Niret Alva was born in Bangalore – the first child of lawyers Niranjan and Margaret Alva. Alva has two brothers, Nikhil and Nivedith, and a sister, Manira, with whom he manages Miditech. His name is a portmanteau, wherein the first two letters are from his father Niranjan, and the last three from his mother, Margaret Alva. The family moved to Delhi in 1974 when his mother was elected to the Rajya Sabha. She went on to serve as minister of state in Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao's governments. A prominent parliamentarian, she served four consecutive terms in the Rajya Sabha and one in the Lok Sabha. Alva is a graduate in history from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, has a post graduate diploma in journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi, and is a recipient of a certificate from the Radio Netherlands Training Centre in Hilversum for a news and current affairs course in television. He earned a law degree from Mumbai University.
Career
Alva joined the Press Trust of India, television, as a trainee reporter/scriptwriter in January 1988. Beginning his career when television was still government-controlled in the late 1980s, he moved on to become a correspondent with Eyewitness, a monthly independent video news magazine, owned by Hindustan Times Television in 1990. He covered subjects such as Indian attitudes toward sex, caste violence, the dangers of the civilian use of the army and the capture of Rajiv Gandhi's assassin. In 1992, he co-founded Miditech, a television software production company, along with his brother Nikhil. Miditech's program, Living on the Edge, won a Panda award at Wildscreen in Bristol in 1996. Alva has scripted, directed and been associated with several international, award winning documentaries, including The Great Descent – a river rafting journey down the Brahmaputra after the massive flood of 2000, and Operation Hot Pursuit – an undercover documentary on the illegal ivory trade between India and Japan.
Personal life
Alva is married to Indian author and advertising executive Anuja Chauhan, author of The Zoya Factor. They first met in 1989, during the production of a play in Delhi. They were married in 1994. They have three children, two girls and a boy.
