Nalin Mehta | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 7 June 1978 |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist and Political Scientist |
| Known for | Political and social analysis. Books on politics, technology, sport history. |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Ph.D, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. MA in International Relations, University of East Anglia, UK ContentsBA (Honours) Journalism from University of Delhi. Studied at The Scindia School, Gwalior. |
| Website | https://nalinmehta.in/ |
Professor Nalin Mehta is an Indian political scientist, journalist and writer. He is the author of books on Indian politics, technology and sport history. These include The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World's Largest Political Party [1] which has been called a "seminal", non-partisan revisionist account of the rise of the BJP in India. [2] [3] [4] Some of the world's leading scholars on India have called it a "classic", [5] praising it as an "indispensable" and "masterful account" of the rise of the BJP. [6]
The book ignited a major debate on Indian politics and caste - with new caste data in the book challenging and disproving caste data and research by the French scholar Christophe Jaffrelot, the Belgian scholar Giles Verniers and Ashoka University's Trivedi Centre for Political Data. [7] About a year after the new caste data - collated in The New BJP's Mehta-Singh Index - pointed out significant flaws in the Trivedi Centre's data, Ashoka University closed it as an entity. It merged the Centre with another body even as Trivedi Centre's scientific board wrote an open letter of protest claiming that its director, Verniers was 'forced out'. [8]
Books
Mehta's books include 'India’s Techade: Digital Revolution and Change in the World's Largest Democracy,' [9] '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] and a national non-fiction bestseller. [11]
Mehta's first book India on Television was widely acclaimed as a seminal, "impeccably researched" [12] and "authoritative scholarly study" of the politics and business of television in India, [13] and won the Asian Publishing Award for Best Book in 2009. [14]
JioStar Vice Chairman and former Star India CEO Uday Shankar has called Mehta "probably the best media academic in India" [15] and the media guru Robin Jeffrey has described his work as "remarkable for being both a distinguished academic and an experienced journalist". [16]
On sports history, he has co-authored 'Dreams of a Billion' (Ekamra Sports Book of the Year 2022), [17] 'Olympics: The India Story', 'Sellotape Legacy' and 'The Changing Face of Cricket' (co-ed). [18] a social history of Indian sport, Olympics: The India Story, which was welcomed as a "pioneering, long-awaited" [19] work of history in the press and as a "triumph of Olympian proportions". [20] 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". [21]
He has also co-authored Sellotape Legacy, a detailed account of the politics, economics, and disaster of the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010. Former Indian sports 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." [22]
Mehta's other work includes Gujarat Beyond Gandhi, a jointly edited anthology of critical essays that looked at 60 years of politics and social change in Gujarat. [23]
Media
A multi-platform journalist, Nalin Mehta has been editor of digital, print and TV platforms. He has served as an international civil servant with the UN and the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland and taught at universities and institutions in Australia (ANU, La Trobe University), Singapore (NUS), Switzerland (International Olympic Museum) and India (Shiv Nadar University, IIM Bangalore). [24]
Between 2021-24, he served as Dean and Professor at the School of Modern Media, UPES University, Dehradun. [25] He has earlier been Group Consulting Editor, Network 18; Executive Editor, The Times of India Online, [26] managing editor, India Today (English TV news channel) and consulting editor of The Times of India. [27] [28] He has also been associate professor at Shiv Nadar University where he taught courses on political economy, the Indian polity and the digital media businesses; [29] a founding editor of the international journal and book series South Asian History and Culture. [30] and founding co-director of the Times LitFest Delhi [31]
