 Nityanand Jayaraman a.k.a Nity is a Chennai-based writer and researcher who specialises in investigating and reporting on the environmental and human rights track record of corporations. After his undergraduate degree in electronics engineering, he spent two years in the US, getting a Masters degree in journalism, hitchhiking in the US and working in the salmon fisheries in Alaska. He returned to India in 1994, and was a travelling journalist, during which time he travelled to most parts of the country specialising in investigating industrial pollution and related human rights violations. He has been associated with the campaign for justice in Bhopal since the time he visited Bhopal to do a story on water contamination in 1996. He has also worked with Greenpeace India and Corpwatch India Nity is a part of a voluntary collective called Corporate Accountability Desk which is a coming together of close friends who extend technical, logistics, legal and strategic support to communities that are fighting corporate crime and globalisation in any form. Learning from their experiences where organisations take up democratic space rather than create it for communities, one of the principal organising principles is to let communities speak for themselves. Currently, the collective is involved in a fledgling effort to consolidate public opinion against water privatisation in Tamilnadu, in promoting wastewater recycling, in supporting pollution-impacted communities in Mettur, Cuddalore and Gummidipoondi, and to a lesser extent in Kodaikanal |