Ajai Shukla

Col. Ajai Shukla (retired) is a columnist and freelance journalist. He writes and blogs on strategic affairs, defense policy, military technology and the defense economy. He has written extensively for Business Standard, a pan-Indian daily newspaper. He has also written for The New York Times, Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera, and South China Morning Post. He runs a defense affairs blog, Broadsword, which is visited daily by 3,000-10,000 readers from across the world.

Shukla is a regular commentator on television news. He worked with New Delhi Television (NDTV) from 2001-2008 as a war correspondent and as a news anchor. He has reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and India’s internal security conflicts. He lectures at various establishments, including the War Colleges of the three services.

He is working on two books. One of them, to be published by Penguin, describes the structures and evaluates the battle-readiness of India’s military. The other is a first-hand account of China’s military intrusion, in 1986-87, into the Sumdorong Chu area of the Tibet-Arunachal border. He has contributed chapters to published anthologies on Afghanistan and Iraq, and a chapter on “war reporting” to a volume on the Indian media.

Before taking up journalism, Shukla served as an officer in the tank corps for over two decades. During his military career, he served on most Indian borders, including Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Rajasthan. He also served for a year with the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in Mozambique.

Shukla graduated from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1978, and has a post-graduate degree in defense studies from Madras University. He also has a post-graduate degree from the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London