Bangalore Literature Festival: Milan Vaishnav wins Rs 15 lakh prize

Bengaluru: Big names are a regular feature at the Bangalore Literature Festival, where star-struck fans can bump into their favourite authors as a matter of course. The festival, unlike all others, has always set aside room for the writers-in-waiting, giving young, fresh talent a space to grow and find themselves.

The Lalit Ashok was teeming with youngsters and people of various nationalities, as upcoming authors and fans rubbed shoulders with Pulitzer Prize winners.
This year also marked the first edition of the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize -- with an inaugural award of Rs 15 lakh.

Milan Vaishnav won it for his work When Crime Pays. He said that the real work on the book started a decade ago. “The book’s labour work started in 2008 and over a period of eight years I travelled across India to understand why so many criminals contest elections and keep winning. Why voters vote for them,” he said.

The award, an initiative of Nandan and Rohini Nilekani’s New India Foundation, was introduced at BLF by Nandan Nilekani, Ramachandra Guha and Manish Sabharwal, founder, TeamLease.

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