Barkha Dutt

A television journalist, Barkha Dutt works as a consulting editor in NDTV. She was born on 18 December 1971 in New Delhi. Her father, S. P. Dutt is an official in Air India, and her mother Prabha Dutt was a journalist working for the Hindustan Times. Barkha has a younger sister Bahar Dutt, who is also a journalist working for CNN IBN. With a Bachelor's degree in English literature, Barkha graduated from St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi. She later went on to finish her Master’s degree from the Jamia Millia Islamia Mass Communication Research Center in Mass Communications. She received another Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York. 

Barkha started out her career with NDTV and rose to the position of Consulting Editor at the same company. Barkha reported the Kargil conflict in 1999 which started with Pakistan’s army invading the Indian side of the Line of Control in Kashmir, and interviewed Captain Vikram Batra. Barkha gained popularity with the incident and was given assignments to cover conflicts in Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. She also covered the 2002 Gujarat violence and 2008 Mumbai attacks. Though she got tied up with few controversies and was acknowledged to have been involved in the Radia tapes controversy, Barkha is widely known for her passionate, committed and fearless nature. She has authored a book called “This Uniquet Land” and contributed a chapter, “Nothing new?: Women as Victims” in the book Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy. 

Barkha Dutt was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour in India, for her work in covering the events of 2004 Tsunami. Her Sunday talk show won the Indian Television Academy Award for the Best Talk show five times and won the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association award for Journalist of the Year in 2007. She has been twice named for “Global Leaders of Tomorrow” by World Economic Forum in 2001 and 2008. She has been listed out as one of the 50 Indians below 36 who made an impact on the society. In 2006, Barkha was named as Asia Society Fellow and in 2010 appointed as a member of India’s National Integration Council. 

Barkha Dutt played an important role as a female protagonist and has been an inspiration for the depiction of journalist characters in various Bollywood movies including No One Killed Jessica (Rani Mukherjee’s character) and Lakshya (Preity Zinta’s character).  She was also the inspiration for the lead role in Anand Kurian’s novel, ‘The Peddler of Soaps’.