American journalist Daniel Pearl was killed in Pakistan in 2002. How did Dannny Pearl die has been a subject of investigation by his friend and colleague Asra Nomani. Called the Pearl Project, the goal of the investigation is to find out what really happened to Danny when he left Asra’s house in Karachi on January 23rd 2002. Danny was working on a story on the Ameican shoe bomber case Richard Reed and was in Pakistan to follow on some leads. For 5 weeks Asra and Mariane, Danny’s wife had no idea what happened to Danny.

Supporters of Sheikh Omar claimed to have kidnapped Danny. After 5 weeks of holding out hope tt finally came as a shock when Mariane and Asra discovered the brutal way in which Danny had been killed.
The movie A Mighty Heart captures those tense 5 weeks that Mariane and Asra spent searching for Danny. The film was adapted from Mariane’s book that chronicled how US and Pakistan authorities tried to track Danny’s kidnappers.

Danny was the South Asia bureau cheif of The Wall Street Journal and was based in Mumbai, India.

Asra has worked with The Wall Street Journal and her work has been published in Time and The Washington Post. She currently writes a column for The Daily Beast.

This interview was originally broadcast at Stanford’s radio station in October 2009.

I caught up with Jules in London in 2006 just before his book was launched. We spoke about the book, and why and how this difficult task of mapping the Himalayas was undertaken by the British. What were the geopolitical reasons that propelled the British to undertake this trans-himalayan survey?

This fascinating book traces a 30-year (1864-1894) effort that was led by British Captain Thomas Montgomerie to map the Himalayas. The official name of the project was The Great Trignometrical Survey of India. The trans-himalayan region was an unknown territory and the British had huge gaps in their knowledge about the contours of the mountain range, Tibet, and the rivers that originated in Mount Kailash.

Captain Montgomerie recruited local people from various regions of the Himalayas, trained them and established standardized ways of measuring their steps. The recruits were not pundits by caste, but were a small group of eclectic group. There was Kinthup, the Tibetan tailor’s assistant from Darjeeling, and then there was Nain Singh from the Kumaon region among others.

A major geopolitical reason that propelled the British to undertake the survey was Russia’s ambitions in the Northwest frontier region. This was the Great Game of the 19th century, when the Russians were almost there at the gates of India says Jules. The Russian search for a warm water port led them to this part of the world, and the British wanted to contain the Russian threat. In order to do that they needed to have a better idea of the terrain of the trans-himalayan region for military planning and logistics purposes.

Jules suspects that Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim had quite a few characters drawn from the survey. He thinks that Colonel Creighton in Kim was modeled after Captain Montgomerie.

Jules is a journalist based in London. In 2005 he wrote his first book called The Khyber Rifles. President Musharraf of Pakistan arranged for Jules to tour the Northwest frontier area.. Jules is already busy putting the finishing touches for his third book, which is a history of the Northwest frontier province. He is already thinking about his fourth book and is interested in writing about the Siachen glacier conflict.

This interview was originally recorded in May 2006 in London.

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I wanted to find out about Mr. Sarin’s connections to Bangalore and the Bangalore Military School, as well as who were his role models for inspiration. Tune in to find out what he has to say about Bangalore, brand India and leadership.

This interview was recorded in 2007.

In Part-2  we pick up our thread of conversation from Part-1 where NInja shared what it takes to create and aggregate news on a 24/7 basis. In this episode she talks about her role at Yahoo!,  her days at Stanford and working at her first job, which was an artificial intelligence project.

NInja divides her time between New York and Sunnyvale.

This interview was originally recorded in early 2009 at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale and was first published in Mint, a leading business newspaper in India.

Ninja and her team are responsible for the content that we read everyday on Yahoo’s website.  “Shepherding the voice of Yahoo,” is how Ninja describes the work she and  her team do on a 24/7 basis every day of the year.

Ninj’s editorial team reads, sifts, organizes, categorizes a diverse amount of content on an ongoing basis. Besides the content that appears on Yahoo! Ninja is also deeply involved in issues like privacy, child safety and accessibility over mobile phones, where the ground rules are very different she points out.

An early and important strategic decision that Jerry Yang and David Filo, co-founders of Yahoo!  made was to have an editorial head. The co-founders recruited their Stanford colleague to help categorize the growing content on Yahoo’s website. Originally Ninja’s  title was that of an ontologist, but her role has expanded significantly over the years as Yahoo has expanded its portfolio of products and services.

I caught up with Ninja a few days ago at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale to find out about her role in creating the voice of Yahoo! that encompasses privacy, data policy, free speech issues and editorial decisions about Yahoo’s overall content. How do they handle controversial topics? How do they categorize and label content? Privacy issues in China? Tune in to find out what Ninja has to say on these topics.

