The 2023 Shorenstein Journalism Award Honors Indian Magazine The Caravan at a Discussion Featuring Hartosh Singh Bal, Executive Editor of The Caravan

A soft tyranny is a state that maintains the façade of constitutional processes, retaining their structure while foregoing their spirit. For those looking at India from the outside, it appears elections are held regularly, judicial processes are in place, and a large and diverse private media continues to thrive. The reality, however, is that in India today, the Constitution is subservient to a ruling ideology that is majoritarian and violative of its spirit. The government acts according to this new set of values, while institutions meant to check its overreach have largely been rendered powerless.

Join APARC as we honor The Caravan, India’s reputed long-form narrative journalism magazine of politics and culture, winner of the 2023 Shorenstein Journalism Award. The Shorenstein Award recognizes outstanding journalists and news organizations for excellence in coverage of the Asia-Pacific region. The 2023 award honors The Caravan for its steadfast coverage that champions accountability and media independence in the face of India's democratic backsliding.

The award discussion will feature Hartosh Singh Bal, executive editor of The Caravan.

Mr. Bal's keynote will be followed by a conversation with two experts: Kalyani Chadha, an associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School for Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications, and Larry Diamond, Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The event will conclude with an audience Q&A session.

Moderator: Raju Narisetti, publisher at McKinsey Global Publishing, McKinsey and Company, who is also a member of the selection committee for the Shorenstein Journalism Award.

Speakers   
 

Hartosh Singh Bal is the executive editor at The Caravan. He formerly worked as the magazine’s political editor for ten years. He has worked with a number of Indian publications including The Indian Express and Tehelka. He has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, and Foreign Affairs, and is the author of Waters Close Over Us: A Journey Along the Narmada and the co-author of A Certain Ambiguity, A Mathematical Novel. He is trained as an engineer and a mathematician.

Kalyani Chadha is an associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School for Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications. Her research is primarily centered around the examination of journalistic practice as well as the societal implications of new media technologies in varied contexts. Informed by critical and sociological theorizing, her scholarship is international in its orientation, with a particular emphasis on journalism-related developments in India and media globalization in Asia. Her recent work focuses on the implications of the rise of right-wing media in India. Additionally, she is also co-editing a collection on journalism and precarity.

Chadha’s work has appeared in a variety of journals such as Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice, Digital Journalism, Journal of Media Ethics, the International Journal of Communication and Media, Culture and Society, as well as several edited anthologies and encyclopedias. Chadha currently serves on the editorial boards of Journalism Practice and Digital Journalism and is vice-head of AEJMC’s Mass Communication and Society Division.

Prior to joining Medill, Chadha was on the faculty of the University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism. While at Maryland, she directed the Media, Self and Society program, a living-learning community for academically talented undergraduates and was awarded the Annual Undergraduate Studies Teaching Award in 2015.

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford. He leads the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. At FSI, he leads the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, based at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for more than six years. He also co-leads with (Eileen Donahoe) the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as senior consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy.

His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy. His most recent book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. He has also edited or coedited more than forty books on democratic development around the world.

Moderator

Raju Narisetti is a career journalist who has served as publisher at McKinsey Global Publishing, McKinsey and Company since 2020. From July 2018 to December 2019, he was a professor of professional practice and director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His journalism career spans roles with major international news and media organizations. At The Wall Street Journal, he served as a reporter, deputy national editor of the American edition, managing editor and editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe, and deputy managing editor in charge of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for the newspaper's global brand. He was also managing editor, digital at The Washington Post, and senior vice president of growth and strategy for News Corporation. He was the founding editor of Mint and facilitated the publication's emergence as India's second-largest business newspaper.    

Narisetti photo by Niccolò Caranti, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Please join us on Wednesday, May 31, for a talk by Indian politician Rahul Gandhi.

Mr. Gandhi will offer his unique perspective on the changing world order and India's crucial role within it. Following his talk, Mr. Gandhi will engage in a conversation with CDDRL Affiliated Scholar Dinsha Mistree.

Registration is required. Please note that large bags will not be permitted into the venue, and all bags are subject to search.

Rahul Gandhi was a Member of Parliament from 2004 until earlier this year. In March 2023, he was disqualified from Parliament pursuant to a court verdict that is currently under challenge in a higher court. He last represented the constituency of Wayanad in Kerala in the Lok Sabha and, prior to that, served three terms as MP from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. In 2007, he was named General Secretary of the Indian National Congress in charge of the youth and student organizations of the Party. In January 2013, he assumed office as Vice President of the Indian National Congress. He was the President of the Indian National Congress from December 2017 to July 2019.

Rahul was born on June 19, 1970, to Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi. He has attended St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, Harvard College, and Rollins College, Florida, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. He went on to receive an M. Phil. in Development Studies from Trinity College, Cambridge University. Thereafter, he joined the Monitor Group, a strategy consulting group in London, where he worked for three years.

In the past, Rahul was a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committees on Home Affairs, Human Resource Development, External Affairs, Finance and Defence and the Consultative Committees for the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Ministry of Rural Development, the Ministry of Finance & Corporate Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs.

