Raj Kamal Jha

Raj Kamal Jha (born 1966) is an Indian newspaper editor and novelist writing in English. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express. He has written six novels that have been translated into more than 12 languages. His journalism and fiction have won national and international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize; Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize; Tata Literature Live! Book of The Year; the International Press Institute India Award for Excellence in Journalism; and the Mumbai Press Club Journalist of the Year award. In September 2021, Jha was awarded Editor of The Year by the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association Annual Leadership Awards.

Early life and education

Jha was born in Bhagalpur, Bihar, and grew up in Calcutta, West Bengal, where he went to school at St. Joseph's College. He attended the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where he got his Bachelor of Technology with Honours in Mechanical Engineering. He was the editor of the campus magazine Alankar in his third (junior) and fourth (senior) years at IIT where he received the institute's Order of Merit. After graduating in June 1988, he received a full scholarship to the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of Southern California to pursue a Master's program in Print Journalism; he received his M.A. in 1990.

Journalism

Since 1990, Jha has been working full-time in newsrooms. He was an Assistant Editor (News) at The Statesman in Kolkata between 1992 and 1994, a Senior Associate Editor at India Today, New Delhi (1994–1996), and since 1996 has been with The Indian Express, first as its Deputy Editor, then as Executive Editor, Managing Editor, Editor and now Chief Editor since June 2014. The newspaper and its journalists have won the Excellence in Journalism Award from the India chapter of the Vienna-based International Press Institute five times. These are for investigative work by the newspaper related to the Gujarat riots of 2002 and their aftermath; the Bihar flood scam in which relief was siphoned off by officers; the disappearance of tigers from India's national parks and questions regarding the role of the Election Commission of India.

As a member of the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists", the newspaper, in April 2016, investigated The Panama Papers and revealed details of Indian names and companies related to offshore accounts in tax havens. Following the revelations, the Government set up a panel to probe each account. For the Panama Papers, the ICIJ won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. For his "exemplary stewardship" of The Indian Express that saw a "focus on investigative journalism", Jha was named Journalist of the Year by the Mumbai Press Club at Redink Awards, 2017.

In June 2021, the newspaper's investigation of FinCEN files, tracking global dirty money flows through global banks including HSBC, JP Morgan Chase and Standard Chartered, was part of the ICIJ-BuzzFeedNews project that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Delivering the vote of thanks at the Ramnath Goenka Memorial Awards in 2016 in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jha underlined that questioning those in power and holding them accountable, inviting their criticism, was the hallmark of good journalism, an obvious truth that often gets lost in the "selfie journalism" of "likes and retweets". The next year, Jha said that the only counter to fear in the newsroom was to get up and switch the lights on rather than find a safe blanket to hide under.

In 2017, for his "outstanding contribution" to journalism and literature by telling stories about a changing India with "honesty, compassion and courage", Jha was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by his alma mater Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, at its annual convocation. Past recipients of this award from the institute include Google's Sundar Pichai, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Magsaysay Award winner Harish Hande.

In March 2023, speaking at the RNG Awards in the presence of the Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, Jha called the Supreme Court the North Star for journalists for expanding the freedom of the press over the years. That's why, he said, "when the lights dim, when a reporter is arrested under a law meant for terrorists, when another is arrested for asking a question, when a university teacher is picked up for sharing a cartoon, a college student for a speech, a film star for a comment, or when a rejoinder to a story comes in the form of a police FIR – we turn to the North Star for its guiding light."

The Indian Express, both print and online, has monthly investigations—an opinion and ideas section, that showcases writers from across the political spectrum—and a national network of reporters and editors whose reporting help readers understand India.

Novels

Jha's journalism uniquely shapes his fiction.

His sixth and latest novel The Patient in Bed Number 12, published in 2023, tracks a viral hate video, a dying father in search of the living and a daughter who follows her head and heart. Actor and director Nandita Das called it "a heart-wrenching journey through the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times". Poet and critic Ranjit Hoskote wrote this "dazzling kaleidoscope" of a novel is a "superbly Sebaldian" take on the trauma and horror of a people who have lost agency.

His fifth novel The City And The Sea, published by Penguin Hamish Hamilton in 2019, "cleaves open India's tragedy of violence against women with a powerful story about our complicity in the culture that supports it." Nobel Laureate, economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has called it a "gripping narrative of human predicament and surviving hope, yielding an extraordinary combination of philosophy and allegory. A book you have to read."