TRUSTEES

Titoo Ahluwalia holds the unique distinction of having headed the three largest market research companies in India – IMRB, of which he became Chief Executive at the age of 30; then MARG, which he set up in 1983, and subsequently ORG, which merged with MARG in 1996. He started his career as a social researcher at Research Services Ltd in London. In 2004, Titoo Ahluwalia took early retirement from his position as CEO of ACNielsen ORG-MARG, to pursue on a full-time basis his interest in issues concerning civil society. He is now Managing Trustee of Citizens for Peace and Trustee of four other voluntary organizations involved with work in many different areas such as communal harmony, urbanization education, rural development and accountability in public institutions. He is also Chairman of Conscious Food Pvt Ltd, India’s first organic food company.

Nandita Das has acted in more than 40 feature films in 10 different languages. She made her directorial debut with Firaaq in 2008 and Between the Lines marks her debut as a playwright and theater director. She is an advocate for issues of social justice and human rights. She was the Chairperson of Children’s Film Society between 2009 and 2012. Nandita Das was the first Indian to be inducted into the Hall of Fame of the International Women’s Forum. She has also been conferred the ‘Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters’ by the French Government. She was at Yale as a World Fellow in 2014.

Smruti Koppikar, an award-winning Mumbai-based journalist and currently the Founder Editor of Question of Cities, has over three decades of experience in reporting and writing on a range of subjects from communal riots and crime to general elections, development issues, gender, malnutrition. She has led newsroom and reporting teams for national newspapers and magazines including The Indian Express, Outlook, Star News, and The Hindustan Times besides reporting for The Statesman and India Today. She is a recognised independent columnist, editorial consultant, and television panelist on urban issues, urban ecology and society.

Outside journalism, Smruti has spent considerable time focusing strongly on marginalised groups and urban issues, advocating for social justice, inclusive environments, and people's right to the city. This reflects, among other things, in her work on gender and city (she was a key member of the Women and DP Group in Mumbai which successfully intervened to include gender in the city's Development Plan 2034), in her contribution of chapters to various books on urban issues, and in the columns she has written in the past many years.

Smruti has been teaching journalism and media studies at undergraduate and postgraduate courses including the nuts and bolts of storytelling at Social Communications Media, Sophia, for more than 25 years, and at Liberal Arts colleges including at the NMIMS, Mumbai. She has developed courses and conducted workshops on media and freedom movement in India, information regimes, media literacy, ecology in cities, and chronicling cities. She serves on the Board of Studies of colleges and is a founder-member of the Dr Aroon Tikekar Centre of Advanced Studies of The Asiatic Society of Mumbai.