Open Minds 2025: Public Square

Space, it is said, is the next frontier but right now its conquest is akin to a series of baby steps. India took one when it got an astronaut, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time. To achieve a feat like that requires a superstructure of collaboration. First, a private commercial company Axiom Space must offer such a service along with another company SpaceX that owns the spacecraft. The US space agency NASA, which is encouraging the privatisation of space, must be part of the endeavour and the rocket itself took off from its launch pad. And then India’s space agency ISRO must have a vision for its own human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, and must get a seat on the mission for Shukla so that India gains valuable experience as a precursor. The US government must ally itself through the good relations of its political leaders. It all happens because everyone sees the great virtue of such an ambition for a young country. Right intent and ideas got aligned and much of it was because of India’s sound reputation. And that in turn emanates from its presence in the public square of the world.

If civilisation is brick and mortar, then it is in its assembly and ideas that its future is shaped. Here is where the intellectuals mediate norms and shape ideologies, where the economists present the trade-offs for progress and theories to maintain a fine balance, where the entrepreneurs are willing to chase an idea until it either consumes them or makes them wealthy beyond imagination. And all the while showing the rest of the world the monumental change a great idea executed well can bring about. Take Artificial Intelligence (AI). We are in an entirely new technological era but multinationals with enormous resources have cornered this field. And yet there are people like Aravind Srinivas who, in under 10 years after passing out of an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), has founded an AI-based answer engine, Perplexity, valued at $9 billion which is challenging the monopoly of Google in search. Similarly, there are the founders of Sarvam AI, Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, who are building India’s own Large Language Model (LLM) to compete against the likes of OpenAI.

Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani are the richest and second-richest Indians in terms of net worth but the real significance of their achievements is the scale of their vision and how that touches and betters innumerable lives. Just one project of one Adani company is leading to the world’s biggest renewable energy plant in India. Ambani has patiently, over the last decade, pivoted his group from a traditional petrochemicals business to a conglomerate right at the forefront of technology spanning telecom, new media, ecommerce, and more.

The men and women whom the Public Square of Open Minds celebrates this year have pushed the needle of progress, whether it be with fresh perspectives to questions that confront us or in the transformations they wrought. They have ushered in agendas for dialogue, expanded the fields that Indians are invested in, and serve as role models for others to attempt likewise. It is through them that the public square remains vigorous.

Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, Astronaut: Leap o the Stars

An Indian returns to space after 41 years and steps into the International Space Station for the first time

At this moment we are orbit­ing the Earth at a speed of seven-and-a-half kilometres per second and the Tricolour flag is on my shoulder telling me that I am with all of you. This is not the beginning of my journey to the International Space Station. This is the begin­ning of India’s human space programme. I would like you, my fellow countrymen, to be part of this journey. Your chest must also broaden with pride. You also must be as excited. Let us together begin this journey of India’s space programme. Thank You. Jai Hind. Jai Bharat.”

With these words, at an altitude of 199km above Earth in the spacecraft he was piloting at a speed of 27,000 km per hour, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla set off a moment in history for India. A second Indian had moved be­yond the confines of the planet.

It took its time coming even up to the very end but no milestone is easy. When Shukla finally took off as the pilot of the Axiom 4 Mission from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 12.01PM IST, it was after the launch had been delayed seven times, and every time the country had held its breath.

On June 26, the crew docked with the International Space Station (ISS) and Shukla became the first Indian to ever step into it. Forty-one years ago, Wing Com­mander Rakesh Sharma had been the first from the country to go to space as part of a Soviet mission. Shukla’s journey has a bigger import because it is tied to India’s ambition of a manned mission of its own, Gaganyaan, in 2027. Axi­om is a private commercial com­pany which uses the spacecraft of SpaceX, another company, to provide services related to space. India, through the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), had purchased a seat for Shukla in their Axiom 4 mission in order to gain valuable experience that will be useful for Gaganyaan.

t is not easy to become an astronaut. First one has to be on an elite shortlist and even after that, it takes years of prepa­ration. Shukla had the pedigree. Born in 1985, he became a fighter pilot with the Indian Air Force (IAF) in 2005 and notched up 2,000 hours of flight experi­ence. When ISRO was planning Gaganyaan, Shukla applied for it and was selected in 2019. He is one of four such astronauts on the programme.

At a press conference held by Axiom a few weeks ago, Shukla spoke of his journey in becom­ing an astronaut and how much Rakesh Sharma’s 1984 space flight had influenced him. Born just a year later, he grew up read­ing about Sharma in textbooks. But it wasn’t a firm ambition because India just did not have a space programme to allow it. Instead, Shukla found himself drawn to fighter jets after wit­nessing an air show and becom­ing entranced by it, and became a fighter pilot. It was through the IAF that he got the opportunity to become an astronaut in 2018. “When it was announced by the Honourable Prime Minister on Independence Day that we will soon launch an astronaut, an Indian astronaut, for the mission Gaganyaan, I don’t think that there was any deliberate thought from my side whether to apply or not. I think it was very instinc­tive. I applied for the programme and am extremely grateful and fortunate to be here doing this as an outcome of that,” he said at the press conference.

