Open Minds 2021: Public Square

Access to information has helped a much larger number of people acquire expertise on a range of subjects than ever before in the history of the planet. Notwithstanding the data overload, interactive social platforms offer genuine insights into almost everything in the world, giving people a means of refining information to offer ideas, some of them grand. Knowledge is not the preserve of a few anymore, and the decentralisation that technology has unleashed in the internet age has led to an effervescence of opinions all around. The situation is akin to what Antonio Gramsci had said—that all men are intellectuals. The Italian thinker had added a corollary: “but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.” Yes, some men and women do stand out as brands, thought leaders, influencers, dissenters, entrepreneurs, do-gooders, technologists, peaceniks, and eco-warriors, all offering tangible or intangible benefits to a society much more than others.

There has been talk about the decline of the public intellectual, with academia getting removed from society. Also coming to the surface is the concept of “organic intellectuals” whose purpose it is, as Gramsci proposed, to serve the interests of the ruling class. Yet, this list is proof that influencers persist and thrive in the interest of the public as well.

Here, we feature men and women who have helped us understand the world and the country we live in better, as well as those striving to make our lives healthier and easier. Some of them have brought glory to the country in the public sphere while others have made quiet gains through their toil. They all deserve our gratitude and praise.

Salman Rushdie, for instance, never fails to surprise us through the magic of his words and ideas. His pursuit of the idea of truth offers the world a wake-up call on the need to engage with this profoundly contested idea that has acquired a new meaning in this age of the global village. Perhaps this could be his late style, but it reminds us of the power of literature that CS Lewis once said, “irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become”.

Satya Nadella, on the other hand, is a fearless Indian-origin CEO who is leading the transformation of one of the world’s biggest corporations, Microsoft. He has taken his own route to helping the company grow and is not wary of taking risks his predecessors would have seldom taken. He has, as a result, given the developer his due, in line with his vision to empower employees.

We have here people who continue to enhance our understanding of politics, society, foreign policy, environment, history and life. You will find names like Prashant Kishor, who has redefined the idea of election strategy in the country, and Tanvi Madan who helps us understand the world we live in better through her incisive takes on geopolitics. While Byju Raveendran is leading a revolution in education, James Joseph speaks in defence of the food our grandparents ate and has shown us that traditional wisdom about eating could also be scientifically sound.

Salman Rushdie, 74, Author: Alchemist of Truth

As an author, with 14 novels to his name, Salman Rushdie has nothing left to prove. Today, his greatest relevance is as a public intellectual. While his novels have received many awards and been translated into 40 languages, we listen to him now for his opinions on liberty and courage. In May this year, he released his most recent collection of essays, Languages of Truth. It includes writings from 2003 to 2020 and covers many of his favourite subjects: how the stories we fall in love with make us who we are and how we live in a time defined by migration. In his magnificent prose, he asks fundamental questions about how we can increase social justice in a globalised world and about the nature of ‘truth’. He writes of the music, art and friendships that have helped define him. And even his own experience of Covid. His ken knows no limits and readers are fortunate about that.

I can only say what the poet Baal says in The Satanic Verses: ‘A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep, says Salman Rushdie

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Satya Nadella, 53, Business Leader: Macro Dreamer

When Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, the company had seemed to have missed the bus of the future. It was still hostage to Windows, the operating system, even as technology was making it obsolete. There was a whole new world of cloud computing, social media, Artificial Intelligence and more that Microsoft seemed to have only cursory interest in. And now, as Nadella has just been named chairman of Microsoft, it seems to be right in the front of the race. It is a leader in cloud computing and, under him, a slew of purchases, such as LinkedIn, have made it ubiquitous again in the digital revolution. Nadella, who has been with Microsoft since the early 1990s, did not allow himself to be trapped by the inertia of his environment. It was evident in how his predecessor Steve Ballmer had not seen the writing on the wall. Now Microsoft is second only after Apple in value and Nadella, a graduate from an engineering college in India, gets almost all the credit for it.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 54, Public Intellectual: Dissent or Be Damned

The evidence of Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s intellectual heft came in the aftermath of his resignation as professor from Ashoka University, citing an environment not conducive to free speech. While Mehta continues to retain his aura as one of the foremost scholars and commentators on politics and governance in India, the university saw its reputation for liberalism diminished. Other resignations followed; students and faculty protested and luminaries from global academia came out in his support. Mehta, increasingly critical of the current Government’s policies, is the liberal conscience of the country making its case against a regime that he sees flouting the principles that the Constitution was designed to protect, such as enshrined freedoms and respect for all communities. And Ashoka University signalling to him that he is a political liability, the reason he gave for his resignation, seemed to prove the point he had been making all along.

