K A Shaji

K A Shaji

K. A. Shaji is a South India-based journalist, who reports regularly on political developments, environmental issues, health, livelihood, dalit issues, tribal affairs, art, culture and developmental disparities. 
Traveling extensively in the most backward regions of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, he is also writes on poverty, impoverishment and other different forms of rural distress. A regular contributor for HuffPost India, Mongabay India, Down to Earth (magazine), The Telegraph (Kolkata), The News Minute, Kochi Post  and Quartz. Till December 2018, he was a Special Correspondent with the daily newspaper The Hindu, focusing on environment, dalits, tribals, art, culture and socio-political issues.
He started journalism career as a staff reporter with The New Indian Express in 2000. He had continued with the organization till 2006 and worked as its correspondent in Kalpetta, Kannur, Kozhikode and Bangalore. After working with Tehelka Magazine in New delhi and Thiruvananthapuram for over three years, Shaji had joined Open (Indian magazine) a features and current affairs magazine from New Delhi, as its Tamil Nadu correspondent based in Chennai. Then he joined The Times of India as its bureau chief in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. He is presently based out of Thiruvananthapuram Shaji's areas of focus include rural distress, farmers’ suicides, human rights violations, caste atrocities and flawed developmental perspectives.
He won a National Media Fellowship from the National Foundation for India in 2005 for Excellence in Journalism. Under the fellowship, he wrote a series of articles on half a million Tamil repatriates from Sri Lanka, who presently have a harrowing existence in Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu. In 2009, he won Sanskriti National Journalism Award for a series of articles on agrarian crisis that plagued Wayanad district of Kerala.