After ten years of Congress-led United Progressive Alliance rule parliamentary elections are due in India in April/May 2014. Against this background the Australia South Asia Research Centre (ASARC) is hosting a panel discussion with four senior influential newspaper editors from India. They will be speaking on the current economic and political situation in their country.

Jaideep Bose is Editorial Director of the Times of India group. Based in Mumbai, Bose heads the newspaper’s operations across 32 editions located in major cities and smaller towns. With a circulation of approximately five million, and a readership close to 30 million, The Times of India is the country’s largest circulating national newspaper. Bose has had an impressive career record and was one of India’s youngest editors when he took over as Executive Editor of The Times of India in 2004. He also holds positions on the boards of Times NOW, the group’s television news channel, as well as in several other group companies. He was instrumental in launching the newspaper chain’s civil society campaigns, India Poised, Lead India and the Teach India initiatives. Bose began his career with The Telegraph newspaper in Kolkata. He was Executive Editor of The Economic Times when he moved to The Times of India. Bose holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Anil Padmanabhan is Deputy Managing Editor with The Mint newspaper published by the Hindustan Times group in association with The Wall Street Journal. The Mint is India’s first Berliner format newspaper with a mix of news and features on economics, politics and business. Its readers are influential policymakers and business people from across India’s major cities, including New Delhi and Mumbai.

M Kesava Menon is Editor of Mathrubhumi, a leading Malayalam-language broadsheet with its headquarters in Kozhikode, Kerala. The newspaper, founded by Menon’s great grandfather, has a circulation of 3.5 million publishing 15 editions across Kerala, in other major Indian cities and in Dubai. Menon writes on foreign policy and strategic issues. He began his career as a lawyer and practised in the Supreme Court of India and the Kerala High Court. His journalistic career started with the Patriot newspaper. He joined The Hindu in New Delhi as a reporter in 1984 and Mathrubhumi from 1990 becoming editor in 2009.

Vinod Sharma is a Senior Editor with over 30 years’ experience in journalism. He is Political Editor with leading national daily the Hindustan Times. He regularly appears as a political commentator on Indian TV news channels, including the BBC. An advocate of positive India-Pakistan relations, Sharma led the first delegation of Indian journalists to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as part of a peace exchange that included a similar visit by Pakistani journalists to the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir. Sharma began his journalistic career with the United News of India in 1978 and had a stint with The Week, an English magazine of the Kerala-based Malayala Manorama Group, before joining the Hindustan Times in 1988. Sharma plays an active role in think tanks and professional bodies. He has been on executive councils of the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) and the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) and has an association with the World Editors Forum.