America
Two Indians among 2015 Yale World Fellows
By
By Arun KumarWashington, April 21
Two Indians - SughaVazhvu
Healthcare founder and CEO Zeena Johar and journalist-author Rahul
Pandita - have been named 2015 Yale World Fellows by the prestigious Ivy
League university.
With the addition of Pandita and Johar, the
global Yale World Fellows network now includes 17 Indian Fellows, more
than any other country since the programme was established in 2002.
The
two are among 16 World Fellows selected in 2015 from a pool of about
4,000 applicants for the New Haven, Connecticut-based university's
signature global leadership development initiative.
Each year,
the university invites a group of exemplary mid-career professionals
from a wide range of fields and countries for an intensive four-month
period of academic enrichment and leadership training, according to a
media release.
From August to December, the 2015 World Fellows
will participate in specially designed seminars in leadership,
management, and global affairs taught by leading Yale faculty and audit
any of the 3,000 courses offered at the university.
The 2015
group also includes a Cuban performance artist, a Ukrainian political
activist and an Indonesian democracy expert among others.
This
year's cohort brings the total number of Yale World Fellows since the
programme's inception in 2002 to 273, representing 85 countries.
"I
am delighted to welcome this incredible group of activists, artists,
policy makers and key global players to Yale," said incoming Yale World
Fellows Director Emma Sky.
Johar's SVHC and IKP Centre for
Technologies in Public Health (ICTPH) are working to create a
primary-care delivery network through rural clinics.
The clinics
rely on affordable healthcare technologies and highly trained Indian
medical practitioners to provide basic healthcare services for
hard-to-reach rural populations of India.
SVHC's innovative care
delivery model has enabled over 70,000 patient visits through its
network of nine clinics in rural Tamil Nadu.
Pandita was
previously the opinion and special stories editor of The Hindu, one of
India's leading English-language newspapers, and has reported
extensively from various war-hit places, including Iraq and Sri Lanka.
In India, he is mostly known for his reportage on Maoist insurgency in central and eastern India, and on the turmoil in Kashmir.
He
is the author of three bestselling books: "Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A
Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir", "Hello, Bastar: The Untold Story of
India's Maoist Movement" and "The Absent State: Insurgency as an Excuse
for Misgovernance" (co-author).
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])