Once selected, he trained for a year at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmo­naut Training Center in Moscow, Russia. And for the Axiom mis­sion itself, the astronauts were again in advanced training for a year, ranging from managing spacecraft operations, handling emergencies to being in simulated situations and conducting scien­tific experiments. Sharma was a mentor to him as he prepared for the mission. Shukla has carried something to the ISS to honour Sharma but has not revealed it. He will hand it over personally once he is back to maintain the surprise. He is also carrying other good­ies, including Indian delicacies like moong dal halwa and carrot halwa to eat up there and share with the other astronauts.

At the ISS, Shukla will also conduct scientific experiments for ISRO which will assist with Gaganyaan. These include ways to make use of Cyanobacteria and microalgae for food, fuel and life support systems on orbit. An­other experiment is to see how muscle cells change in space and perform in microgravity. It will help in coming up with countermeasures.

Shukla is also carrying with him symbols and souvenirs created by National Institute of Design students, artefacts that will represent the spirit of India in space. He will be speaking live with students, educators and the space industry. Beyond the Indian human space programme, the biggest reward for Shukla’s journey will be in the spark that it lights among young Indians. India’s progress in space explora­tion is inevitable but it will need them to participate in it. As he said at that press conference, “If even one young believer is moved to explore the cosmos because of this mission, we will have already succeeded.” (By Madhavankutty Pillai)

V Narayanan, 61, Chairman, ISRO: The Higher Authority

At the beginning of 2025, when V Narayanan took charge as ISRO chairman, his goals were clear. At the top was Gaganyaan, India’s manned space mission. And a precursor to that was having an Indian astronaut in space. That ambition was achieved with the Axiom 4 mission in which Shubhanshu Shukla became the first Indian to go to the International Space Station (ISS). Narayanan, a veteran ISRO scientist specialising in propulsion of rockets and spacecraft, was one of those responsi­ble for India developing its own cryogenic engines, an ability that only a handful of countries share. In his 40 years at ISRO, he has seen and overseen the capabilities of the organisation increase exponentially. It is already a pathbreaker in making satellites and spacecraft that reach as far as Mars. The successful achievement of Gaganyaan, when it eventually happens, will have much to do with his safe pair of hands steering it.

Sunita Williams, 59, Astronaut: Defying Gravity

A veteran of two space missions, Sunita Williams spent an extraordinary 286 days aboard the ISS in 2024–25, after what was meant to be an eight-day flight turned into a nine-month test of endurance. When she finally touched down, it wasn’t just NASA that exhaled: Jhu­lasan, her ancestral village in Gujarat, did too, as firecrackers lit up the sky, students danced garba, and the local temple echoed with prayers. The girl whose grandparents once left this soil had returned from space, and in doing so, tethered a small Indian village to the farthest reaches of low Earth orbit. For India’s Shubhanshu Shukla and others on the launchpad of ambition, Williams has become more than a pioneer. She is a quiet compass pointing not just upward, but inward, reminding them that spaceflight demands not just courage in motion, but the strength to endure the silence between countdown and return.

Wealth of Ideas: Powering India Inc
Mukesh Ambani 68, Chairman, Reliance Industries: The Growth Savant

Last August, speaking at the annual general body meeting of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani informed shareholders about a unique achieve­ment—Reliance had become the first Indian company to cross a turnover of ₹10 lakh crore. What has been equally striking is how Ambani has managed to pivot Reliance from a traditional petrochemicals business to one that spans multiple sunrise sectors. It began with Jio and mobile networking, but then branched off to categories ranging from retail, green energy to OTT platforms. After a merger, JioHot­star now has more than 200 million paid subscribers. He is also building the world’s largest data centre in Jamnagar which will bring Reliance to the forefront of the AI revolution.

Gautam Adani, 63, Chairman, Adani Group: Engine of Expansion

he scale of Gautam Adani’s entrepreneurial zeal is evident across multiple sectors. In Khavda, Gujarat, for instance, the world’s biggest renewable energy plant is in the making, which will provide 30GW of power. In Mumbai, the group will this year flag off a new airport while also doing the redevelopment of Dharavi, which will probably be one of the greatest real estate projects India has ever seen. The conglomerate paid a whopping ₹74,945 crore in taxes, a nearly 30 per cent increase over the previous year. All this has been built from scratch by Adani over three decades. And the story is still in the making as he plans to invest a further $15 to $20 billion in his businesses till 2030.

