Basharat Peer is a staff writer at the New York Times and the author of A Question of Order: Strongmen and Illiberal Democracies

Pritish Nandy is a poet, journalist and filmmaker

Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, Delhi

The author is professor of Indian history at Oxford

K Hariharan is professor, Film Studies and Broadcast Journalism at Ashoka University, Sonepat

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s novels include English, August : An Indian Story, The Mammaries of the Welfare State and Fairy Tales at Fifty

Sajjid Z Chinoy is Chief India Economist at JP Morgan. All views are personal

Peggy Mohan is a linguist and author. Her most recent book is Wanderers, Kings, Merchants; The Story of India through Its Languages

Amit Chaudhuri is an author and musician. His most recent book is Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music

Ananya Vajpeyi works at the intersection of intellectual history, political theory and critical philology. She is writing a book about the modern life of Sanskrit