Sri. Boobli George Verghese Chairman, Board of Jury

Boobli George Verghese, columnist and author, is Visiting Professor at Delhi's Centre for Policy Research, chairman of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and holds the Delhi Policy Group's Comprehensive Security Chair.

He was at Delhi and Cambridge Universities before joining the Times of India, and was Editor of the Hindustan Times (1969-75) and the Indian Express (1982-86). He received the Magsaysay Award for Journalism in 1975 and Assam's Srimanta Sankaradeva Award for 2005.

He was Information Adviser to the Prime Minister (1966-68), has served on several committees and commissions and is associated with a number of NGOs and other institutions. He has a special interest in the Northeast, water resources and India's neighbours.

Verghese has authored "Waters of Hope", "India's Northeast Resurgent", "Re- orienting India: The New Geopolitics of Asia", "Warrior of the Fourth Estate: Ramnath Goenka of the Indian Express", "A J&K Primer", and "Rage Reconciliation, Security: Managing India's Diversities" (Penguin).

He is a member of a number of NGOs and has been associated with several dialogue groups and official and non-official committees and commissions over the years.


Sanjoy Hazarika Member, Board of Jury

Sanjoy Hazarika is Managing Trustee, Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (C-NES); Editor, Writer and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Policy Research. He has written extensively on the North-east and made documentary films about the region and the neighborhood where he travels, including Tibet, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.

He is an awardwinning former correspondent of The New York Times and launched and edited The North East Page at the Statesman for four years between 2002 and January 2007. He also writes columns for the Indo-Asian News Service, Hindustan and other newspapers and journals and is a frequent speaker on issues related to the North-east.

He was a member of the National Security Advisory Board, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) review committee, of an advisory panel for the NE in the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution and has held fellowships at Harvard University and the University of Kentucky.

In October 2006, he was a "Practitioner in Residence" at Tufts University, which honoured his innovation, research and policy advocacy. He is also a Member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, Member, Advisory Committee, North East Research Centre of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and has most recently been appointed to the National Disaster Management Advisory Board.

He is also member of various expert committees in India's Planning Commission for the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012.) He is acknowledged as a specialist on migration and issues in the North-east; his books include Bhopal, the lesson of a tragedy; Strangers of the Mist; Tales of War and Peace from India's North East; Rites of Passage: border crossings, imagined homelands – India's East and Bangladesh.

He has conceived and developed projects of health intervention, governance, livelihoods in Assam and a participative Vision 2020 exercise for the North-eastern Council of the Government of India, involving more than 40,000 respondents, one of the biggest such surveys in the region with 20 partner NGO groups and over 100 enumerators.

One of his major projects with long term policy applications is Akha (Hope): the development of ships for health services in the islands of the Brahmaputra river, which reach thousands of people who have been without access to basic health care and other facilities for over 60 years. Another is a project on protecting the Gangetic dolphin in Assam by mobilizing local communities, developing awareness and alternative livelihoods and organic fish bait for those who have hunted the dolphin for its oil which has been used as bait; a significant component of this campaign is to train local villagers in green tourism, with the dolphin the key attraction. A film has also been made on the dolphins.

He divides his time between the North-east and Delhi apart from other travels in the country and abroad.


Patricia Mukhim Member, Board of Jury

Patricia Mukhim is an educationist, activist and journalist. She is currently editor of The Shillong Times, Meghalaya’s oldest English language daily and a columnist for The Telegraph and The Statesman. Patricia Mukhim is a member of the National Security Advisory Board and National Foundation for Communal Harmony, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, New Delhi. She had been a member of the task force on the Committee for Centre State Relations and is member of the Environmental Advisory Board of the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCo) and also member of Meghalaya State Coordination Committee to Combat Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Women. Patricia is a trustee of the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (CNES), New Delhi and the Vice President of the Delhi-based Indo Global Social Service Society.

Patricia Mukhim was conferred the Padmashree in March 2000. Earlier in 1996, she received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for outstanding woman media person, from the Media Foundation, New Delhi. In February 2008, Patricia received the excellence in journalism award by FLO, the women’s wing of Federation of Indian Chamber’s of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) at Mumbai.

In May 2008 she was given the UN Brahma, Soldier of Humanity Award and in June 2009 she was conferred the Shiva Prasad Barooah National Award for Journalism.

In January 2011 Patricia was conferred the 2nd North East Excellence Award by Indian Chamber of Commerce.