Devinder Sharma

Devinder Sharma is a distinguished food and trade policy analyst. An award-winning Indian journalist, writer, thinker, and researcher well-known and respected for his views on food and trade policy. Trained as an agricultural scientist (he holds a Master’s in Plant Breeding & Genetics), Sharma has been with the Indian Express, amongst the largest selling English language dailies in India. And then quit active journalism to research on policy issues concerning sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and intellectual property rights, environment and development, food security and poverty, biotechnology and hunger, and the implications of the free trade paradigm for developing countries.

In his own unique way, he analyses the international developments with local interpretation. Many regard him as singularly responsible for deciphering the complex global treaties and agreements and what it means for the developing countries in a simple and understandable manner.

He has been recently awarded with the honorary degree of Professor at Large by the CSK Himachal Pradesh Agricultural University, Palampur (India), from where he had graduated, and also has formerly been a Visiting Fellow to the International Rice Research Institute, in the Philippines; Visiting Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (UK); and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK).

The popular Indian weekly magazine The Week in its Independent Day Special (issue dated Aug 16, 2009) has listed Devinder Sharma among the 25 Most Valuable Indians, calling him ‘Green Chomsky”.

Sharma is associated with numerous national and international organizations, civil society groups and farmers organisations. He also on the board of half a dozen national and international organizations, and is also a member of the CGIAR’s Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property Rights.