Ninja grew up in Lawrence, Kansas where her father taught Mathematics at the University of Kentucky. Ninja moved to the San Francisco bay area to study at Stanford University where she got her undergraduate degree in Symbolic Sciences. Ninja speaks and writes fluent Japanese.

This is the first of a 2-part conversation with Ninja. Here is a link to Part-2 of the interview with Ninja.

This interview was originally recorded in early 2009 and was first published on Mint.

In this interview  we cover a wide range of topics including how Aasif got his break in Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, his new movie project, the 2008 Mumbai blasts and Bollywood.

Aasif was born in Mumbai, grew up in the UK and USA. His family relocated from Bedford, UK  to Florida, US when Aasif was a teenager. He studied theater and acting and moved to New York, which is where he is based.

This interview was recorded in early 2009.

Shantanu was born and bought up in Hyderabad, India. In the early 1980s he left for the USA for higher studies. After completing his graduate studies he worked for various Silicon Valley-based companies like Apple and Silicon Graphics’s and was the co-founder of  Pictara, a photo-sharing start-up before he joined Adobe.

You can listen to Part-1 of the interview with Shantanu.

Note: Two weeks after the interview was recorded, Shantanu was named as the CEO and board member of Adobe, which is headquartered in San Jose, California.

Related Links: Video clips of Shantanu talking about Adobe and Rich Internet Applications: Part-1 and Part-2

I caught up with Shantanu in 2007 while he was on a whistle-stop tour of Bangalore.  Shantanu talks about innovation, and how Adobe nurtures innovation through its Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) program and working with open source community. At the time of this interview Shantanu was the President and COO of Adobe Systems. A couple of weeks after the interview was recorded Shantanu was named as the CEO and of Adobe Systems.

Prior to Adobe Shantanu co-founded Pictra, a digital photo-sharing startup in the late 1990s. Before that he worked with Apple and Silicon Graphics.

Tune back in for Part-2 where Shantanu talks about Adobe’s mobile strategy and about Adobe India.

Related Links: Video clips of Shantanu talking about Adobe and Rich Internet Applications- Part-1 and Part-2.

Inspired to do something in the area of education Neeru’s husband Vinod Khosla suggested looking into textbooks for high school students. And that suggestion sparked off Neeru’s interest although she initially resisted the thought since she believes in providing personalized content for school kids. However, Neeru discovered that there is a gap and a need to provide contextual content for high school students and teachers especially in the areas of science and math. And thus was born the idea for CK-12, her non-profit organization. Through CK-12 Neeru has combined her passion for education with purpose.

Over the past couple of years Neeru and her co-founder Murugan Pal have been working behind the scenes to create open-source, collaborative text books called textbooks. Flexbooks and their technology will be made available in August 2008.

In this interview Neeru shares how CK-12 is developing the technology and seeding content to create flexbooks that will are free to be used by high school students and teachers. She also shares on where and how she gets help from her husband, the in-house expert, who helps her with her questions. Doing a start-up is consuming as Neeru has discovered. So, I asked her if she has a better understanding of what her husband’s work in running his companies and being a venture capitalist. Tune in to find out what Neeru has to say on this subject.

Related Links: Knowledge Unlocked, Video Demo of Flexbooks and Video Interview with Neeru Khosla and Murugan Pal.

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March 9, 2009 marks the 50th anniversary since the Dalai Lama left China and came to India. After a failed uprising against the Chinese Government the young Dalai Lama along with his followers left Lhasa in 1959 and travelled to India and settled down in Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, India.

Pico Iyer is a well-known  author and essayist. His book about the 14th Dalai Lama The Open Road: The Global Journey of the 14th Dalai Lama published in 2008 has received excellent reviews.

“In The Open Road, Pico Iyer transcends his celebrated excellence as a travel writer,” comments Peter Matthiessen, while the Economist writes that Pico has “an access and insight into the Dalai Lama that lifts his writing above the clichés that normally surround him.”

Pico has been in constant touch with the Dalai Lama for about 30 years. Pico first met the Dalai Lama through his father Prof. Raghavan N. Iyer, who taught at Oxford and University of California in Santa Barbara. In  1960 Prof. Iyer sailed from England to India to meet with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.

In the midst of his hectic book tour schedule Pico graciously made time to do an hour-long interview where he spoke about his new book, writing process, travels and growing up in England and California and about life in Japan. Pico has been living in Japan for the past several years.

