Vaad

Kuljinder Dhillon is a common man from Majha region in Punjab. Like tens of thousands of youth, he also got swept away by the Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale-led Khalistan movement in late 1970s and early 1980s. He was inside the Golden Temple when the Indian Army launched a military operation codenamed 'Blue Star' to take control of the holy complex back from Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was using the Sikhism's holiest site as a launchpad for his terrorism and anti-India activities.Kuljinder Dhillon actively participated in the battle with Indian army on 4th & 5th June 1984. He was arrested later from the Golden Temple but managed to flee from a hospital where he was referred to for treating injuries inflicted by a grenade attack. He later fled to Pakistan in search of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, believing like lakhs of other Sikhs that 'Sant' was hiding in Pakistan.Kuljinder Dhillon later got involved in smuggling activities across the border but was caught few years later. Ultimately, he got disillusioned with the Khalistan movement and is a strong opponent of the same now. His journey from extremism to mainstream is an important one that needed to be documented. Though, Kuljinder Dhillon lives like a family man in Punjab, he is constantly under the threat from Khalistanis who have made attempts on his life for speaking truth.

Dharmendra Pradhan has resigned, finally!

Puneet Sahani is an independent researcher and commentator known for his work on Sikh history, identity, and the intersection of religion and politics in South Asia. He is particularly recognized for his critical perspectives on the evolution of Sikh identity and the Khalistan movement.

Jay Vardhan Singh is currently doing his PhD in Ancient Indian History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. His area of interest includes the Ancient and early medieval history of the Indian subcontinent.Follow Jay’s YouTube channel (English): @JayVardhanSingh ; Hindi: @ThestoryofIndia

Dinkar P. Srivastava joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1978. He has served in Karachi in the early 90s. Also served in the Middle East, Washington, Brussels and Tehran.In 1993-94, as Director (UNP), he was part of successful Indian lobbying efforts against four Pakistani attempts to have resolutions on J&K adopted in UN General Assembly and UN Commission on Human Rights. He was involved in the drafting of National Human Rights Commission statute. As Joint Secretary (UNP), he participated in Indian lobbying efforts to contain the diplomatic fallout of the Pokhran II nuclear tests and prevent the internationalization of the J&K issue during the Kargil war (1999).He dealt with Indian candidature for permanent membership of the UN Security Council, UN Peace-keeping and Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. He was a member of the Indian delegations to the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, and the International Court of Justice in the case of Aerial Incident of 1999 (Pakistan v. India). In 2011-15, as Indian Ambassador to Iran, he negotiated the MOU for Indian participation in Chabahar Port.His book 'Forgotten Kashmir: The Other Side of the Line of Control' examines the evolution of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) over the past seven decades. His latest book 'Pakistan: Ideologies, Strategies, Interests' examines the ideology of Pakistan.

Colonel Rajesh Pawar (retd) is a former officer of the Indian Army and is now a seasoned war correspondent and defense journalist for India Today. He is best known for his fearless ground reporting from some of the most volatile conflict zones in recent history.His expertise lies in global geopolitics, modern warfare tactics, and defense strategy. Most notably, he provided extensive on-ground coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war, reporting live from Kyiv even as the city was under siege.More recently, he has covered the Israel-Hamas war, reporting from locations like Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea to analyze the conflict's military and human impact. His work often focuses on the intersection of military action and its geopolitical ripple effects, making him a critical voice for understanding how global conflicts impact India's strategic interests.

Colonel Yogander Singh is a retired Indian Army officer and military historian, with special focus on Haryana. He has written several books, most prominent among them being 'Hal Wa Samshir: Politico-Military History of Haryana', Future Ready Indian Army and 'Effective Deterrence: Thoughts on India's Security Policy and Structures in the Twenty-first Century'.

Dr Abhinav Pandya, a Cornell University graduate in public affairs and a bachelor's from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, is a founder and CEO of Usanas Foundation, an India-based foreign policy and security think tank. He has authored books named 'Radicalization in India: An Exploration (2019)' and 'Terror Financing in Kashmir (2023)'.He had previously advised the former governor of Jammu and Kashmir on security issues during the critical times when Kashmir's special status, Article 370, was revoked.He has written extensively for several national and international newspapers, and worked with the International Labour Organization, the United Nations.His latest book is 'The Jihad Game: Inside Pakistan's dark war'

Dr Ramesh Chandra Sinha is a 1962-batch IAS officer whose six-decade career produced some of the most consequential infrastructure projects in modern India.As Vice Chairman and Managing Director of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) under PWD Minister Nitin Gadkari, he built India's first world-class expressway — the 95-km Mumbai-Pune Expressway — completing it in 36 months at a cost of Rs 1,600 crore, which was Rs 50 crore below the MSRDC's own estimate and roughly half of Reliance's competing bid that came with 78 concessions. He raised Rs 2,400 crore from the open market through non-convertible debentures on an equity base of just Rs 5 crore, creating a financing model that other states later sought to replicate.Alongside the Expressway, he delivered 50-plus flyovers across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region with an average construction time of around 30 months, along with numerous rail over-bridges and town bypasses.Earlier, as Vice Chairman and Managing Director of CIDCO under Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, he transformed Vashi from a settlement of 30,000 people into the foundation of Navi Mumbai — building its dam, water supply, six-lane road to Mumbai, railway connectivity (with CIDCO funding 67 percent of the capital cost), modern railway stations, and the iconic Seawoods NRI Complex which sold out worldwide in nine days.He also developed New Nashik, New Aurangabad, New Nanded and the district headquarters of Sindhudurg, and engineered the shifting of Mumbai's wholesale market to Navi Mumbai.At the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation, he turned a loss-making PSU profitable and launched the famed half-hourly ASIAD bus service between Mumbai and Pune in the face of organised taxi-union resistance.In Andhra Pradesh, under Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, he played a key role in conceptualising Cyberabad, the Visakhapatnam SEZ, the Nagarjuna Sagar water supply system for Hyderabad, the Hyderabad bypass, the biopharma zone, the Hyderabad Metro, the Krishna port and the international airport.As Vice Chairman and Managing Director of MADC, he led the MIHAN multi-modal cargo hub and airport project at Nagpur. As Aurangabad Collector during the 1992 riots, his decisiveness earned him the nickname "Simh."At All India Radio earlier in his career, he was instrumental in bringing FM radio to India in 1977. His biography, Transforming India from Within, was released in 2024.

Vishal Bhargava is one of India's most independent voices on real estate — a journalist and analyst who has tracked the sector for nearly two decades from inside both finance and media. He began his career on the institutional side, with stints at CLSA India and Bank of America, before moving to financial journalism at The Economic Times and ET NOW.Today he writes regular columns on real estate, and runs BHK-Voice, his independent platform that has become required reading for serious homebuyers, builders, and policy-watchers. He is based in Mumbai and applies the discipline of an equity analyst to a sector that has historically resisted scrutiny - pricing builders the way one would price stocks, and reading projects through their lenders, their balance sheets, and their political backers.His writing and commentary are known for being unusually plain-spoken in an industry built on spin: he has called Mumbai's market "Lower Parelised," predicted Gurgaon's coming correction long before consensus, and coined the term "location deception" for one of Indian real estate's most common scams.Beyond the numbers, he is also a chronicler of Indian cities — their architecture, their infrastructure, their slow disfigurement — which makes him one of the few people in India equipped to discuss real estate not just as a market, but as a mirror of Indian state capacity and public life.