Jaideep Hardikar is a Nagpur-based independent journalist, researcher and writer – and an avid story lover. In his career spanning nearly 26 years, he has worked with several English newspapers, including The Telegraph, as their Central India correspondent. He is currently a Core Team member and Roving Reporter with the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) founded by P Sainath. He is also a former Fellow at the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, where he worked on a project between VIDC and MSEPP on setting up and strengthening of the water users associations in the command areas of the Gosekhurd and Lower Wardha irrigation projects.

Hardikar was an Asia Leadership Fellow at Tokyo, Japan, in 2015 and an Alfred Friendly Press Fellow in 2009, during which he worked with the Sun Sentinel newspaper in South Florida. He has received numerous prestigious national and international awards and fellowships, including the Prem Bhatia Memorial Award and the Sanskriti Award for Journalism. Widely travelled, Hardikar’s journalism has appeared in many national and international publications, both in print and digital formats, including BBC/Southasia, Scientific American, Livemint, The Hindu Businessline, The Wire, and The Telegraph, among others. His interests range from agrarian economy to commons, collectives and international affairs.

He is also a visiting faculty at several journalism schools in India and is associated with the Asia Center at the Monash University, Australia, as a researcher under Emeritus Professor Antonia Marika Vicziany. Hardikar holds a Master’s degree in Sociology and a postgraduate degree in Mass Communication.

He is the author of two books. Ramrao – the story of India’s agrarian crisis was published in August 2021 by Harper Collins, and his first book, A village awaits doomsday (Penguin, India, 2013), looked at the life of people displaced by development projects in India. In 2021, he received the New India Foundation fellowship to research his next book, The Empress of Central India – the first Tata venture and its profound impact on Nagpur.