Dissent is crucial to a democracy. But dissent is not just opposition for the sake of it. As George Eliot said, the right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, not to wander in lawlessness, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta

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Swapan Dasgupta, 65, Commentator and MP: Conservative Poise

The right wing in India is dominant politically and culturally but intellectually it has a harder time becoming relevant. Much of the blame has to fall on its online mob which pushes a discourse that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Swapan Dasgupta is among the few from the right who are able to match toe-to-toe with the leftist orthodoxy using the intellectual arsenal of a traditional conservative. This, he has been doing for a long time now through his columns and public debates. His is the refined voice of someone who arrived at his ideology through exposure to the wider world of the intelligentsia, through an Oxford education, and a long stint in the high echelons of journalism.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the greatest disruptive events globally. Its full impact is still unknown. Predictably, a huge social and political transformation is inevitable. While change will have to be negotiated, the importance of continuity cannot be over-emphasised. In the coming years, conservatives have to work towards restoring certitudes in an unstable world, says Swapan Dasgupta

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Dasgupta is also unusual in that he now also strides the length of popular politics by his active involvement in the West Bengal election. He may have lost his first contest but the experience should only add to his status as a voice that appeals to reason to explain why power is better off in the corner of the right.

Shashi Tharoor, 65, Author and MP: Brave New Words

He is perhaps the leadership equivalent of Public Law 480 (PL 480), the American food aid programme targeted at food-deficit friendly nations. Shashi Tharoor has the smarts to energise the organisationally and electorally starving Congress to help it wriggle out of myriad shortcomings. But while his services haven’t been enlisted enough to reverse the fortunes of his party, Tharoor, a Tufts University and St Stephens College alumnus, has managed to make a name for himself as someone who can easily step into the shoes of a public intellectual notwithstanding political restrictions. Not someone to wait for opportunities to come knocking, Tharoor charted this path for himself on his own. He makes this pursuit look effortless. Behind his pleasing composure is a man who thrives on the rigour required of an intellectual. He has proved to be as inventive as a writer as he is a reader, offering anyone who follows him on Twitter an eclectic mix of subjects to relish. And nothing stops him from churning out voluminous and thought-provoking books on a wide range of subjects, including Hinduism, which even his political rivals find hard to resist.

In a culture where conformity is too often valued above originality, bucking the desire to ‘fit in’ and offering provocative new ways of thinking about issues is not always pain-free. But thinking outside the box is the only way to move minds and change people. To me, between the illusory comfort of conformity and the challenge of moving the world to your vision, the unfamiliar path is the one worth walking on, says Shashi Tharoor

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Brahma Chellaney, 59, Strategic Affairs Expert: Dragon Slayer

He is often called a hawk in strategic issues and if India’s experience with China has shown anything in recent times, it is that Brahma Chellaney was more prescient than most in perceiving the threat. Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, has been an important constant in the Indian national security landscape, as both advisor and analyser. He has, for instance, been a vociferous advocate of India creating a viable nuclear deterrence against China. He is also independent, critical when needed about government policies. When Indian soldiers gave the Chinese a taste of what they were in for with experiments in intrusion, Chellaney argued that the opportunity was lost in not evicting them altogether. He was talking of China using debt as a weapon to enslave nations much before it became self-evident. And he remains relentless in his writings about the danger that Beijing poses to Indian interests and on the urgency of countering it.

In addition to in-depth knowledge and cognitive skills in strategic studies, understanding the geostrategic equations and trends in the world demands an integrated view of the relationships between security, foreign policy, defence and environmental issues and the ability to critically analyse and synthesise complex information relating to the conduct of strategy, says Brahma Chellaney

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Prashant Kishor, 44, Political Strategist: The Winning Formula

His name is now a synonym for political strategy in India. For the young man from Bihar who assisted Narendra Modi in the 2012 Gujarat Assembly polls and in the 2014 General Election as a master strategist, Kishor has had several crowning glories in his career that saw him transform from a vendor to an ally to a politician. But his masterpiece is this year’s campaign for Mamata Banerjee in the fiercely fought battle in West Bengal. Kishor, whose says his biggest inspiration is Mahatma Gandhi, has had his share of setbacks as well when he handled the account for the Gandhis in the 2019 General Election and on other occasions. But over years, he has clicked well in Telangana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. The most exciting win for him before Bengal was the 2015 state election of Bihar in which he became one of the faces of the anti-BJP grand alliance. Kishor says he is quitting as a political strategist but he doesn’t seem to be in a mood to stay away from the political spotlight yet. Whatever he decides, political strategy in India will always be viewed as pre- and post-Kishor.

