INFORMATION FOR CHANGE

InfoChange News & Features (www.infochangeindia.org) is an online resource base that provides news, views, perspectives and debates on crucial issues of sustainable development and social justice in India and South Asia. It brings into sharp focus agents and avenues of change.

The website aims to inform readers on issues that are increasingly being pushed into the margins by the mainstream media. It seeks to enable readers to marshal facts, opinions and perspectives on rights and development issues, so that they can participate in drawing up an agenda for a more equitable and sustainable world.

This cross-sectoral website provides daily updates of development news from across India, the background and context to development and social justice issues in India, and features, profiles, interviews, data and statistics on the social sector. We also report dozens of stories of change from the grassroots.

Our content is sourced from a wide, credible and experienced network of independent journalists, researchers, development specialists and grassroots activists, and from dozens of different journals, websites and news agencies in India and across the world.

www.infochangeindia.org is one of India’s most-visited online resource bases on rights and development issues. We currently log an average of 2,000 visitors every day. Our content is linked and reprinted by several print journals and newspapers and by research institutions and development portals worldwide (see Copyright & Disclaimer).

InfoChange News & Features is managed by the Centre for Communication and Development Studies (CCDS), a social change resource centre that uses innovative communication strategies to strengthen civil society and citizens’ action for social justice, human rights, sustainable development and accountable governance.

The core competence of CCDS is the use of innovative communication strategies and media advocacy to influence public policies and societal attitudes. Our civil society discussion forums, the Open Space civil society and youth outreach programme, www.infochangeindia.org, our quarterly dossier InfoChange Agenda, and other research and publications play a crucial role in advocating issues related to sustainable development and social justice at the national and international levels.

Copyright and reprint rights

The Centre for Communication and Development Studies reserves copyright for the content on this site. For material published on this site, but made available through various organisations, the copyright and the conditions of use of the content from this site stands reserved with them.

All content may be cited, reprinted, translated and linked for the purposes of public education and non-profit dissemination. Please write in for prior written authorisation from the Centre for Communication and Development Studies.

The Team

CCDS has been promoted by a team of experienced, highly-regarded and competent media professionals, communication experts, development researchers and analysts. All mid-career professionals, we were brought together by the shared desire to use our knowledge and skills in ways that would help bring about change in the lives of the most deprived sections of society. And in doing so, bring about change in our own lives. Each member of the team has substantial years of experience in either activism or communications and in most cases, both these fields. CCDS thus has an extensive network of journalist-activists/activist-journalists. This network is perfectly placed to synergise perspective, knowledge, skill and experience, so that communication and information are used to effect institutional and social change.

Editors

Hutokshi Doctor: A journalist who has worked in the Indian media for over 25 years, she has held senior editorial positions at several leading mainstream publications including The Times of India, The Independent and The Illustrated Weekly of India. For the last ten years she has been working exclusively with communications for social change. She was editor of Humanscape, a journal on social change and social action which she co-founded. She is the founder-director of the Centre for Communication and Development Studies, which manages this website, and has been its co-editor since inception.  She has also managed  several communications projects for development organisations, campaigns and programmes. 

John Samuel: has been a human rights activist, policy researcher, writer, institution-builder and development manager for more than 20 years. He has been working with social movements, human rights and advocacy organisations and development organisations at the grassroots, national and international levels. He has initiated and promoted national and international campaigns for human rights, accountable governance and social justice, including the Rights to Information in India and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. He was formerly the Executive Director of the National Centre for Adovocacy Studies. He has helped to establish more than ten organisations and networks at the national and international level, including the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, Social Watch India, Asia Media Forum and CCDS. He is currently the International Director of Actionaid, based in Bangkok.

Associates and Subject Specialists

We have an extensive network of senior and respected writers, reporters, researchers, subject specialists and development workers all over the country. They include:

Aditya Dev Sood is founder and director of the Center for Knowledge Societies -- Bangalore , a research organisation investigating the socio-cultural and politico-economic effects of emerging technologies. Through the documentation, research and analysis of new technology initiatives, the institution aims to develop planning and consultancy resources for different developmental agents. Sood is a 2001 Fulbright scholar, and is also completing a doctorate at the University of Chicago . With a number of publications, awards and fellowships to his credit, he maintains a multidisciplinary interest in technology, design, education and social science.

