Barkha Dutt

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Barkha Dutt in news footage which shows the BM-21 Grad MRL system being fired in the background. The rocket barrage was aimed at Tiger Hill.

Barkha Dutt (born December 18, 1971) is a popular TV journalist of India . Barkha presently works for NDTV, one of India's many TV news companies. Her rise in popular Indian awareness is primarily attributed to her coverage of the Kargil War and her continued association with news primarily pertaining to the sensitive issues of Kashmir politics. She is hailed as the "Indian Christiane Amanpour".^{[citation needed]}An extremely pathetic version according to her critics.

1 Early life
- 1.1 Education
2 Career as Reporter
3 Criticism
4 Trivia
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Early life

Barkha was born in India to S.P. Dutt (called "Speedy" because of his initials[1]and Prabha Dutt (nee Behl). Speedy was an official in Air-India and Prabha was a Chief of Bureau of the Hindustan Times for quite some time. Her childhood days were spent shuttling between New Delhi and New York.[2]

Barkha credits her journalism skills to her mother, Prabha, a pioneer among women journalists in India. Prabha Dutt graduated from the Chandigarh School of Journalism with honours and did her inhouse training with the Hindustan Times, Delhi in 1964.

Prabha Dutt died in 1984, when she was in her prime, due to a brain haemorrhage. At that time Barkha was just thirteen.[3]

[edit] Education

Barkha was educated at the Modern School, New Delhi. She then did her Bachelor's degree in English literature from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi. After this, she did her Master's degree in Mass Communication from Jamia Milia Islamia's Mass Communication Research Center New Delhi.

That was the time NDTV was just about starting and Barkha took up a job with the channel. " There was no looking back after that," she says.[4]She was a 1997 winner of the Inlaks Scholarship, which sends six Indians abroad annually for graduate work. Barkha took two years off from work and got a master's in journalism from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, New York.

[edit] Career as Reporter

Barkha's coverage of the 1999 Kargil Conflict gained her much popularity and fame , though she confessed later that she did not perform her journalistic duty during her war reporting ^[1]. Kargil apart, Barkha has done yeoman work for NDTV. Today, she is the Managing Editor of the Channel. She also hosts the talkshow, We The People on NDTV. She is also anchorperson of the 8 p.m. 60 Minutes and co-anchors "Newshour," an hour-long analysis and discussion program for STAR TV, the Asian satellite channel. Some of her writings can also be viewed in Outlook magazine's website.

Her recent coverage of the Tsunami disaster from Nagapattinam won appreciation from viewers and media professionals alike^{[citation needed]}. She is also on the editorial advisory board of cultural online magazine- Cerebration.

[edit] Criticism

Though she is hailed as the "Indian Christiane Amanpour" however, her style of reporting has not been immune to criticism regarding sensationalisation. [5][6] She has also been frequently criticized for being unduly sympathetic towards Islamic extremists whilst seeking to heap the blame for their actions on Hindu conservatives. [7] Her cheap sensationalism,lack of indepth research,personal agenda in her shows makes her a Katherine Mayo of modern India, who was called by Mahatma Gandhi as a 'drain inspector'.

[edit] Trivia

Barkha and her younger sister, Bahar are said to have got their names from the song, "O sajana barkha bahar aai..", from the Bollywood film, 'Parakh' (1960).
The character of 'Romila Dutta', in the Bollywood film, Lakshya (2004), enacted by Preity Zinta, is based on Barkha Dutt.
Her name is also mentioned(although in a humorous way) by Nana Patekar in the movie Bluffmaster.