openIndia is openDemocracy's site dedicated to the politics of south Asia, with particular attention to India, the region's largest country. We focus on the news and the debates of a region whose complexity of experiences and diversity of perspectives remain largely inaccessible to broader audiences.
India's recent growth has seen it enter the simplifying spotlight of international scrutiny. The more meaningful focus on India looks not simply at its rise on the world stage, but how the country rises to the multi-pronged challenges it faces. How does the world's largest democracy, the world's largest plural society, cope with its incredible diversity? This is a question of tremendous relevance not just to India, but to the rest of south Asia and to states across the "developing world" and elsewhere, as they struggle to balance democracy and multiplicities of identities, income, and interests. openIndia sheds light on the travails of democratic politics and society in a region at the "frontlines" of many of the world's most important challenges.
Submissions
We are open to unsolicited articles and pitches. If you are interested in writing for us about India or south Asia, please first consult openDemocracy's submission guidelines. Please send all documents as Word attachments to india@opendemocracy.net.
Contact
For all other enquiries regarding openIndia, please visit the openDemocracy contact page.
Editorial advisors
Siddharth Dube
Siddharth Dube is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute. A non-fiction writer and specialist commentator on poverty, public health, and development, his books include In the Land of Poverty: Memoirs of an Impoverished Indian Family, 1947-1997; Sex, Lies and AIDS; and the central essay to photographer Sebastião Salgado’s The End of Polio. More about Siddharth here.
Mira Kamdar
Mira Kamdar, an Associate Fellow of the Asia Society, was a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute from 1992 to 2006. She founded the Institute's program on "Emerging Powers: China, India, Brazil and South Africa", and was a founding member of the program on "Citizenship & Security". She served as Acting Director in 1996-97. She is the author of Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World (Scribner 2007). More about Mira here.
Gowher Rizvi
Gowher Rizvi, Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard, is director of the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Before joining the institute, he was the Ford Foundation's Representative for South Asia, having previously served as the Foundation's Deputy Director for Governance and Civil Society in the New York office. Earlier he was the Director of Contemporary Affairs at the Asia Society in New York and a Professor of Politics at Oxford. He is the author and editor of several books. More about Gowher here.