Ammu Joseph is an independent journalist and author based in Bangalore, India, and writing primarily on issues relating to gender, children, human development and the media. Her publications include five books: Whose News? The Media and Women's Issues (Sage, 1994 and 2006, co-authored/edited with Kalpana Sharma), Women in Journalism: Making News (Konark, 2000 and Penguin India 2005), Terror, Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out (Kali for Women/Zed Books, 2003, co-authored/edited with Kalpana Sharma), Storylines: Conversations with Women Writers and Just Between Us: Women Speak about their Writing (Women's World India/Women Unlimited, 2003 and 2004, co-authored/edited with Vasanth Kannabiran, Ritu Menon, Gouri Salvi and Volga ).

Anil Dharker is a senior editor, writer and columnist. He is the former editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India , The Independent, Debonair and Midday . His columns have documented trends in society, the media, politics, human rights, the arts and sport for over 25 years. He is a columnist for The Hindu, The Times of India and several other leading publications.

Anu Kumar is assistant editor of Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai. She is interested in issues relating to education, development and environment and has contributed articles to EPW and other newspapers on these subjects. She was awarded a CSE fellowship on Making Water Everybody's Business between in 2002. She is currently working on a PhD from the University of Mumbai on grassroots women activists and their contribution to issues of civic concern.

Arpita Bedekar holds a post-graduate degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Xaviers, Mumbai. She is currently a freelance researcher.

Arshia Sattar has a PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilisations from the University of Chicago . Her abridged translations of the Sanskrit Kathasaritsagara and Valmiki’s Ramayana have both been published by Penguin Books. Her book reviews and articles appeared regularly in The Times of India, The Illustrated Weekly of India and the Indian Review of Books. She has also worked with documentary film and theatre. She taught Indian Studies at the Mahindra United World College of India in Pune for five years. She currently works as a freelance writer and researcher.

Aseem Shrivastava has a doctorate in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has taught Economics at various universities in the US and India and Philosophy at Nordic College in Norway. He is an independent writer who writes on various contemporary themes like globalisation, human rights and US foreign policy.

Ashish Kothari is a founder-member of Kalpavriksh, a 20-year-old environmental research and action group. He is currently the co-ordinator of the Technical and Policy Core Group to formulate India 's National Bio-diversity Strategy and Action Plan. He is a member of several government committees including the Expert Group on the Bio-Diversity Act, the committee to revise the National Wildlife Action Plan, the Environmental Appraisal Committee for River Valley Projects, etc. He is the head of the IUCN inter-commission Task Force on Local Communities and Protected Areas and is on the board of Greenpeace International.

Ashok Gopal is an independent writer and editor based in Pune. He has over 20 years of experience with several publications, including Imprint and The Times of India. He specialises in corporate communications, technical writing and writing for CD-ROMs and websites. He is a communications consultant to several development organisations and institutions and also teaches communications to students of journalism and management.

Bharti Ali was head of the Women and Child Programme of MARG, New Delhi . Her work includes research on domestic violence, Panchayati Raj, sexual exploitation of SC/ST women, child labour, reproductive health, documentation of NGO experience in educating adolescent girls etc. She has also been involved in the setting up of the documentation system of the National Alliance of Women's Organisations (NAWO). Gender sensitisation training with the Delhi Police and NGOs and child rights training with school teachers have been a major activity. She is an executive secretary of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, New Delhi .

Binu S Thomas is the former senior correspondent of BusinessWorld magazine, Kuala Lumpur-based bureau chief of Time Inc’s Asiaweek, and former associate editor of EducationWorld magazine.

Darryl D'Monte was Resident Editor of The Times of India and The Indian Express in Mumbai. He writes a column on environment and development, which is published in several Indian newspapers and websites. His book Temples or Tombs? Industry Versus Environment was published in 1985. He is the chairperson of the Forum of Environmental Journalists in India .

