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Monica Jha

Monica Jha

Freelance journalist

Visiting the Global Migration Institute

Fall 2026

Monica Jha is an independent journalist based in India,  specialising in investigative reporting and multimedia storytelling. She reports on marginalisation, organised crime, and ecology. Her recent works include an oral history of India’s fisherwomen; investigations into illegal shark fin trade from India to East Asia, and crimes of the sand mining mafia.

Her works have received awards from Online Journalism Awards, One World Media, Fetisov Journalism, Society of Publishers in Asia, Stop Slavery Media, Asian American Journalists Association, New Media Writing Prize, and the SEJ Investigative Reporting.

Jha’s work has appeared in Rest of World, Daily Beast, Coda Story, London Evening Standard, South China Morning Post, Scroll, Fountain Ink and The Wire.

She has received reporting grants and fellowships from Environmental Reporting Collective (2023), Pulitzer Center Gender Equity Grant (2021), GITOC-GIJN fellowship to participate in African Investigative Journalism Conference 2022, GITOC, Oxpeckers and Henry Nxumalo Foundation grant to investigate transnational organised crime (2021), and Impact Journalism Grant (2019) to report on land and property inclusivity.

Jha has conducted programmes for Thomson Reuters Foundation to train Chevening scholars and other Indian journalists to report on human trafficking and modern slavery.

Research focus while a Bridging Divides Fellow

India is redesigning its emigration framework through the proposed Overseas Mobility Bill, 2025 and new bilateral mobility agreements, prioritising short-term labour export, remittance inflows and mandatory return. This shift institutionalises circular temporary labour migration. At Bridging Divides, Jha's research will examine the operational dynamics and potential outcomes of this model for the world’s top origin country.

She aims to assess how this policy shift shapes the migration cycle—from recruitment to reintegration—specifically for semi-skilled workers. Her inquiry explores critical questions: Can this model generate sustainable large-scale employment? How are consent and motivation for migration shaped under return-bound contracts? And how do these frameworks balance mandatory return with worker rights, assimilation and social welfare in the host country? And crucially, how will India manage the reintegration of returnees? She will also examine the extent to which these new agreements mirror the contract-based migration of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Publications and Reports

(2024) "Breaking The Nets: An Oral History of India’s Fisherwomen (external link) ". The Wire.

(2021) “The Testimony (external link) ". Fifty Two.

(2019) "The dark hand of tech that stokes sex trafficking in India (external link) ". Factor Daily.