Mrinal Pande

Mrinal Pande Biography

Mrinal Pande is a well-known writer and TV personality from Madhya Pradesh and the daughter of the Hindi novelist Shivani. She is the daughter-in-law of B. D. Pande, a Civil Service officer, who served as Union Cabinet Secretary of the Government of India under Indira Gandhi, followed by governor of Indian states, West Bengal and Punjab in the 1980s. Mrinal is also a successful journalist who served as chief editor of Hindi daily Hindustan. As a writer she is best known for the book The Other Country: Dispatches from the Mofussil. She was awarded with the fourth highest civilian honour of Padma Shri in 2006.

Mrinal Pande was born in 1946 in Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh. She completed her studies from Nainital followed by Allahabad University. She pursued her higher studies from Washington DC, before beginning her successful career as an author and journalist. She published her first story in a magazine when she was 21 years old. Apart from her successful career as a journalist, she had a brief career as an academician too. She taught for a brief period in the late 1970s and early 1980s at Maulana Azad College of Technology, Bhopal. She also got associated with National Commission for Self-Employed Women for many years. She hosts a weekly interview show Baaton Baaton Mein on Lok Sabha TV, and formerly served as chairperson of Prasar Bharati.

Many of his family members and close relatives are Padma award winners, and civil servants too. Her father-in-law B. D. Pande and his brother-in-law uncle Vinod Chandra Pande were civil servants, and both served as state Governors as well as the prestigious Union Cabinet Secretary position. Her brother-in-law Lalit Pande is an environmentalist and social worker. All these three well-reputed personalities along with Mrinal have won Padma Shri awards. Her father-in-law has received Padma Vibhushan in year 2000 too. Mrinal was awarded Padma Shree 6 years later.

Published: November 29, 2018

Updated: November 29, 2018