Capturing Visions and Creating Waves

Pubarun Basu is a Young India Fellow from the batch of 2024 at Ashoka University. He is a young photographer and literature scholar working towards social inclusion and environmental conservation. Starting photography at age 4, Basu sees youth as an advantage in the field, allowing him a unique and unfiltered perspective.

Pubarun made it to the 2020 Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list. He is also the first Indian to win the Youth Award in the Sony World Photography Awards. His richly detailed photographs of daily life on the Ganges River and Indian spirituality have been published in The Guardian, BBC, CNN, etc. Pubarun is currently working on a Freshwater Conservation Project with National Geographic Society and Nature Conservancy. In March 2021, Pubarun won the Indica Cultural Photography Grant to develop his project on the tribal communities of northeast India.

He recently participated in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit held in Singapore on the 4th and 5th of December, 2023. He represented India as the youngest participant in the summit as well as the first Indian photographer to be a Forbes 30 under 30 honouree.

Speaking about his engagement at the event, Pubarun said, “The summit hosted a wealth of incredible professionals engaging in discussions about the future of our planet, the new frontiers of AI, navigating capital investments, and so much more. I actively engaged in networking sessions, shared my photographic documentation on the river systems of India through press conferences, and even managed to strike up some exciting collaborations with some fellow honorees around the world.

My participation in this summit has left me utterly motivated to strive for excellence through my work in the days to come. As a current student of Ashoka University and the Young India Fellowship, I take great pride in associating with an institution of such high repute and have been diligently working on expanding my knowledge and creativity.

I hereby express my humble gratitude to the institution and its people and hope to contribute my bit to the Ashoka ecosystem.”