Bengal results showed that other parties also can stand up to BJP and give them a contest, says Prashant Kishor

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Ram Madhav, 56, RSS Leader: National Globalist

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is an organisation that has learnt to evolve with changing cultural and political winds while maintaining its core character of nationalism. In the present age, Ram Madhav, who has spent his entire life within the organisation, is seminal in manoeuvring it into the future. Madhav, who has just returned to being a fulltime RSS man, being appointed to its National Executive Council, cut his teeth in realpolitik with the Bharatiya Janata Party, being instrumental in extending its footprint in the Northeast. He was also, for a while, actively involved on the Jammu and Kashmir front, which led to the revocation of Article 370. He also brings to RSS a perspective on global politics and India’s position in it, especially its troubled relationship with China on which he has authored a book. RSS is the ship on which the Sangh Parivar’s ideology sails and Madhav will be an important voice on how to steer it.

In today’s heteropolitan world with multiple state and non-state players, political complexity can be tackled only through politics of intelligent moralism. If the wise fail to reach the helm, demagogues will take over the realm. It is ethical ideation versus despotic authoritarianism in the new world order, says Ram Madhav

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Kanti Bajpai, 66, Academic and Author: Back to Beijing

Kanti Bajpai deserves praise for his new book India Versus China: Why They Are Not Friends. He has stirred up a debate on the need to unlearn existing tropes about Chinese designs and priorities. Coming, as it does, a year after the Galwan clashes along the Line of Actual Control, this book places in perspective the dynamic nature of India-China relations. He lays bare the dramatic changes over centuries as the gap between India and China grew. Bajpai, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, focuses on the transition from a relationship marked by respect and cooperation towards a lack of respect and non-cooperation. He dissects how the elite worldview of China triggered this shift. He also puts the spotlight on the differences over territorial perimeters, strategic partnerships of the two countries with other powers, and the Chinese idea of national power. From the Chinese elite’s perspective, India is a chaotic democracy. He dwells on the casual racism among the hoi polloi, too, emphasising that at multiple levels in Chinese society, India is despised. Perception and power asymmetry play a major role in India-China diplomacy. The message from Bajpai is that the Indian engagement with China needs an overhaul.

In today’s heteropolitan world with multiple state and non-state players, political complexity can be tackled only through politics of intelligent moralism. If the wise fail to reach the helm, demagogues will take over the realm. It is ethical ideation versus despotic authoritarianism in the new world order, says Ram Madhav
Even when it comes to soft power, China is much ahead of India, says Kanti Bajpai

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Vinay Sitapati, 37, Academic and Author: Biographer of Politics

With his first book Half Lion, Vinay Sitapati, associate professor of political science at Ashoka University, looked at the life of PV Narasimha Rao. For his next, which came out end of last year, Sitapati looked at the other side of the political fence. Jugalbandi: The BJP before Modi is ostensibly about Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, the duo that first brought the party to power, but it is actually the story of India itself, the gradual change being wrought in its political and cultural fabric by the resurgent force of Hindutva, its frugal beginnings and ascendance. The research involved was painstaking, with over 200 interviews. Sitapati brings a storyteller’s skills to make history and politics accessible to readers while not compromising on scholarship. The result is a riveting read that only begs the question why he ended the BJP story in 2004 and whether he will do a follow-up for the Modi era.

After my PHD at Princeton, I chose to come back to India because I realised that I wanted to write about recent Indian political history for other Indians. Self-knowledge, especially in social science, is a sovereign asset. Who you write for impacts what you can say, says Vinay Sitapati

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Tanvi Madan, 42, Foreign Policy Expert: The Explainer

Tanvi Madan, who works with the Brookings Institution as director of the India Project, has helped us understand better how China has shaped US-India ties. Her commentaries on this are often treated like gold dust by people who want to keep themselves abreast of the subject. After her book Fateful Triangle, in which she digs up the Chinese role in US-India ties from 1949-79, she is currently working on a book which, according to her, “explores India’s approach to the US in the context of a rising China”. She notes that it “considers how Delhi perceived and approached Beijing and Washington between 1980 and 2020, and the insights that period can offer us for the future”. Madan has explained how the visions of India and China for the region are incompatible. Delhi, she thinks, does not want to see a unipolar Asia dominated by Beijing and in the context of intensifying US-China competition, Beijing, for its part, also seems to perceive India more competitively. This alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin and Yale University says India will have to strengthen its capabilities, make necessary trade-offs and enhance its partnerships while seeking ways to manage competition with China and reduce the risk of conflict.

