Kota Neelima

Neelima writes in Economic and Political Weekly, The Huffington Post India,[1] The Quint, The Wire, DailyO,[2] DNA,[3] and Hindustan Times. She speaks at academic institutions on agricultural crisis and gender, like Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Delhi, Azim Premji University, Jadhavpur University, Graphic Era Hill University (Dehradun), Sri Ram College of Commerce (Delhi), JECRC University (Jaipur), Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHDA), Pune.

Kota Neelima also participates at many leading literary festivals like Jaipur Literary Festival,[4] Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, Dehradun Literature Festival, Odisha Literary Festival,[5] Times LitFest,[6] and Delhi Literary Festival. National Award-winning filmmaker Vetrimaaran has optioned one of her books, Shoes of The Dead, to be adapted into a movie.[7] Recently, she faced threats from the Karni Sena[8] in Rajasthan for writing an article critical of their role in women empowerment in the state in view of their protest against the movie, Padmavat. Her research organization, Institute of Perception Studies (IPS), maps rural distress and solutions, with special focus on gender and farmer suicides.

Another of her initiative StudioAdda conducts periodic outreach events like art and photography shows, and discussions on social, economic and political conditions of India. She was awarded in the Exceptional Women of Excellence category at the Women Economic Forum (WEF) 2019 .[9]

Neelima was born to the journalist and author, K. V. S. Rama Sarma, and Uma Sarma in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh.[10] She has a Ph.D in Political Science from University of Delhi, and a Master of Arts in International Relations from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Neelima has also been a Senior Research Fellow, South Asia Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC.

As a journalist, Neelima covered politics for The Indian Express in Delhi and was the Political Editor of The Sunday Guardian. Her academic articles are on distress, farmer suicides and reforms on electoral system in India, like 'Right to Recall'.[11]

Neelima has written books on the poor and women in India in both genres of fiction and non-fiction. Her non-fiction work about farmer suicides identify new areas of distress, especially among the rural poor. Her new book Widows of Vidarbha, Making of Shadows (Oxford University Press, 2018) is about the life of widows who are left behind by suicides of farmers due to agriculture distress[12] in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. The book reveals the six invisibilities imposed on the women,[13] and how they are forced to relegate their rights and freedoms to the men.

Neelima has utilised the genre of fiction to contract the lives of poor farmers with the lives of the powerful who live in the cities of India.[14] Shoes of the Dead (Rupa Publications, 2013) is the comparison of the inheritances of two young men, a political heir and a poor farmer in India, and who wins the game for power. The book's examines how the poor farmers' determination to get justice for the farmer suicide of his brother, threatens to derail the political career of an ambition politician.

Death of a Moneylender (Penguin, 2009/Reprint 2016) is the story of a young, urban journalist whose reluctance to cover rural India is a comment on the priorities of mainstream media today. This book was taught, as part curriculum, to the Upper School students of the Collegiate School, Richmond, USA[15] to learn about rural Indian life and agriculture in a changing world of globalisation.

Her fourth book, The Honest Season (Penguin, 2016) is a critique of the state of democracy in India. The story centres around six conversations that take place inside a mythical Parliament, and establishes why the Indian democracy can thrive even after ignoring the basic needs of the vast majority of the country.[16]

Her non-fiction works also include two books on spirituality. One of them, Tirupati: A Guide to Life (Penguin, 2012) has been translated to Hindi, Telugu and Tamil languages.

Neelima is also a painter.[17] Her works are impressionist-abstract and the medium in oil on canvas. She follows an elaborate artistic process of making the works, which begins with extensive research of ancient Indian texts, which forms the theme of her works. This is followed by charcoal drawings on paper before, finally, converting the images into oil paintings. Her works are informed by the rich tradition of skepticism in the Indian philosophical thought, and seek to re-imagine Upanishadic questions to themes of causation, creation and karma. The symbols used in the paintings are trees, sky, the moon and birds, which undergo multi-faceted and complex redefinition.

Neelima's latest work (2018), Metaphors of the Moon,[18] charts the trajectories of the mind as it travels from absence to presence in an eternal cycle. The mind is the metaphor for the Moon. It represents the cyclic process of thought; its creation, immersion and regeneration, and also is a metaphor for absence and presence.

Her works have been featured at the Lalit Kala Akademi and the India Habitat Centre in Delhi, and in art shows in Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, among other cities in India.[19] Her works have also been featured at several international exhibitions, including The Nehru Centre, London, Museum, and China Art Museum, National Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.[20] Her works are part of the permanent collection in Museum of Scared Art, Belgium.

• List of Indian writers
• List of Indian women writers
• List of Indian women artists

• Kota Neelima at Penguin India