In Part-1 of the conversation Pico talks about his new book about the Dalai Lama, his perceptions of Buddhism and Communism, and how this book is a homage to the memory of his father. How did Pico come up with the idea of writing a book on the Dalai Lama?

What does the Dalai Lama have to say about Tibet and Tibet’s future? Is there a happy ending to the Tibet question? Tune in to find out what Pico has to say.

This interview was recorded in 2008.

Photo: Courtesy Knopf Publishing

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Prof. Rajesh Rajagopalan

What were the perceptions and misperceptions that led to the war? What is the current status of the relationship between India and China?

In this interview Rajesh talks about the background that led to the outbreak of the 1962 war. The 1950s and 1960s was a period of cold war when China and USSR were pitted against the USA and its allies. India under Prime Minister Nehru professed a policy of Non-Alignment.

According to Rajesh during the 1950s India was riding high at the international level, and the Chinese perceived India as a threat to its ambitions in Asia. And, after the war India he points out India had no voice at the international level. The war broke out right around the time when the US-USSR were in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Rajesh deconstructs the reasons leading to the 1962 war and the limited objective that the Chinese government had for the war. How has the war impacted India? What is the current status of the border issue between the two countries? Can the border issue, which is a political problem be solved? What will it take to solve the border issue?

Prof. Rajagopalan teaches at the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. His areas of research interest are international relations theory, military doctrines, and nuclear weapons and disarmament. His book, Second Strike: Arguments about Nuclear War in South Asia, was published by Penguin (India) in 2005. He is currently working on a manuscript on the Indian Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine.

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Tula started her media career in India and moved to the USA 20 years ago and worked for Mira Nair’s early production and for Spike Lee’s production of Malcom X. She has just finished writing her first book titled “Bollywood and Beyond.”

Tula started the Bollywood internship program at Syracuse two years ago, when she took her first batch of American students to India’ entertainment capital: Mumbai.  Her students have worked for various production houses in India including Subash Ghai’s Mukta Arts, Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment and Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions.

But, how did it all begin? How was this idea for a Bollywood internship born? What does it take to run such an innovative program?  Tune in to listen to Tula.

This interview was originally published on NDTV.com

In Part-2 of the interview Reid talks about his journey as an entrepreneur. After he graduated from Stanford, he went to Oxford from where he received his Master’s and came back to Silicon Valley to start a company. But, he had to wait a few  years before he realized that dream. But, when he did realize his dream it was a very successful one.

What advice does Reid have to offer young entrepreneurs? What does technology mean to him? What have the seven deadly sins got to do with entrepreneurship? What keeps him awake at nights? Can I get out all the features out in time is Reid’s prompt answers. And the one word that he would use to describe himself? Tune in to find out what Reid has to say about all these questions.

In this short exclusive video clip Reid offers a couple of tips on how to use LinkedIn.

In case you missed, you might want to listen to Part-1 of the interview with Reid.

This interview was originally published by LiveMint.

In this 2-part interview Reid talks about his entrepreneurial journey, how he started LinkedIn, his plans to expand in India where mobile phones are the devices of choice to network and not computers and what technology means to him. What is LinkedIn’s exit strategy? An IPO?

LinkedIn has changed the way we network in more ways than one, and has become an important networking tool for professionals. Recruiters use LinkedIn to find prospective candidates, sales folks use LinkedIn to connect to their future prospects, while other use LinkedIn to expand their network.

In Part-1 of the interview Reid also talks general philosophy behind LinkedIn, how he started it and LinkedIn’s plan to expand in India. He also talks about other social network and where LinkedIn fits into the social network landscape. Here is how Reid put it: “Now the metaphor that I frequently use when we are talking about the three current giants’ is: MySpace is the bar, Facebook is home and LinkedIn is the office.”

LinkedIn has changed the way we network in more ways than one, and has become an important networking tool for professionals. Recruiters use LinkedIn to find prospective candidates, sales folks use LinkedIn to connect to their future prospects, while other use LinkedIn to expand their network.

In this short exclusive video clip Reid offers a couple of tips on how to use LinkedIn.

Don’t forget to listen to Part-2 of the interview with Reid.

This interview was originally published by LiveMint.

Under the former President George W. Bush the US-India relationship achieved a lot of milestones. Could the same be said of President Obama’s administration? Tune in to see if there is a difference when it comes to foreign policy issues between the Democrats and Republicans.

Paul is an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Paul’s research focus is on international security environment in South Asia. He is the author of “Dangerous Deterrent:Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia.”

In the June issue of Foreign Affairs journal has an article “The End of An Affair,” that Paul co-authored with Prof. Sumit Ganguly about Washington’s cooling passion towards India.