pursuing a graduate degree in public administration from Harvard University. He believes this would equip him with analytical skills and approaches to public policy making. On returning to India, Mr. Balasubramanian intends to work on various issues concerning the urban sector at the state and central levels.

Naveen Anaswara

Dr. Naveen Anaswara is a service-oriented health professional and has served as the District Program Manager, National Health Mission, Kozhikode, Kerala for over half a decade. He completed his MBBS and his diploma in child health from the Government Medical College, Kozhikode, and he holds a PG diploma in health care management from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Dr. Anaswara has led many innovations in the government health sector. He played a key role in the development of the COVID-19 Jagratha portal—a comprehensive IT platform to help citizens gain access to information on the covid-19 health services and support available in Kerala. This initiative earned his team two state e-governance awards. Dr. Anaswara has pioneered several other projects during COVID, such as the first-of-its-kind Tele ICU and Mobile Unit Networks across the district. He also introduced Neo Cradle: A Comprehensive Newborn Care Management System in Kerala. Under his leadership, the Kozhikode district established the state’s first breast milk bank in the government sector. In recognition of his professional excellence, the district administration presented him with a good service entry award.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Dr. Anaswara is studying global health at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland. Through this fellowship, he aims to bolster his knowledge and analytical skills in the public health field to work more effectively at the national and international levels.

Nikita Agarwal

Ms. Nikita Agarwal is a lawyer, policy practitioner, and community educator. She started out as a policy practitioner in 2013, focusing on addressing the food security crisis and gender-based violence in India, and built her legal practice to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical applications of law. She has primarily represented indigenous communities in the conflict zone of South Chhattisgarh, and women, children, and religious minorities in Delhi.

Ms. Agarwal was appointed member of the Committee Against Sexual Harassment of the Chhattisgarh Bar Council. She regularly drafts workplace sexual harassment policies and is a gender and sexuality trainer. Through her research and documentation work, she has engaged with issues around labor, conflict, gender and sexuality, forest rights, and the criminalization of the lives of indigenous people and de-notified tribes, among others.

Ms. Agarwal is a graduate of National Law University, Delhi. As a student, she founded the student volunteer group Aaghaaz to provide need-based education to women and children on campus and outside. She simultaneously became involved with the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a people’s anti-displacement resistance movement in Madhya Pradesh, which helped her understand the need to work with law in a holistic manner—synergizing reform processes, litigation, and community mobilizing.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Ms. Agarwal aims to study the U.S. criminal justice and legal aid systems. After completing her fellowship, Ms. Agarwal intends to build a practice with community lawyers and paralegals, to addresses the crisis of legal aid in India.

Tanita Abraham

Ms. Tanita Abraham is an independent consultant who has been working in the higher education space for around a decade. She works with universities and graduate programs to help shape them, lay a strong foundation for governance, and build them sustainably for the future. She helped set up the office of faculty and research at Ashoka University, among other projects in its first five years of inception.

Ms. Abraham completed the Young India Fellowship in 2014, a program that inspired her to work in higher education and to help other learners get the best out of their classroom experience. She also worked as a journalist with The Hindu at the Hyderabad desk and graduated from the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai. She completed her bachelor’s degree from Christ College, Bengaluru in English, psychology, and journalism.

Through her Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship at Harvard University, Ms. Abraham hopes to understand the foundations of higher education better and further the work around access and inclusion in India.

Nadimpalli Siva Kumar

Dr. Nadimpalli Siva Kumar is Senior Professor at the School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH), Hyderabad, Telangana. Supported by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the German Research Foundation, Dr. Kumar developed and coordinated the first international research training group in Molecular and Cellular Glycosciences with the University of Muenster, Germany. He is also coordinating EU supported projects: “Internationalization and Virtual Exchange: Borderless Between EU and Asian Countries” and NAMASTE, and NAMASTE+ supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). His areas of research include protein biochemistry, cell, and molecular biology, glycobiology, and bio-nanotechnology. He received his master’s in biochemistry from Andhra University and his Ph.D. from CFTRI, Mysuru, Karnataka.

Asima Sahu

Dr. Asima Sahu is Professor of Political Science at the School of Social Sciences, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack. She has more than three decades of teaching and research experience. Her research areas include South Asian affairs, gender studies, Indian political processes, development studies, and nuclear non-proliferation. She earned her master’s degree from the University of Hyderabad, her M.Phil. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and her Ph.D. from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. She has published nine books and several research articles in peer-reviewed journals and has participated in several national and international conferences. In addition to successfully completing research projects sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Dr. Sahu is an Assessor at NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) and visits different higher education institutions for their accreditation evaluation.

Tanya Mary Koshy

Tanya Mary Koshy is Senior Program Manager at the Office for International Affairs, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. At TISS, she oversees all operational, administrative, and program management aspects of the international office. She develops, facilitates, and organizes exchange and teaching programs, including dual and joint degrees, research projects, international admissions, field exposure, and cultural immersion activities for students and researchers, workshops, and high-level conferences. She has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Pune and a master’s degree in international security from Sciences Po, Paris. Before joining TISS, she worked in the fields of anti-trafficking, conservation, sustainable development, and country of origin research.

Anil Kumar Tripathi

Dr. Anil Kumar Tripathi is Professor of Biotechnology and Director of the Institute of Science at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. At BHU, Dr. Tripathi was instrumental in establishing a DST-supported state-of-the-art Sophisticated Analytical Technical Help Institute (SATHI) and a BIRAC-supported Bioincubator for Nurturing Entrepreneurship for Scaling Technologies (BioNEST). Since their inception, he has served as Coordinator of both SATHI-BHU and BioNEST-BHU. Dr. Tripathi obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in botany from Banaras Hindu University and has published 92 peer-reviewed articles. His research focus on genetics, genetic engineering, systems biology, and synthetic biology of a plant growth promoting bacterium. He is a recipient of the prestigious J C Bose National Fellowship in addition to several other national awards and grants.

Prabin Kumar Panigrahi

Dr. Prabin Kumar Panigrahi is the Dean (Faculty) and Professor of Information Systems at Indian Institute of Management Indore. Prior to this, he was the Chair of Post Graduate Programme and Chair of Executive Post Graduate Programme of the institute. He holds his master’s from National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India, and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. His current teaching and research interests include Emerging Technologies, Technology Adoption, Analytics, Social Inclusion in Information System, Cyber Security, and Artificial Intelligence. Prabin has various professional honours, awards, and fellowships both internationally and nationally across teaching, research, and industry. He has published several research articles and cases in peer reviewed international journals and case repositories of repute. He is also a member of the editorial board for some international journals. Prabin is also member of high-level committees in state, central government, and corporate bodies.