The emergence of Hyderabad as a technology cluster is one of the most remarkable success stories of modern India. The transformation of a former Princely city into a competing Centre for technology business in apparently short time has evoked great interest in recent years. A multitude of factors – historical, geographical, political, and cultural – over the past one hundred years have contributed to this change. The process has been slow, contentious and shaped by contributions from a range of public institutions and favorable government policies.
Dr. Dinesh C Sharma is an award-winning journalist, author and media trainer with nearly 40 years’ experience in reporting on science and technology, health and environment for national and international media outlets. His latest book is Beyond Biryani: The Making of a Globalized Hyderabad, published by Westland. For his book, The Outsourcer: The story of India’s IT revolution, published by MIT Press, USA in 2015, he was awarded the prestigious Computer History Museum Book Prize instituted by the American Society for History of Technology (SHOT) in 2016. Another book– Indian Innovation, Not Jugaad (Roli Books) – is about 100 innovations that have transformed India in the past 75 years. He penned a science travelogue – Witness to the Meltdown – based on his climate change reportage from the Arctic in 2008. He has been the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow (2020-2021) and the New India Fellow (2007). Dinesh’s academic experience includes teaching a course in development journalism for MA students at Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines, and being a teaching Fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). He is a doctorate from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and a post-graduate in communication and journalism from Osmania University. Sharma has been the Science Editor at Mail Today (India Today Group) from 2007 to 2014 and Founding Managing Editor at India Science Wire from 2017 to 2019. He is a regular contributor to the medical journal, The Lancet, among others.