Akash Kapur

Akash Kapur (born October 28, 1974) is an Indo-American journalist and author. He is the author of a non-fiction book titled India Becoming, which was selected by The New Yorker and The New Republic as a Best Book of 2012;^[1][2] byNewsweek as one of its three Must Reads on Modern India;^[3] and by the New York Times Book Review as an "Editors' Choice."^[4] An episode from the book was also excerpted in The New Yorker magazine.^[5]

Early life and education

Kapur was born to an Indian father and American mother and raised near Auroville. He attended boarding school in the United States when he was sixteen.^[6] Kapur graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard University with a major in Social Anthropology. He has a DPhil in Socio-Legal Studies from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He also attended the SAIIER (Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research) school in Auroville, where he grew up, and Phillips Academy, Andover. Kapur lives outside Pondicherry, in South India.^[7]

Career

Writing and Journalism

Kapur has published in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Atlantic, The Economist, Granta, The New York Times, Outlook, The New Yorker, and Time magazine. He is the former "Letter from India" columnist for The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times online edition. In 2010, his columns for the International Herald Tribune received an "Honorable Mention" award by The Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA), which praised Kapur's "brilliant accounts of developments in modern India." ^[8] Kapur has spoken several times on NPR radio in America,^[9][10][11] public radio in Australia,^[12] and NDTV in India.^[13]

Kapur speaks fluent French, and has also spoken on several radio and TV programs in France, including on France 24, ^[14] France Inter,^[15] and Radio France Internationale.^[16] India Becoming was published in France in mid-2014, under the title L'Inde de Demain (Albin Michel).^[17]

In addition to writing on India, Kapur has also written on a variety of other issues. His travel writing has appeared in Conde Nast Traveller and The Atlantic, and include reports from Romania,^[18][19] Poland,^[20] Turkey ^[21] Switzerland,^[22] and Thailand.^[23] He is reported to be working on a book set in the intentional community of Auroville, and his recent writing has focused on the topic of utopia and the search for a better world.^[24]

Technology and Society

Kapur's PhD thesis at Oxford focused on the effects of new technologies on economic and social development. He has consulted for a variety of organizations on related topics, including the United Nations Development Program and The Markle Foundation^[25] Recently, he was named a non-residential Senior Fellow at The GovLab,^[26] New York University, an organization that explores the intersection of technology and governance.^[27]

References

External links

• http://www.akashkapur.com/
• http://www.indiabecoming.com