The stories that won Caravan writers Ramnath Goenka Journalism Awards for 2011

10 September, 2014

The Caravan's executive editor, Vinod K Jose, and contributing editor Christophe Jaffrelot have won Ramnath Goenka Awards for the year 2011.

Jose won for his reporting on politics and government for his stories on the aging DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi and the former prime minister Manmohan Singh. 

'Falling Man,' in The Caravan's October 2011 issue was Jose's profile of Manmohan Singh when a year of scandals had brought into question Singh's reputation as an incorruptable man of integrity. In 'The Last Lear' from The Caravan's April 2011 issue, Jose profiled an anxious M Karunanidhi who was trying to hold his family and party together in the aftermath of the 2G scam and amidst other multiplying allegations and a strained relationship with the Congress. 

Jaffrelot won in the commentary and interpretative category for "incisive writing on India's new political sadhus," which included his Perspectives on Swami Aseemanand and Baba Ramdev.

In 'The Pacification of Swami Aseemanand' in The Caravan's March 2011 issue, Jaffrelot brought to the fore the Muslim inmate who seemed to have moved Swami Aseemanand to make his confessions that Hindu nationalists had been responsible for six bomb blasts, and in 'Ramdev: Swami without Sampradaya' in The Caravan's July 2011 issue, Jaffrelot examined Baba Ramdev's ties with the Sangh Parivar while he was a prominent face in the anti-corruption movement that was then sweeping the country. Jaffrelot's other Perspectives that year included 'India: More than a Market,' which discussed the former government's contract diplomacy measures, and 'India Keeps Abstaining,' on India's politics of abstention.