The Centre for Financial Accountability, a New Delhi-based organisation working to strengthen and improve financial accountability within India, invites applications for the Smitu Kothari Fellowship 2025.
Started in 2018, the Fellowship encourages young writers to critically examine the world of development finance beyond lending and ‘development’. This year, we will award up to 5 fellowships, each worth Rs 15,000 and lasting two months. More about the Fellowship from previous years can be found here.
The two-month fellowship starts in September 2025 and entails writing comprehensive, well-researched investigative articles, photo essays, or short documentaries on specific area/projects related to the themes mentioned below.
Theme/Topic
The fellows are encouraged to write an article from a financial/economic perspective on themes suggested below, but not limited to them.
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Crisis of rural credit – causes and consequences
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Corporate capture of Indian coasts – at what cost?
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India’s Just Energy Transition story amidst steady fossil fuel expansion.
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BRICS in the Era of US Tariff Wars: Opportunities and Challenges
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Climate crisis and India’s petrochemical expansion
Please attach a research proposal/story idea with your application, mentioning a tentative title and the aspects you’d be covering in your article.
The Fellowship is open to all Indian citizens below 40 years of age and is open to writers in English and other Indian languages.
Application Requirements:
Please submit your application through this form.
Proposals on more than one topic can be sent by filling out the form more than once.
CFA reserves the right not to award fellowships if the applications do not meet a minimum standard.
Expected deliverables:
- One comprehensive analytical article of 1000-1500 words on the topic proposed, by the end of the Fellowship or a short documentary/ photo essay based on the proposal.
- Fellows are expected to get their articles published in a mainstream publication after approval.
- Present their findings on the topic to CFA post the completion of the Fellowship.
Mentor:
Selected fellows would be mentored by .
- Rakesh Dewan, senior journalist, currently, the Editor of Sarvodaya Press Service, he has worked previously with Dainik Bhaskar, Tehelka and other publications in senior positions.
- Jimmy James is a senior Malayalam journalist and currently the Digital Head at Reporter TV. Over the years, he has worked with leading mainstream Malayalam news channels, including Asianet News
- Along with these two mentors, we have sector-specific mentors, a new addition this year, to bring deeper thematic guidance and support to the programme.
Eligibility:
- Open to all, under the age of 40 years.
- Women, Dalits, Muslims, disadvantaged communities and independent writers/researchers writing in regional languages are encouraged to apply.
Timeline:
- Application Submission Deadline: September 05, 2025
- Announcement of successful fellowships: September 15, 2025
- Article submission: November 15, 2025
- Publication of article: By December 31, 2025
Copyright:
- All copyright of the work remains with the authors. However, CFA reserves the right to translate and publish the work after giving due credits.
- The Fellows may be required to attend a program to present their work.
For any queries, please write to fellowship@cenfa.org
About the organization:
Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) engages in critical analysis, monitoring and critique of the role of financial institutions – national and international, and their impact on development, human rights and the environment, amongst other areas in India.
The Centre partners with a range of civil society groups, social movements and community groups to ensure that the financial institutions are transparent and accountable to the people they exist to serve. However, we also look at the South Asia region and seek to reflect a global perspective, especially given the globalised nature of international finance in the twenty-first century.
More about CFA here.
About Smitu Kothari:
Smitu Kothari was a distinguished environmentalist and scholar-activist, who was involved in ecological, cultural and human rights issues. Throughout his life, he tried to collectively forge a national and global alternative that is socially just and ecologically sane.
Trained in physics, communications and sociology, Kothari taught at the Cornell and Princeton Universities in the US. He was also a Contributing Editor to The Ecologist and Development. As a prolific writer and editor, he wrote extensively on critiques of contemporary economic and cultural development, financing of developmental projects, developmental displacement and social movements. Some of the books he edited are: Voices of Struggle: Social Movements in Asia (2006); Voices of Sanity, In Search of Democratic Space (2002); A Watershed in Global Governance? An Independent Assessment of the World Commission on Dams; The Value of Nature: Ecological Politics in India (2003); Out of the Nuclear Shadow (with Zia Mian, 2001); Rethinking Human Rights: Challenges for Theory and Action (1991); The Non-Party Political Process: Uncertain Alternatives (with H. Sethi, 1988).
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