Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2025: Aparajith Ramnath wins for ‘Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M Visvesvaraya’

Aparajith Ramnath has become the winner of the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay New India Foundation (NIF) Book Prize 2025 for ‘Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M Visvesvaraya’. The award honours exceptional non-fiction writing on modern and contemporary Indian history, with Ramnath’s book standing out for its scholarship that reconstructs the storied life of M Visvesvaraya (1861–1962), arguably the most famous Indian engineer of the 20th century. The award carries a cash prize of Rs 15 lakh, a trophy, and a citation, and will be awarded at the 14th edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival on December 6.

The jury for the 2025 KCBP includes N Chandrasekaran (chairman of Tata Sons and Tata Group), Manish Sabharwal (entrepreneur), Niraja Gopal Jayal (political scientist), Srinath Raghavan (historian), Rahul Matthan (partner, Trilegal), Jawed Ashraf (former Ambassador of India to France), and Yamini Aiyar (public policy scholar).

The jury citation for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize 2025 notes: “This is a remarkable biography of an extraordinary figure: an engineer, a bureaucrat, an administrator, a constitutionalist, and a developmental thinker. In a fine display of the biographer's art, as well as the historian's craft, Mr Ramnath explores the many social, political, and intellectual worlds that Visvesvaraya traversed and the deep genetic imprint that he left behind on the Indian nation-state and its technological aspirations.”

Selected from a shortlist of five outstanding books, Ramnath’s work joins the ranks of notable narratives that bring new perspectives. His book highlights the role of a man, regarded as a national icon, who played a pivotal role in India’s economic planning and industrialisation in the 20th century.

Besides ‘Engineering a Nation’ (published by Penguin Viking), the shortlist included ‘Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva’ by Janaki Bakhle, ‘India’s Forgotten Country: A View from the Margins’ by Bela Bhatia, ‘India’s Near East: A New History’ by Avinash Paliwal, and ‘Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity’ by Manu Pillai.

Based in Bengaluru, the core activity of the New India Foundation is the NIF Book Fellowships, which have been awarded to scholars and writers for two decades to enable the highest standard of research and writing about India after Independence, resulting in the publication of 36 books covering an extraordinary range of topics.

The NIF Book and Translation Fellowships are awarded in alternate years. The third round of the NIF Translation Fellowships is open for applications until December 31. For details, visit the website (www.newindiafoundation.org).