As a journalist since 2015, I’ve written across a wide variety of subjects - from reporting on higher education to essays on the intersection of science, history and art. Here’s a selection of some of my published work:
Features / Essays ¶
- A Tale of Two Continents: Lemuria and Gondwana (Lapham’s Quarterly, 11th March 2019)
- The Experimental Life of Naomi Mitchison (LadyScience, 7th July 2020)
- The opium trader who became the Baronet of Bombay (The Hindu’s Sunday Magazine, 4th May 2019)
- The Student Experiment in Organising Education on Democratic Lines (The Wire, 24th December 2019)
- How the Hindu Right-Wing Factchecks (Fake) News (3QuarksDaily, 3rd December 2018)
- How 9-Year-Old Skateboarder Kamali Became The Star Of An Oscar-Contender Short (Huffington Post, 23rd October 2019)
- The Casteless Collective takes gaana mainstream (BLInk, 25th May 2018)
- Why the Web Needs the Little Miracle of 3QuarksDaily (The Wire, 10th July 2016)
Book Reviews ¶
- Through Two Doors at Once by Anil Ananthaswamy (The Wire, 7th Feb 2019, Non-fiction)
- The Man Who Saw the Sun and Other Plays by Makarand Sathe (BLInk, 27th July 2018, Plays)
- Elements of Surprise: Our Mental Limits and the Satisfactions of Plot by Vera Tobin (The Wire, 27th June 2018, Non-fiction)
- The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities by Namit Arora (3QuarksDaily, 30th October 2017, Non-fiction)
- Navigating the Labyrinth: Perspectives on Higher Education by Prataph Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur (The Wire, 16th March 2017, Non-fiction)
Science Fiction and Fantasy ¶
- Six Reasons 2018 Was a Game-Changer for Indian Speculative Fiction (The Wire, 29th December 2018)
- The Great Clomping Foot: Worldbuilding and Art (3QuarksDaily, 26th February 2018)
- Politics and Fantasy: A Criticism (3QuarksDaily, 8th January 2018)
- Book Review: Anya Ow’s Cradle and Grave (Strange Horizons, 22nd March 2021)
- Book Review: Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem (The Hindu’s Sunday Magazine, 4th February 2017)
Labour and Politics ¶
Life of Labour, a weekly newsletter on national and international labour news (co-written with Venkat T and Srividya Tadepalli) that ran for more than 100 issues. Archive on The Wire / MailChimp.
- Construction workers and social wealth funds (3QuarksDaily, 8th October 2018)
- How India’s Gig Economy Is Trapping its Workers in the Cycle of Poverty (The Nib, 17th July 2017, Non-fiction comic illustrated by Satwik Gade)
- Standing Up For Justice For Sooraj and Other Victims of Cow Nationalism (The Wire, 2nd June 2017)
- Wrongly Convicted, Six of the ‘Pricol 8’ Walk Free (The Wire, 27th January 2017)
- The Labour Story that Big Media is Not Telling You (The Wire, 2nd September 2016)
- How India’s Sixteen Occupational Safety Laws Couldn’t Prevent Two Deaths (The Wire, 28th August 2016)
Higher Education ¶
- The Student Experiment in Organising Education on Democratic Lines (The Wire, 24th December 2019)
- With All Eyes on Science, Social Science Scholars Flounder With Even Less Money (The Wire, 12th February 2019)
- Impact Factors Fail in Evaluating Scientists. Why Does the UGC Still Use Them? (The Wire, 18th April 2018)
- Indian university rankings inherently inconsistent (Nature Index, 9th April 2018)
- Three Charts Show What’s Wrong With the NIRF University Rankings (The Wire, 6th April 2017)
- Seven Charts That Show the Gap Between Old and New IITs (The Wire, 24th March 2017)
- Book Review: Navigating the Labyrinth: Perspectives on Higher Education (The Wire, 16th March 2017)
- IITs and NITs Gobble Up 87% of Hike in Higher Education Budget (The Wire, 2nd February 2017)
- At Least 35 in UGC’s List of ‘Preferred’ Journals Can Be Classified As ‘Predatory’ (The Wire, 25th January 2017)
- It’s Not Wise to Trade in Higher Education (The Wire, 14th December 2015)
- India’s Engineering Education Story, With an Eye on Tamil Nadu’s Colleges (The Wire, 22nd October 2015)
- India Produces 50,000 Doctors a Year. If Only Medical Education Were Better Regulated. (The Wire, 28th August 2015)
- So Who Decides What an Institute of National Importance is? (The Wire, 22nd July 2015)
- Demystifying Higher Education in India – First of a Series (The Wire, 8th July 2015)
Science ¶
- The Experimental Life of Naomi Mitchison (LadyScience, 7th July 2020)
- Why the Way We Use Statistical Significance Has Created a Crisis in Science (The Wire, 31st March 2019)
- A Tale of Two Continents: Lemuria and Gondwana (Lapham’s Quarterly, 11th March 2019)
- Review: The DIY Experiment That Captures ‘All the Mystery of Quantum Physics’ (The Wire, 7th Feb 2019)
- Interview with Torill Kornfedlt (BLInk, 14th December 2018)
- How Scihub Is at the Forefront of the Quest to Frame Scientific Knowledge as Public Good (The Wire, 27th February 2018)
- Infinite in All Directions as Guest Editor (The Wire, 19th December 2016)
History ¶
- The opium trader who became the Baronet of Bombay (The Hindu’s Sunday Magazine, 4th May 2019)
- A Tale of Two Continents: Lemuria and Gondwana (Lapham’s Quarterly, 11th March 2019)
- Sita Valles in Angola on 26th May 1977 (3QuarksDaily, 25th March 2019)
- Madhava and the Uninfluential Discovery (3QuarksDaily, 13th August 2018) (Also on The Wire)
- Ethiopia and Europe’s Christian Connections (3QuarksDaily, 18th June 2018)
- The Criminal Tribes of the Madras Presidency (3QuarksDaily, 23rd April 2018)