Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava

2022 AI ACCOUNTABILITY FELLOW

Kumar Sambhav is an independent journalist and India Research Lead at Princeton University’s Digital Witness Lab. Sambhav is also the founder of Land Conflict Watch, a multidisciplinary organization of lawyers and researchers which carries out research on land and natural-resources conflicts.

Sambhav’s recent reportage includes an investigation into more than 500,000 political ads placed on Facebook in India, which revealed how Meta’s ad platform undercut political competition in Indian elections by giving a leg-up to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. His other stories have exposed how political parties used India’s unique biometric identity system to profile voters and manipulate their choices, including how the Indian government planned a 360-degree-surveillance infrastructure to track the lives of its citizens.

For his reporting, Sambhav has received the prestigious Red Ink Award, the Press Council of India’s National Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Shriram Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism. He has earlier reported for global and Indian prime news outlets, including Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Business Standard, Scroll.in, Hindustan Times, Down to Earth, and The Times of India.

Sambhav will be assisted in his AI Accountability Network project by Tapasya, a journalist with The Reporters' Collective, and Divij Joshi, a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Laws, University College London.

Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava posing on a sofa.