Vineet Narain

Vineet Narain (born 1956) is a prominent Indian journalist, anti-corruption activist and conservator of heritage. His exposure of the 1990s Jain Hawala scandal led him to use a public interest petition to apply pressure on the Central Bureau of Investigation. The CBI was widely criticised when its prosecutions collapsed, and the Supreme Court of India in deciding the Vineet Narain Case made directions that included new supervision of the CBI by the Central Vigilance Commission.

Born in 1956, Vineet Narain had his primary education in Western Uttar Pradesh and did his higher studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. His father was an academician and served as the Vice-Chancellor of two prominent universities in U.P. He fought against interference of the political masters in the admission procedure of some of the professional courses in the state. His mother, a Gandhian social worker and highly spiritual person, was active in students politics at the Lucknow University in 1940s. She gave values of social commitment to her children.

Narain is married to Dr. Meeta Narain who is Professor of Russian language at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has two sons Azeez Narain and Eeshit Narain.

Narain was drawn to social work from his early youth. He worked in a village at the age of 18 years with an NGO.

In 1980s he anchored Yuv Manch a youth TV show on govt. controlled only TV channel i.e. Doordarshan. In 1986–87 he anchored the first ever investigative TV show on Doordarshan, titled Sach Ki Parchain and created nationwide ripples with his bold exposes of the failures of govt. policies at the grass root level. Soon as a protest against editorial interference from the Govt. he decided to sacrifice his TV career at its prime. A magazine TV & Video World reported, "It may sound surprising, but men of principles, willing to take tough stand and unwilling to compromise on basic ideals, still exist in our society. When, in April 1987, one of his programmes in the Sach Ki Parchhain series was arbitrarily stopped by Doordarshan authorities, its producer, TV and newspaper journalist Vineet Narain vowed never to present anything on the government-controlled network until it was made autonomous and functioned more democratically.

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