Nikhil Kamath, 38, Investor: The Billionaire Podcaster

He wears many hats. He is the co-founder of Zerodha, and by virtue of that a multi-billionaire. He is a philanthropist, the young­est Indian to sign the Giving Pledge by which most of his wealth will go to charity after his death. He has invest­ment funds and also organisa­tions that mentor young entrepreneurs. But what Nikhil Kamath is most identi­fied with in the public mind is as a podcaster. He pulled off a coup in January 2025 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi did his first podcast appearance with Kamath. They talked for two hours and got millions of views on just that channel alone. Others who have been a guest on his podcast WTF include a wide subsection of society and the world, from Bill Gates to Ranbir Kapoor.

Shashi Tharoor, 69, Author and MP: The Eloquence of Freedom

He deserves praise for consistently playing the role of an intellec­tual among politicians, someone who makes complex subjects more accessible to everybody. He writes with the vigour of a politician and the nuanced perspec­tive of a writer, a highly accomplished one at that. For someone who has read, reviewed and written books at lightning speed, Shashi Tharoor’s aim has always been to offer the right mix of intellectual depth and broad overviews of the subjects he tackles. These include figures as complex and towering as BR Ambedkar and topics as dense as the Indian Constitution, on which he has recently written a book. His effort this time was to convey both the significance of the Constitution and the threats it currently faces. Tharoor, a scholar and former international dip­lomat who enjoys enormous popularity on the literary circuit, carries a certain autonomy about him. His independent tone sets him apart, unsettling to those unaccustomed to it, but valuable to those seeking a persuasive advocate for India’s case against terrorism abroad in the aftermath of the limited war with Pakistan.

The Arc of Argument: Where the Nation Is the Conversation
Ram Madhav, 60, Author: Navigating the World

In August 2024, after a long hiatus, Ram Madhav, national executive member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was back in active politics when the Bharatiya Janata Party made him the election-in-charge for Jammu & Kashmir that was going to the polls. Even other­wise, Madhav has been contributing to the national discourse as president of the influential think-tank India Foundation, and with the numerous books he has written. His latest, The New World: 21st-Century Global Order and India, published in May, brought his wide experience and insights into foreign policy to analyse how the geopolitical order is being reshaped, from the rise of China as a challenge to US unipolarity to artificial intelligence (AI) as a technological disruptor. In what India must do to meet these forces, Madhav’s prescriptions are a valuable guide.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 58, Public Intellectual: Decency of Dissent

Whether it is the crisis of free speech, the state of univer­sities and poli­tics, the nexus of technology and power, the catastrophe in Gaza, the threat of war with Pakistan, the Iran-Israel conflict, or the delu­sions of leaders and the rise of authoritarianism, we look forward to the incisive commentary of Pratap Bhanu Mehta. He remains a champion of democracy, one that upholds and promotes an ethical relationship between the state and its citizens. He dissects policy, politics, geopolitics, and a myriad of other subjects, making the experience of reading him a revelation. He is an intellectual’s intellectual, yet entirely accessible to the layperson. For decades now, he has positioned himself as a perpetual dissident, risking online vitriol and public backlash to prove that in a true democracy, moral integrity cannot be bar­gained away simply for speaking truth to power. As one of our fore­most public intellectuals, he has shown, through both thought and action, that to dissent is not only a right but a responsibility.

Swapan Dasgupta, 69, Commentator: Conservative Class

To the political establishment of India, Swapan Dasgupta may no longer be in Rajya Sabha, but his views are still of great import be­cause he continues to remain one of the nation’s leading intellectuals on the right. The governing BJP, of which he is a national executive council member, especially sets great store by his insights on issues that face the nation, from India’s response to the terrorist attack on tourists at Pahalgam to Indo-US relations in the Donald Trump era. And this he does through his numerous columns in mainstream media, television appearances and public talks.

Anand Ranganathan, 53, Author: Razor Right

A molecular biologist, Anand Ranganathan wields logic as both shield and sabre. He cleaves through platitudes, demanding clarity and laying bare ‘selectivist’ biases. A “Darwinian atheist” who embraces a cultural Hinduism, Ranganathan is a prominent voice in India’s on the right side of the argument. He has dismantled hate-crime trackers, prompting retractions from leading media, and championed former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma amid public fury, arguing principle over popularity. He is relentless because he believes history, law, and national identity must obey facts, not feelings. Whether exposing bias or mocking consensus, he insists that the only true refuge for ideas is interrogation.

