in India. His reportage has been published by the Caravan, the Guardian Long Read, The New Yorker, and Reuters. He was awarded a Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellowship in 2022-23, won the True Story Award in 2024, and received a Ramnath Goenka Award and a Mumbai Press Club Red Ink Award in 2015.
Bhatia's new book is The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy.
At the Guardian he tagged five books that "speak to some of the themes dominant in India these days – caste, propaganda, political prisoners, the weaponisation of state machinery, listless youth and nostalgia for gentler times." One title on the list:
Gujarat Under Modi by Christophe JaffrelotRead about another book on the list.
Jaffrelot’s extraordinary book describes Narendra Modi’s centralised governance style before he was prime minister. It was written in 2013, the year before Modi’s national victory, and deemed too “high-risk” to publish for almost a decade. But 10 years later, the book could well be a record of Modi’s prime ministership. It’s a detailed study of how he outflanked rivals, thwarted investigations, reduced his dependency on the RSS – the organisation he rose from – and took his message directly to the people. Jaffrelot records how Modi tinkers with political systems and bureaucratic processes to make them align with his interests, and describes how these actions lend cover to Hindu nationalists as they embed themselves deeper into society, making their extrication increasingly difficult.
--Marshal Zeringue
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