Rahul has championed the development of a self-help group movement and a non-profit eye care provider in North India.  He also serves as a trustee of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

Dinsha Mistree is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he manages the Program on Strengthening US-Indian Relations. He is also a research fellow in the Rule of Law Program at Stanford Law School and an affiliated scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Dr. Mistree studies the relationship between governance and economic growth in developing countries. His scholarship concentrates on the political economy of legal systems, public administration, and education policy, with a regional focus on India. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University, with an S.M. and an S.B. from MIT. He previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at CDDRL and was a visiting scholar at IIM-Ahmedabad.

This event has reached capacity. Registration is now closed.

The sixth installment in a special event series on the occasion of Shorenstein APARC's 40th Anniversary, "Asia in 2030, APARC@40"

How will key technologies shape India’s strategic capacity, and its relationship with the United States, in the years ahead? The Indian and U.S. governments both recognize that critical and emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence to synthetic biology, are increasingly vital for national security and global influence. Effectively harnessing those technologies requires the right mix of state policy, academic research, and private-sector-led innovation. The South Asia Initiative will bring together leading researchers and practitioners to better understand India’s approach to applying technologies in its defense industrial base, and the evolution of US-India cooperation on strategic technologies. 

An initial keynote session will provide an overview of key trends and policy priorities for India and the bilateral relationship. Two research presentations will then examine how India has sought to develop its defense industrial sector, with new partnerships and private sector involvement, and an aspirational goal of indigenization; and how the major powers including the US and India have traditionally managed the expectations, conditions, and anticipated returns of high technology transfers. The research will be critically evaluated by dedicated discussants who draw from both academic scholarship and personal experience as technology-sector practitioners. By the end of the workshop, we anticipate setting a rigorous baseline appreciation of how India and the US-India relationship approach the strategic applications of key technologies, and generating important new cues for future research and public-private collaboration. 

Agenda

8:30-9 a.m. ~ Coffee and Tea Served

9-9:30 a.m. 

Welcome Remarks

Gi-Wook Shin
Director of Shorenstein APARC and the Korea Program
William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
Professor of Sociology
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University

Arzan Tarapore
South Asia Research Scholar at Shorenstein APARC 
Stanford University

9:30-10:30 a.m.

Keynote Conversation: "The Future of U.S.-India Tech Cooperation" (virtual)

Rudra Chaudhuri
Director of Carnegie India
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Helena Fu
Director for Technology Alliances
National Security Council

10:30-10:45 a.m. ~ Coffee and Tea Break

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. 

Panel: "The Evolution of India's Defense Industrial Base: Trends, Trade-offs, and Technologies"

Speaker

Joshua T. White
Professor of the Practice of International Affairs
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Discussants

S. Paul Kapur
Professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School 
Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution 
Stanford University

Sarah Hess
West Coast Director
Silicon Valley Defense Group

12:15-1 p.m. ~ Lunch Break

1-2:30 p.m. 

Panel: Transactionalism Revisited? Unpacking the Logic of Major Power Technology Transfers"

Speaker

Sameer Lalwani
Senior Expert of South Asia Programs
U.S. Institute of Peace

Discussants

Julie George
Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Stanford University

Akhil Iyer
Vice President
Shield Capital

2:30-3 p.m. 

Concluding Discussion

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Rudra Chaudhuri is the director of Carnegie India. His research focuses on the increasingly important role of emerging technologies in diplomacy and statecraft. He works on comparative models of cross-border data flows and how data is treated by national capitals in inter-state and multilateral negotiations. He is the author of Forged in Crisis: India and the United States Since 1947, and the editor of War and Peace in Contemporary India. He is also a visiting professor of international relations at Ashoka University, New Delhi. From 2009 to 2022 (on leave since 2018), Rudra was  a lecturer and a senior lecturer at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and in 2012, he established the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office's (FCDO) Diplomatic Academy for South Asia at King’s College London. He holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London.

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Helena Fu, Director for Technology Alliances, National Security Council

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Joshua T. White is Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, and serves as the inaugural director of the U.S.-ASEAN and U.S.-Pacific Institutes for Rising Leaders. He is also a Nonresident Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at The Brookings Institution. He previously served at the White House as Senior Advisor & Director for South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, where he staffed the President and National Security Advisor on the full range of South Asia policy issues pertaining to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Indian subcontinent, and led efforts to integrate U.S. government policy planning across South and East Asia. Prior to joining the White House, White was a Senior Associate and Co-Director of the South Asia program at The Stimson Center and, previously, Senior Advisor for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a position he held in conjunction with an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations. White has written on a wide range of issues including defense policy, electoral politics, Islamic movements, and nuclear deterrence.

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Sameer Lalwani is a senior expert on South Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is also a non-resident senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Lalwani’s research interests include nuclear deterrence, interstate rivalry, alliances, crisis behavior, counterinsurgency and Indo-Pacific security. He has conducted field research in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Lalwani is a term member with the Council on Foreign Relations, and a contributing editor to War on the Rocks. He earned his doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an affiliate of the MIT Security Studies Program. From 2015 to 2022, Lalwani was a senior fellow for Asia strategy and the director of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center. He was also as an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation.