The mission
The Polity is a colloquy on the idea of India - the journey of the nation, the evolution of the republic and the metamorphoses of its people as a socio-political union.
As a unique journalistic venture, the Polity will strive to unveil a narrative or a dialectical journey that pits history against the contemporary, intersperses the social, political, economic and cultural elements that shaped this nation, its history, its episodes of nationhood, its statecraft, its standing in the comity of nations, its ideological identities and their discursive structures, and much more of the saga that defines its journey through the passage of time. There are no limits, no bounds and no constraints when we explore this saga - of We THE PEOPLE!
As for the form, we prefer to follow the model of Slow Journalism - a movement that is reshaping the paradigms of journalism globally.
Who we are
The Polity and its audio-visual platforms are owned by the Vud Media India Foundation, a Section 8 (non-profit) company.
A. Vinod Kumar
The platform is led by its Editor-in-Chief, A. Vinod Kumar, an acclaimed strategic analyst and journalist. Kumar was a journalist in his initial professional years having served in leading media houses across India. He was also a first-generation online journalist and a broadcaster and was part of some pioneering mass media initiatives in the 1990s and 2000s. Kumar was also the Executive Editor of South Asia Monitor in its inception years.
As a strategic analyst, Kumar is internationally acclaimed for his scholarship on foreign and national security policies, and in particular, his expertise on nuclear issues. His first book India and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime: A Perennial Outlier was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2014. The book, one of the first international university press books from Indian think tanks at the time of its launch, was also nominated for the American Political Science Association Award in 2015.
Kumar's second book on missile defence was published by Vij Books in 2019. His third book on missile defence and nuclear deterrence is currently headed to the press. He is currently working on his fourth book which deals with the history of India's nuclear decision-making.
Besides extensively publishing in international platforms like Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and The National Interest, Kumar's testimony on nuclear policy was published by the UK House of Lords in 2019.
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Pradeep Kaimal
A Delhi-based journalist with over 25 years of experience in national and international media, Pradeep Kaimal is the Executive Editor of The Polity.
Kaimal has had a rewarding journalistic career with stints in The Observer of Business and Politics, The Times Group and Down to Earth. Kaimal was South Asia Correspondent for IHS Markit for many years. He also edits Indoen, a platform dedicated to energy and the environment.
Besides his journalistic engagements, Kaimal was a legal editor at the Reed Elsevier-owned LexisNexis India’s Halsbury’s Laws of India project. He also worked at The Energy Research Institute (TERI) and the National Institute of Labour Economics Research and Development. He was also part of the Centre of Science and Environment's prestigious State of India’s Environment project.
Kaimal has also been a political commentator and writes regularly for prominent media platforms.
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Stig Toft Madsen
Stig Toft Madsen is a Copenhagen-based anthropologist and sociologist, who also closely observes South Asian politics, besides having extensively travelled across India and the sub-continent. He is associated with the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) at the University of Copenhagen. Starting from his first visit in 1969-70 or the hippie era, he returned to India many times later - for field studies, work, as a tour guide, and as a tourist. During his visits, Madsen has extensively chronicled the Indian way of life, its society, politics, economy and culture. Madsen is an avid bird watcher.
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Jayaprabha Ravindran
Jayaprabha Ravindran is one of India's foremost archivists having spent a professional lifetime of service in national repositories like the National Archives of India (NAI) and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). Ravindran retired from NAI as Assistant Director and was for, many years, superviing its Research Room, frequented by distinguished historians and scholars, who have time and again acknowledged her leadership in this arena for many years. She is a co-founder of the Milli Archives Foundation, and is also working on various projects to collate private paper collections.
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Shantanu Chakrabarti
Shantanu Chakrabarti is a Professor of History at the University of Calcutta and Convenor of the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies. An acclaimed scholar of both Indian and world history, Chakrabarti research interests expand to international relations, European studies and the niche area of privatisation of security. He is the Honorary President of Association of European Studies in India. Chakrabarti is currently the Deputy Editor in Chief of Stosunki Międzynarodowe–International Relations, Journal of the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Warsaw and also a Member in the Advisory Board of the UNISCI (Research Unit on International Security and Cooperation), University of Madrid, Spain.
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Prasad Nair
Prasad Nair is a Delhi-based freelance journalist. He also has many years of experience with different publications.
