Anita Agnihotri

Anita Agnihotri (nee Chatterjee) was born and spent her childhood in Kolkata. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics at Presidency College in Kolkata, and graduated with a Masters in Economics from Calcutta University. She was selected for the IAS in 1980 to the Odisha cadre. She went on to have a 37 year career in the civil service. As an IAS, she was Collector of Sundargarh district of Odisha and was Principal Secretary in departments such as Textiles and Industries. In 1991, she took a sabbatical from IAS and completed Masters in Development Economics from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

At the centre, she was a joint DG in Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) between 1996 and 2001, and then Development Commissioner of SEEPZ, Mumbai in 2008-2011 at the rank of Joint Secretary. She was also the member secretary of the National Commission for Women. She retired in 2016 as Secretary, Social Justice Department, Government of India.

Anita commenced writing at an early age. The writer Bimal Kar encouraged her to pursue a literary career . As a school student, she used to write for renowned filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s children's magazine Sandesh, something that gave her confidence and also shaped her literary sensibilities. Her writing has been compared with that of noted Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi.[2] Anita’s concerns are also the struggles, the exploitation, the deprivation in the lives and environment of the poor and downtrodden. The following works of note illustrate this.

In 1991, on a sabbatical from the IAS to pursue a course on rural development in UK’s Anglia Ruskin University, she wrote the novella “Mahuldiha Days” capturing the incidents that she had encountered as an administrator in Odisha’s Mahuldiha.

In 2015, Anita’s book Mahanadi was published. The eponymous book is written with the river Mahanadi in the first person. It tells the story of a river that flows through some of the least developed (and poorest) regions of Chhattisgarh and Odisha, and the profound influence of the river on the regions society, culture and economics.

Anita is married to Satish Agnihotri, her batchmate from IAS and now also retired. Satish is also a published writer in Hindi. He writes satire and science fiction. They have a son and a daughter.

• Indu Basu Smriti Puraskar
• Sahitya Setu Puraskar
• Bangla Academy Somen Chanda Puraskar, (Anita returned this award in protest of the killing of innocent people in Nandigram)
• Sarat Puraskar
• Bangiya Sahitya Parishad Samman
• Golpomela Puraskar
• Sailajananda Smriti Puraskar
• Gajendra Kumar Mitra Smriti Puraskar
• Pratibha Basu Smriti Puraskar
• Bhuban Mohini Dasi Gold Medal by Calcutta University for contribution to Bengali literature
• Economist-Crossword Award, 2011 in the category ‘Indian Language Fiction Translation’ for Anita’s collection of stories Seventeen, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha

Fiction

• Forest Interludes - Journals and Essays, including the novella 'Mahuldiha Days', translated to English Bengali by Kalpana Bardhan
• Mahuldihar Din - translated to Swedish by Joar Tiberg
• The Awakening - translated to English by Nandini Guha[3]
• Seventeen - a collection of stories - translated to English by Arunava Sinha[4]
• Those Who Have Known Love[5] translated to English by Dr Rani Ray from the original Bengali novel, Jara Bhalo Besechhilo
• Sabotage - a collection of stories - translated to English by Arunava Sinha
• Kaste
• Mahanadi
• Desher Bhitor Desh

Non-Fiction

• Involuntary Displacement in Dam Projects edited by A.B. Ota & Anita Agnihotri ; foreword by Michael Cernea. Prachi Prakashan, 1996. ISBN 8185824037

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