Nidhi Razdan

The Daughter of a Press Trust of India Editor

Razdan is a Kashmiri Pandit and grew up in a newsroom family. Her father, Maharaj Krishan Razdan, was a career journalist who rose to editor-in-chief of the Press Trust of India, the country's largest news agency, News24 reported. Her mother is Sarla Razdan. Profiles published after the wedding give a birth date in April 1977 and a birthplace in Budgam district, but other profiles give 1978, and this article leaves the date out until a second independent record confirms it.

Left, Right and Centre at NDTV, 1999 to 2020

Razdan joined New Delhi Television in 1999 and stayed for about 21 years. Over that time she went from reporter to executive editor and became one of the channel's main prime time faces. News24 lists the programmes she presented: Left, Right & Centre, India Decides @ 9, The Lead, and The Big Fight, the long-running studio debate.

Her reporting covered foreign policy as much as domestic politics. The Observer Research Foundation, which published her columns, described her in 2017 as having reported from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, China, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Tibet, and parts of Africa. News24 adds coverage of the India-US civil nuclear deal and of the earthquakes in Gujarat in 2001 and Kashmir in 2005. In 2017 Penguin published her first book, Left Right and Centre: The Idea of India at 70, named after her nightly show.

The awards News24 credits her with include the Ramnath Goenka Award for reporting from Jammu and Kashmir and the north-east, an International Press Institute award for her work on the Kathua rape and murder case, and News Show Host of the Year in English at the 2010 Indian News Broadcasting Awards.

The Harvard Offer, June 2020 to January 2021

In June 2020 Razdan announced that she was leaving NDTV to join Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences as an associate professor teaching journalism. In January 2021 she said the job had never existed.

Her own account, written as a blog post for NDTV and quoted by Snopes, began in November 2019, when she was invited to speak at a Harvard Kennedy School event planned for early 2020. "One of the apparent organisers of this event contacted me separately to say there was a vacancy for a teaching position and would I be interested," she wrote. "A few weeks later I was 'interviewed' online for 90 minutes. It all seemed legitimate." She received class schedules and course outlines. Classes were due to start online in September 2020, then moved to October, then to January, each time with the pandemic given as the reason. She was told a United States work visa had been issued and would be sent when travel was needed.

When she contacted Harvard's administration directly, she said, she learned she had been "the victim of a sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack" built to reach her personal data and communications. She filed a complaint with the cyber crime cell of the Delhi Police listing forgery, cheating, identity fraud, and impersonation, and the police confirmed it had been filed.

Harvard's position was blunt. "After a careful review of Harvard's people related systems, there is no record of, nor any knowledge of, an appointment involving Ms. Nidhi Razdan," Rachael Dane, a spokesperson for the faculty, said in a statement. Snopes, which rated the story a mixture of true and unproven, pointed out that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has no journalism department and that Harvard's only journalism degree is a Master of Liberal Arts offered through the open-admission Extension School. Razdan herself raised that program in her blog post as the reason the offer had looked plausible. She had not published the emails or documents behind her account when Snopes reported on it, and in the months before she disclosed the fraud she had appeared at events introduced as a Harvard professor.

No Spin, February 2022

She spent the year after the disclosure writing a weekly opinion column for Gulf News, called This Side of the Story. In a December 2021 post she described the Harvard episode as a nightmare and wrote that other victims of cybercrime had contacted her afterwards.

At the end of February 2022 NDTV announced her return, this time as a consulting editor, with a new interview show called No Spin at 9.30pm on NDTV 24x7. "It feels good to be back on TV. I feel like I have never been away," she told Gulf News. "This is my real calling and here I am, asking tough questions to the who's who of politics and industry."

Resignation After the Adani Takeover, January 2023

The return lasted less than a year. After the Adani group became NDTV's majority shareholder in late 2022, a run of senior staff left. The founders Prannoy and Radhika Roy stepped down from the promoter company on 29 November 2022, and the NDTV Hindi anchor Ravish Kumar resigned the next day. On 28 January 2023 Sreenivasan Jain announced he was leaving after nearly three decades. Razdan resigned as executive editor three days later, The News Minute reported on 31 January 2023, citing Newslaundry.

Since then she has worked away from studio television. NewsMeter reported that she has taught as visiting faculty at the Kautilya School of Public Policy, lecturing students on the media's role in public policy.

No reputable financial publication has put a figure on her net worth. Estimates on celebrity sites run from half a million to ten million dollars with no stated method, so this article gives none.

Sources

• Who is Nidhi Razdan? Award-winning TV journalist weds Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah in Delhi - News24 India
• Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah marries journalist Nidhi Razdan
• J&K CM Omar Abdullah marries journalist Nidhi Razdan
• J&K CM Omar Abdullah marries journalist Nidhi Razdan; shares pics
• Nidhi Razdan | ORF
• Was Journalist Conned Into Quitting Her Job for Fake Harvard Position? | Snopes.com
• Nidhi Razdan returns to NDTV
• Nidhi Razdan resigns as executive editor of NDTV
• FACT CHECK: Is Nidhi Razdan teaching at Harvard?