Devinder Sharma is a food and trade policy analyst. Trained as an agricultural scientist, Sharma was Development Editor of The Indian Express. He now researches policy issues concerning sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and intellectual property rights, environment and development, food security and poverty, and the implications of the free trade paradigm. He is a visiting fellow to several universities abroad. He has authored GATT and India: The Politics of Agriculture; GATT to WTO: Seeds of Despair and In the Famine Trap. He is the winner of the 2001 Chaudhary Charan Singh Award for Excellence in Journalism, instituted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi.

Enakshi Ganguly Thukral is currently the executive director of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, New Delhi . She has been working on issues of child rights and gender justice for over 15 years. She has worked with the Indian Social Institute and Multiple Action Research Group (MARG), New Delhi . Child participation processes and child rights training with children and schoolteachers has been an important area of concentration in the last few years.

Kaustubh Moghe is associated with Kalpavriksh and has worked as a researcher/ wildlife biologist with the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. He was involved with the Tourism Impact Assessment at Corbett National Park, Uttaranchal, India. Currently, he is authoring a portion of 'Restoration Practices in Abandoned Opencast Mine Areas in India', which is part of the Mining and Biodiversity subthematic review of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP).

Laxmi Murthy is Editor of India Resource Centre and a Delhi-based freelance journalist specialising on development and gender. Her writings, with a focus on giving voice to issues marginalised by mainstream media, have appeared in major dailies including The Times of India , The Hindustan Times, The Hindu and The Indian Express. Till recently, Laxmi was an editor at the Women's Feature Service, an international news-feature agency specialising in development issues from a gender perspective. She is currently the South Asia coordinator for the Tolerance Prize, an award for excellence in journalism instituted by the International Federation of Journalists.

Lalitha Sridhar is a Chennai based freelance journalist reporting on development issues. She contributes to both mainstream and web-enabled publications. She is one of two recipients of a travel award, for coverage of water and sanitation related subjects, given by the Forum of Environmental Journalists of India (FEJI) in 2003. She is the CGK Reddy Human Rights Fellow for 2004. She is also a winner of the Developing Asia Journalism Awards 2004, for her work on the theme of Inclusive Social Development. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Manoj Nadkarni specialises in the area of natural resource management and has an academic background in biology and the philosophy of science. His focus so far has been mainly on water and sanitation, conservation, biodiversity management and ecotourism. He also works on education, outreach and constituency building for environmental advocacy.

Mari Marcel Thekaekara is founder-associate director of ACCORD, an organisation that works with the tribals of Gudalur, Tamil Nadu. She is a frequent contributor to The Hindu and Frontline and was a columnist for New Internationalist, UK . Her articles have also appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly and other leading publications. She is the author of Endless Filth, a book on the safai kamdars of Gujarat , published by Books for Change. She was commissioned by the Directory of Social Change, UK , to do a study of poverty and development in the United Kingdom.

Meena Menon writes on the environment, health and women's issues. Her articles on development issues appear in The Hindu, Inter Press Service and other publications. Formerly a reporter with The Times of India, Menon has received fellowships from the Centre for Science and Environment and Panos Institute, London , to work on water-related issues. She also got a fellowship from the National Tree Growers Cooperative Federation in Anand to study development issues in Orissa.

Mini Shrinivasan taught in primary schools for several years before moving to teacher training and development of teaching-learning materials. She works with the Centre for Learning Resources, Pune, involved in designing training inputs for NGO and government projects, focussing on improving the quality of elementary education for children from the poorest sections of society.

Neema Pathak is a member of Kalpavriksh, a 20-year-old youth environmental action group. She has worked as a researcher at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi . She has co-ordinated several projects, including the preparation of a Directory of National Parks and Sanctuaries in Maharashtra state, a Directory of Community Conserved Areas in India and the South Asia Regional Review of the above programme.

N Vinod Chandra Menon is the former professor of disaster management at the Yeshwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA), Pune, where he headed the Centre for Disaster Management. He is a member of the High Power Committee set up by the Government of India for the preparation of national, state and district disaster management plans. He is a trustee of the Calamity Reduction Fund Trust set up by the Government of Andhra Pradesh. He has been a consultant to the UNDP for the Orissa supercyclone and for the preparation of multi-hazard response plans for various districts in Maharashtra.

