Krishna Pokharel

Krishna Pokharel writes about life, politics, business, environment, religion and culture in India and the Himalayan region for The Wall Street Journal.

A native of Nepal, Krishna joined the Journal's South Asia bureau in New Delhi in September 2007. Since then, the major news events and themes he reported and wrote about have included the challenges and opportunities facing India's youthful population; a tussle over mining mineral resources and rights of the tribal people in India's forests; the final voyage of an Indian fishing boat in the Arabian Sea hijacked for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks; Nepal's peace process after a decadelong civil war; pollution in India's sacred rivers, the Ganga and the Yamuna; societal and institutional failings and reforms to protect children and women from violence and abuse in India; Hindu-Muslim relations in the Indian subcontinent; the human and economic cost of India's unsafe roads; and, the human impact of Covid-19 pandemic, including on one-horned rhinos in Nepal's nature reserves.

In 2013, Krishna co-authored a HarperCollins book, “Crimes Against Women: Three Tragedies and the Call for Reform in India,” a compilation of WSJ’s reporting on women’s issues in 2012 and 2013.

For his India coverage, Krishna, with his Journal colleagues, has won Overseas Press Club of America's 2007 Bob Considine Award for best interpretation of international affairs; South Asian Journalists Association's 2013 Award for outstanding enterprise reporting about South Asia; and Society of Publishers in Asia's 2014 award for excellence in reporting on women's issues. In 2016, he and his colleagues won Association for Women in Communications' Clarion Award for their feature story titled, "Death on India's Highway 66."