Dr. Vartika Nanda is a prison reformer and media educator from India. She is the founder of Tinka Tinka Foundation, a movement targeted towards prison reforms by encouraging literacy, creative writing, art, literature and skill development in jails. Tinka Tinka is a series of her work in different prisons.
Vartika Nanda is credited to have curated and created the concept of awards for inmates and prison staff for the first time in India. Two national awards exclusively for inmates – Tinka Tinka India Awards and Tinka Tinka Bandini Awards have been instituted by her as part of the effort.
The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee conferred the Stree Shakti Puraskar on her in 2014. This is the highest civilian honor for women in India. This award was given to her in Rashtrapati Bhavan in 2014, in recognition of her contribution for creating awareness on women’s issues through media and literature.
Her name has been included twice in the Limca Book of Records for her unique work on prison reforms. Her action oriented research on prisons and communication was taken into cognizance by the Supreme Court of India in 2018.
Her books Tinka Tinka Tihar, Tinka Tinka Dasna and Tinka Tinka Madhya Pradesh are considered to be masterpieces on prison literature. Her work in the field of prison reforms has been recognized by Limca Book of Records twice.
She has conceptualized, trained and executed prison radio in the state of Haryana, India. Launched in 2021, Panipat Jail Radio is the first prison radio of the state, followed by District Jail, Faridabad and Central Jail, Ambala. 10 radio stations in Haryana are operational. Vartika Nanda has also created, produced and released more than a dozen songs from different jails.
She has played key role in introducing prison radio in District Jail, Dehradun in Uttarakhand.
Jail Radio in District Jail, Agra in Uttar Pradesh, was coceptualised and executed by her in 2019. Uttar Pradesh is the largest state in India. Prison Radios have helped inmates immensely, especially during Covid 19.
Vartika Nanda has curated Tinka Prison Radio Podcasts, which are the only podcasts in India, solely dedicated to prison reforms. Started in 2020, these podcasts are based on original voices from different prisons. These are scripted and voiced by Vartika Nanda and are broadcast regularly on her YouTube Channel.
Vartika Nanda is also popular as the Voice of Delhi Police for being the official storyteller for Delhi Police for the podcast series- Kissa Khaki Ka, the only podcast series by any police department in India.
With a doctorate in Journalism on the issues of coverage of rape cases by Indian print media, she is currently the head of the Department of Journalism in Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University. Prior to this, she taught TV Journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi as Associate Professor. She has worked with Zee News, NDTV and Lok Sabha TV in the past. She was the first Executive Producer of Lok Sabha TV.
Contact: tinkatinkaorg@gmail.com
Vartika Nanda on Wikipedia: https://en.
Phone: 9811201839