Raj Kamal Jha (born 1966) is an Indian newspaper editor and novelist writing in English. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express. He has written five novels that have been translated into more than 12 languages. His journalism and fiction have won national and international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize; Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize; Tata Literature Live! Book of The Year; the International Press Institute India Award for Excellence in Journalism; and the Mumbai Press Club Journalist of the Year award. In September 2021, Jha was awarded Editor of The Year by the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association Annual Leadership Awards.

Early life and education

Jha was born in Bhagalpur, Bihar, and grew up in Calcutta, West Bengal, where he went to school at St. Joseph's College. He attended the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where he got his Bachelor of Technology with Honours in Mechanical Engineering. He was the editor of the campus magazine Alankar in his third (junior) and fourth (senior) years at IIT where he received the institute's Order of Merit. After graduating in June 1988, he went to the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of Southern California to pursue a Master's program in Print Journalism; he received his M.A. in 1990.

Journalism

Since 1990, Jha has been working full-time in newsrooms. He was an Assistant Editor (News) at The Statesman in Kolkata between 1992 and 1994, a Senior Associate Editor at India Today, New Delhi (1994–1996), and since 1996 has been with The Indian Express, first as its Deputy Editor, then as Executive Editor, Managing Editor, Editor and Chief Editor since June 2014.[5] The newspaper and its journalists have won the Excellence in Journalism Award from the India chapter of the Vienna-based International Press Institute five times. These are for investigative work by the newspaper related to the Gujarat riots of 2002 and their aftermath; the Bihar flood scam in which relief was siphoned off by officers; the disappearance of tigers from India's national parks and questions regarding the role of the Election Commission of India.

As a member of the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists", the newspaper, in April 2016, investigated The Panama Papers and revealed details of Indian names and companies related to offshore accounts in tax havens. Following the revelations, the Government set up a panel to probe each account. For the Panama Papers, the ICIJ won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. For his "exemplary stewardship" of The Indian Express that saw a "focus on investigative journalism," Jha was named Journalist of the Year by the Mumbai Press Club at Redink Awards, 2017.

In June 2021, the newspaper's investigation of FinCEN files, tracking global dirty money flows through global banks including HSBC, JP Morgan Chase and Standard Chartered, was part of the ICIJ-BuzzFeedNews project that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Delivering the vote of thanks at the Ramnath Goenka Memorial Awards in 2016 in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jha underlined that questioning those in power and holding them accountable, inviting their criticism, was the hallmark of good journalism, an obvious truth that often gets lost in the "selfie journalism" of "likes and retweets". The next year, Jha said that the only counter to fear in the newsroom was to get up and switch the lights on rather than find a safe blanket to hide under.

In 2017, for his "outstanding contribution" to journalism and literature by telling stories about a changing India with "honesty, compassion and courage," Jha was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by his alma mater Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, at its annual convocation. Past recipients of this award from the institute include Google's Sundar Pichai, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Magsaysay Award winner Harish Hande.

In March 2023, speaking at the RNG Awards in the presence of the Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, Jha called the Supreme Court the North Star for journalists for expanding the freedom of the press over the years. That's why, he said, "when the lights dim, when a reporter is arrested under a law meant for terrorists, when another is arrested for asking a question, when a university teacher is picked up for sharing a cartoon, a college student for a speech, a film star for a comment, or when a rejoinder to a story comes in the form of a police FIR – we turn to the North Star for its guiding light.” 

Honours

Winner, Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Eurasia), The Blue Bedspread, 2000
Finalist, John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Blue Bedspread, 2000
Finalist, Guardian First Book Award, The Blue Bedspread, 1999
The New York Times Notable Book of The Year, The Blue Bedspread, 2000
Finalist, Hutch-Crossword Book Award, If You Are Afraid of Heights, 2003
Winner, Best Book (Fiction) published in 2006, Fireproof, CNN-IBN List
Finalist, DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, She Will Build Him A City, 2016
Longlist, JCB Prize for Literature, The City and The Sea, 2019
Finalist, DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, The City and the Sea, 2019
Winner, Tata Literature Live Book of The Year (Fiction), The City and the Sea, 2019
Finalist, Mathrubhumi Book of the Year, The City and the Sea, 2020
Winner, Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize, The City and the Sea, 2020
Selected, The Blue Bedspread, as one of the 10 books of decade 1992-2001 and one of the 70 books to mark The Queen's Jubilee List, 2022

Other media

Japanese video artist and photographer Noritoshi Hirakawa created four video art installations taking scenes from Jha's three novels for an exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi in 2007 as part of a special exhibition of contemporary Japanese art called Vanishing Points.

Teaching

Jha was a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught a course on reporting on India. He was also a fellow at the Yaddo Residency in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 2005. He was selected as Artist-in-Residence (Literature) in Berlin by the German Academic Exchange Service for 2012–2013 under the Berliner Künstlerprogramm, offering grants to artists in the fields of visual arts, literature, music and film."

Books

1999: The Blue Bedspread, novel, Picador, Random House
2003: If You Are Afraid of Heights, novel, Picador, Harcourt
2006: Zwischen den Welten, Short fiction in a German anthology
2006-7: Fireproof, novel, Picador
2012: Prose-verse in Kindness, Australia-India Cultural Exchange, 20 Year Anniversary Project, Australia-India Council
2013: Short Fiction in Es war einmal, audio book, Hörbuch Hamburg
2015: She Will Build Him A City, novel, Bloomsbury
2019: The City And The Sea, novel, Penguin Hamish Hamilton