Bio
Mrinal Pande was born in 1946 in Tikamgarh to Shivani, a well known Hindi author and Shukdeo Pant, an educationist . She was schooled in Nainital and graduated from the University of Allahabad where she studied Sanskrit, ancient Indian history and English literature. Mrinal has also studied classical Hindusthani ( vocal ) music under eminent Gurus and art at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC.
Mrinal has taught at the Universities of Allahabad , Delhi and Bhopal before switching to journalism in mid 1980s . She has edited well known Hindi periodicals, Vama and Saptahik Hindustan for the Times of India and the Hindustan Times group .
Mrinal has worked as Editor Anchor for Hindi news in Star News and also Doordarshan .
In 2000 she became India’s first woman Chief Editor of a multi edition Hindi daily (Hindustan , Hindustan Times Group). She is also the founder President of the Indian Women’s Press Corps, a national body of India’s women journalists and a member of the National Board for Film Certificatio . Mrinal was also a member of the group that prepared Shramshakti, India’s first documentation of the status and lives of women workers in the unorganized informal sector.
In 2009, Mrinal was appointed Chairman of India’s national broadcaster, Prasar Bharati. She completed a 4 year term there and demitted office in April 2014 .
Mrinal has been writing in both Hindi and in Englsish. Her work covers fiction, plays, and essays on contemporary India and its women and a study of India’s rural women and their sexual and reproductive lives . She has also translated two rare accounts of the 1857 Mutiny, one from Marathi and another from Hindi, to highlight common citizens’ testimony as to how they had experienced the uprising.
She was awarded the Padmashree in 2006 for her services in the field of journalism , and the Red Ink Lifetime Achievement Award by the Mumbai Press Club in 2014.
She is married with two daughters and lives in New Delhi with her husband.