Kanchan Gupta
Kanchan Gupta (Bengali: কাঞ্চন গুপ্ত) is an Indian journalist, political analyst, and activist.
Kanchan Gupta | |
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| Born | |
| Education | Loyola School, Jamshedpur St Michael's High School, Patna St Xavier's College, Kolkata. |
| Occupation | Journalist and TV commentator; Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi; Chairman of Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation, Kolkata. |
| Spouse(s) | Nandini Gupta |
Early Life and education
Born to Bangladeshi refugee parents, Kanchan Gupta was raised in Jamshedpur and Patna where he attended missionary schools. He later moved to Kolkata where he studied English literature, political science and economics at St Xavier’s College, University of Calcutta.
Journalism career
In 1982, he joined The Telegraph as a sub-editor on the news desk, where he learned editing from M.J. Akbar. In 1987, he was invited to join The Statesman by the paper's then-editor, Sunanda K. Datta-Ray. He became the youngest Assistant Editor in The Statesman’s history.
In 1991, he moved to Delhi with a new assignment as Assistant Editor of The Pioneer, then edited by Vinod Mehta. He was promoted to Deputy Editor in 1994.
He took a brief break from journalism from 1995 to 2004. He returned to journalism in 2004, and again joined The Pioneer for some time, edited by Chandan Mitra.
Kanchan Gupta writes on national and regional politics, international affairs and security issues. His weekly column, Coffee Break, appears in The Pioneer every Sunday. He writes a weekly column for the popular Mumbai daily, MidDay. He participates in Indian television programs on political and national security issues. He is politically conservative, socially liberal. He lives by the precepts of the Brahmo Samaj.
Political career
A year later, in December 1995, he gave up full-time journalism to concentrate on a public career and began to assist L.K. Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee in their parliamentary work. As an official in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) when the NDA came to power, he worked in close association with National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra on foreign affairs and security issues. He was the PMO’s representative on the National Security Advisory Board.
As part of the Government’s public diplomacy initiative in Arab countries, and to engage and influence opinion-makers and the intelligentsia in the Middle East, Kanchan Gupta was sent to Egypt as director of the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture in Cairo. He held this post till 2004.