New Delhi: One of India’s better known anchors, Nidhi Razdan, has quit NDTV after more than two decades, to take to academics. “Later this year, I start as Associate Professor teaching journalism as part of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences,” said a brief announcement she made on social media.

Hailing from Kashmir, Nidhi Razdan is the daughter of Maharaj Krishan Razdan, a long time editor in chief of the Press Trust of India who was seen as a blue-eyed boy of Indira Gandhi, remained paly with the establishment, and turned the agency into a financially viable entity while keeping it pedestrian when it came to journalism.

Nidhi Razdan, on the other hand, emerged from the shadows of some heavyweight screen hogging figures in Indian journalism to be counted as an outspoken journalist with an opinion and someone who refuses to put up with non-sense.

Fiercely feminist, she could give it back as good as she got it sometime in her heated TV show — Left, Right and Centre — but was mostly known for not allowing the debate to plunge too much on the cerebral scale and remaining in control of the narrative.

Her on air skirmish with BJP’s loudmouth Sambit Patra made news in Indian media circles, ensuring that she was no more the darling of the saffronites. She wasn’t earlier, either, to put the record straight.

Winner of several awards, including the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, her exit from the NDTV leaves the organisation without any major woman face, though NDTV can still boast of some women journalists who can hold and host a crackling debate.

After Barkha Dutt’s exit in not so cordial circumstances, Nidhi Razdan’s exit from Indian news television is by itself a newsworthy event. Her father isn’t remembered with any fondness at PTI, but will Nidhi be remembered better?

There have been times when Nidhi Razdan’s opinion was not known. For example, her view of the circumstances in which Barkha Dutt was hounded out of NDTV, or her view of the earlier Indian media fiasco called Radia Tapes in which Dutt’s name featured or was dragged in. Possibly, her students at Harvard might get to hear some stories, but will she be a teacher who drops newsworthy bon mots during a lecture?