Tavleen Singh is a noted columnist and political reporter. She was born in Mussoorie in 1950 and studied at the Welham Girls School. Tavleen completed her education in India and started her career with a reporting job at Evening Mail, Slough, where she worked and trained for two and a half years under the Westminster Press/Thompson training scheme.
She returned to India in 1974 to work with The Statesman as a reporter and went on to do several stories on communal riots, elections and wars. In those days such topics were covered mainly by male reporters.
She joined The Telegraph as a Special Correspondent in 1982, mainly covering Punjab and Kashmir. Tavleen did the first known interview with Bhindranwale during this time and won the Sanskriti award in 1985 for her reporting of Punjab.
In 1985 and also in 1987 she became the South Asia correspondent of the Sunday Times, London. Subsequently she became a freelancer and started writing for India Today and The Indian Express. Her column in The Indian Express became the first political column to be written by a woman.
She is the author of two books:
Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors Lollipop Street: Why India Will Survive Her Politicians
In 1990 she began her stint with television by heading Plus Channel's Delhi bureau. Tavleen presented two video magazines called People Plus and Business Plus. She has done Ek Din Ek Jeevan, a Hindi weekly programme for Star Plus.
In 2002 she anchored the new weekly political discussion programme Dateline India a programme produced by Karan Thapar, on BBC World.