Delhi will need to be prepared for a China that believes its time has come, says Tanvi Madan

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Nikhil Srivastava, 37, Mathematician: Mapping the Matrix

There is something beautiful about the way Nikhil Srivastava and two others solved two of the biggest problems in mathematics and engineering—the Kadison-Singer problem and proof of the existence of bipartite Ramanujan Graphs of every degree. Srivastava, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, shared the 2021 Michael and Sheila Held Prize with Adam Marcus and Daniel Alan Spielman, for work that has been awarded before—it won the prestigious George Polya Prize in 2014. Using combinatorial mathematics, sophisticated number theory and the language of graphs, they took a crack at the Sparsest Cut Problem in computer science—bipartitioning a graph into two or more large pieces while removing as few edges as possible, for which there’s no good algorithm—and ended up with a complex universal truth. The team has shown networks and matrices can be broken down without a lot of discrepancy among the resultant parts. Arriving at an algorithm to do so may take ages, but the profundity of the solution is enough to keep mathematicians going.

Proving a new theorem is satisfying to me on many levels—it’s like solving a mystery, building a machine, and looking into nature at the same time. I try to work on questions which feel natural because I believe they are more likely to have beautiful answers, says Nikhil Srivastava

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Byju Raveendran, 40, Entrepreneur: A Digital Class Apart

For someone who once studied in a Malayalam-medium school, it has taken Byju Raveendran just a decade to create India’s most valued startup. Byju’s, which provides online educational content to students, is now valued at over $16 billion after the latest round of funding it got in June. He started helping friends prepare for competitive entrance exams in the mid-2000s, realised he had a special knack for it and got into it as a vocation. In 2011, the business was formally established. The next five years were spent refining the product and when, in 2016, the app Byju’s was launched, its use of visuals and interactive format made it a runaway success. They claim to have 95 million students registered on the app now and cater to all ages, from LKG to Class 12 and entrance exams. Byju’s has played a big part in opening the doors of online learning in India and in the lockdown, with schools closed, it kept education going.

James Joseph, 50, Entrepreneur: Fruitful Mission

In January, this former director at Microsoft showcased the outcome of his seven-year-long ‘crusade’ before Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a brief presentation. As founder of Jackfruit365, an organisation that pitches ripe jackfruit flour as the perfect antidote for fighting diabetes, Joseph argued that replacing a tablespoon of rice or wheat flour in daily meals with green jackfruit flour significantly lowered the plasma glucose level in patients with Type 2 diabetes. Recently, the study was published after peer reviews in Nature. “The address before the PM gave us visibility,” he says. The study involved randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled human trials done between May 2019 and February 2020 at the Srikakulam Medical College in Andhra Pradesh. Had it not been for his international exposure, Joseph says he would have given up on this mission that initially attracted scepticism and resistance from a section of doctors. The new calling meant leaving a corporate lifestyle to settling for budget hotels. Joseph was so successful in his MNC job that he had won what is internally considered “the Oscar in Microsoft”, the Circle of Excellence Award, for employee performance. Revolution through nutrition is his new mantra.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. I refused to give up despite daunting challenges, says James Joseph

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Y Nuklu Phom, 47, Environmentalist: The Falconer

The conservationist from Nagaland’s Longleng district is credited with a tenfold growth in the population of Amur falcons in the decade since 2007, when he started working with the community to give up their jhum lands (clearing the forest cover on slopes for cropping) and to bring about a cultural change. Many Naga villages subsist on hunting even today. Over the past decade, conservationists like Phom have worked hard to turn hunters into protectors of the migratory birds that arrive in large numbers in October in Nagaland and other parts of northeastern India. One of the recipients of the prestigious Whitley Award, or the ‘green Oscar’, for 2021, Y Nuklu Phom is a churchman and an inspiration to Naga youth. He himself started worrying about the environment as a child when his grandfather told him that nature was mourning because humans were putting pressure on it. Under the Biodiversity Peace Corridor initiative, his organisation, Lemsachenlok, has now roped in 15 villages to create safe habitats for flora and fauna while promoting sustainable consumption and cropping. There are plans to expand the initiative to other districts and states, including a transborder project involving hundreds of indigenous communities.

Our ancestors called Amur falcons dumaloi—meaning a falcon that comes from a foreign land. Today, thanks to awareness drives in schools, colleges and communities, many young people are engaged in efforts to restore and protect the ecosystems of Nagaland, says Y Nuklu Phom

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