Oishik Sircar is a human rights lawyer and independent researcher and presently a Fellow in Reproductive & Sexual Health and Women's Rights at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. He has previously worked as a campaigner with Amnesty InternationalIndia, and has taught courses at the Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune, and Research Centre for Women's Studies, SNDT Women's University,Mumbai. In 2005 he set up the CCDS Human Rights Education Initiative. He works and writes in the areas of postcolonial feminist legal theory, sexual rights, migration studies and cultures of human rights.

Rahul Srivastava has written on the environment, popular culture and new knowledge practices. He has studied sociolgy and anthropology in India and the United Kingdom. He was co-director of PUKAR, Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research, a Mumbai-based research initiative founded by Prof Arjun Appadurai. He is now concentrating on writing fiction.

Rashme Sehgal is a Delhi-based writer/journalist who has specialised in investigative reporting. She broke the story on the Taj Corridor Scam for The Times of India in June 2003, and did a series of media-related exposes during her tenure with The Telegraph. She was also the first Indian journalist to expose the ISI presence in Kashmir for The Independent in 1990. Her first novel, Headlines and Other Lives, was published in 2005.

Rubina Lal has an MEd and PhD in special education. She is a senior lecturer in the Post-Graduate Department of Special Education, SNDT Women's University, Mumbai. Dr Lal has worked with people with developmental disabilities, and their families for 25 years. She has introduced new methods of intervention for children with developmental delays in India and is an active participant in advocacy and human rights movements for the disabled. She is President of SOPAN, Society of Parents of Children with Autistic Disorders. Lal has presented papers at several national and international conferences including the UN Conference on Population & Development (1994), Cairo . She is the recipient of the Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship for Post-Doctoral Research 2003-04.

Saloni Mathur is Programme Officer at HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, New Delhi . Her work has included research and evaluation of childcare organisations, reproductive health and child rights. Vocational guidance to children, training of helpers in child care institutions, workshops on educational material for effective teaching in preschool, processes of child rights with children have been an important area of her work.

Sandhya Srinivasan is a freelance journalist specialising in public health and development issues. She has a master's in public health and is Executive Editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. She was a Panos Reproductive Health Media Fellow in 1998 and an Ashoka Fellow. She is Consulting Editor, Public Health, for www.infochangeindia.org  and has edited infochangeindia’s information gateway on HIV/AIDS.

Sharmila Joshi works in the academic field of historical sociology, with an interest in issues related to development, gender, labour and social movements. She has been a journalist, writing for several years on social issues.

Shirish N Kavadi is an independent researcher and consultant based in Pune. He has degrees in history and political science from the University of Bombay . With more than 20 years of teaching and research experience, he has written and published on health policy and the history of public health in India.

Sujata Madhok was editor of Women's Feature Service from 1989 to 2000. She has been active in the women's movement and has worked with women's groups in Delhi on a range of issues and campaigns. She has co-ordinated radio series on Women and the Law and on Women and Health for broadcast on All India Radio. She has also worked for The Statesman, The Hindustan Times and Democratic World.

Dr Sudhirendar Sharma is a Delhi-based water expert and development analyst. Sharma has a doctorate in environmental sciences. He has worked with India Today and The Pioneer and with the UN for the World Bank's water and sanitation programme. Policy analysis of water management and the role of traditional knowledge in human development are his special interests. He is Director of the Ecological Foundation.

Researchers

Anosh Malekar is a journalist with 18 years of experience with publications including The WEEK, The Indian Express and The Times of India. He is senior researcher-writer with CCDS.

Sherna Gandhy is a senior journalist based in Pune. In a career spanning over 25 years in the mainstream media, she has been Editor of The Times of India, Pune, Senior Editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, and Deputy Editor of the Sunday Observer.

Copy editor

Gita Vasudevan has been assistant editor of Sanctuary and Cub magazines and copy editor of Humanscape. She was a senior copy editor with the Business India group, Mumbai, for several years.

Webmaster

Vijay Narvekar holds Diplomas in Electronic Engineering and Internet and Multimedia. He specialises in  developing, designing and managing websites for civil society organisations and corporate houses.

Administration and Accounts

Philip Varghese is a post-graduate in Commerce from the University of Pune . He has been a teacher and accountant.