Shekhar Gupta is the Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express, a newspaper at the forefront of investigative and public-affairs journalism. He leads the nation’s largest network of award-winning journalists whose work has effected change in several areas, including government policy and legislation.
Shekhar, known as a reporter’s editor, has some of the significant newsbreaks in contemporary Indian journalism to his credit. At 26, as a reporter with The Indian Express, he exposed the horrific Nellie massacre in Assam that marked a watershed in the North-East’s ethnic conflict. As a reporter, and then an editor, with India Today, India’s largest newsmagazine, he uncovered LTTE training camps in India, nailed the lie of official intelligence agencies in a spy scandal that falsely implicated scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation. And seven years before 9/11, travelled across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany, the US and the UK, to report extensively on the threat from Islamic fundamentalism, including its links with Osama bin Laden.
His weekly column called National Interest, now in its ninth year, has become a touchstone for new ideas in politics, governance, society, business and sports. He also hosts an interview-based programme Walk the Talk on NDTV 24x7, India’s most watched and respected English news channel.
A regular guest speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos and its India summits, Shekhar has authored Assam: A Valley Divided and India Redefines Its Role, published by the Oxford University Press by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London. His newspaper won the Vienna-based International Press Institute’s first India Award for Outstanding Journalism in the Public Interest.