The Edge of Tomorrow: On the Frontline of AI
Aravind Srinivas, 31, CEO, Perplexity AI: The Answer Engineer

Google has had a monopoly on online search for decades but the man who has come up as a challenger to them is an electrical engineer from IIT Madras, Aravind Srinivas. His startup Perplexity shot up in valuation over the course of a year from $1 billion to $9 billion, and might rise to $14 billion after the next round of funding. It describes itself as answer engine that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to come up with replies for questions. Srinivas, who went to the US after finishing his MTech, did a PhD in computer science at the University of California. He worked at OpenAI before co-founding Perplexity in 2022 which has investors like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Nvidia. Companies like Apple and Meta, which need to up their AI game against the likes of Google and OpenAI, are also said to be eyeing to acquire Perplexity.

Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, Co-Founders, Sarvam AI: Bharat Intelligence

Foundational or large language models (LLMs), which are trained on phenomenal amounts of data, are what underpin the artificial intelligence (AI) era. Think Ope­nAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. It was a domain of the US until China began to reveal that it too had them. India is late to the game, but Sarvam AI, a startup founded in 2023, is leading the catch-up by cre­ating a foundational model specific to India. And the people helming this are its founders, Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, both IITians. Raghavan, a technolo­gist, played a big part in the development of Aadhaar. Kumar is an AI and systems engineering researcher with experience in Microsoft Research, IBM Research, and IIT Madras. He had co-founded AI4Bharat, which made AI applications of Indian languages. It was when Raghavan was a mentor to AI4Bharat that the two saw the need for a desi foundational model and founded Sarvam. When the Indian government decided on IndiaAI Mission, it was Sarvam that was first selected to create an LLM for India.

Vinod Dham, 75, Entrepreneur: Chip-Savvy

At 75, Vinod Dham carries his legend lightly. The man who once built the Pentium now wants to build his homeland’s future. As nations rush to master artificial intelligence, the battlefield is silicon, and GPUs, he says, are the uranium, reminding India that without sovereign chips, it risks being a renter in someone else’s digital empire. India is listening. The government plans to roll out 18,000–34,000 high-end GPUs via the IndiaAI compute ecosys­tem, empowering startups, universities, and researchers with subsidised access. The India Semiconductor Mission and new chip design programmes are unlocking billions in incentives and strategic partnerships. Into this ferment, Dham injects urgency and clarity. Advising across governments and nurturing a national Centre of Excellence, he helps shape India’s semiconductor strat­egy by marrying technical rigour with geopolitical grit.

Balaraman Ravindran, 53, Professor, IIT Madras: Mind the Machine

He was recently named a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, one of the high­est honours in the field. Over 30 years, Balaraman Ravindran became a bridge between maths and meaning. His work in decision-making systems—how machines choose, err, and learn—has seeded a generation of Indian researchers, some now at Google and OpenAI. But it is as an institu­tion builder that he has left his deepest trace. As head of the Wadhwani School of Data Science & AI, the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial In­telligence, and now of the new Centre for Responsible AI at IIT Madras, Ravindran has made the institution a compass for Indian AI. He has also chaired national task forces on AI and cybersecurity, helped steer de­fence AI strategy, and now serves as India’s representa­tive to global panels on AI ethics.

Ashok Elluswamy, 35, Vice President, Tesla’s AI Division: Musk’s Man

Before Tesla, he built vision systems. But his appointment as the first director of Tesla’s autopilot programme brought Ashok Elluswamy to global prominence. In 2025, as this Tamil robot­ics engineer takes additional charge of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot project, Elluswamy remains quietly embedded in the most audacious AI experiment of our time—meeting with Elon Musk every week, absorbing what he calls the CEO’s uncanny ability to “predict the future very early.” As Tesla enters the Indian market with its premium fleet, Elluswamy could become a vital bridge between Silicon Valley engi­neering and Indian ambition.

Jay Shah, 36, Chairman, International Cricket Council: Master of the Game

As Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India from 2019 to 2024, Jay Shah had a superlative innings that included the successful hosting of the One Day International World Cup in India, raising the pay of women cricket­ers, steering Indian cricket through Covid, boosting financial revenues and more. He then took over as the International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman in December 2024 and has brought in the same efficiency. The ICC Champions Trophy was executed to wide viewership. When the Indian team was apprehensive about security for a match against Pakistan in that country, the venue was shifted to the UAE quickly. And high on Shah’s agenda is the globalisation of cricket and overseeing the sport becoming part of the next Olympics in 2028.

Uday Shankar, 62, Vice Chairperson, JioStar: Brand Builder

The head of India’s largest media company JioStar, Uday Shankar will spend `33,000 crore on content in 2025, enough to start changing audience tastes. An industry star, he understands that India has the power to tell its own stories but for that it needs a new system of monetisation which can take the valuation of local media companies to global levels. He has highlighted the potential in Tier-II, III, and IV cities where content networks can help emerging businesses scale, build new brands, and bring them into the adver­tising ecosystem to create enormous value. The JNU alumnus has always understood the lifecycle of content streams, whether it was TV news or mainstream television when he was with Star News and then Star TV India, a coveted asset sold by the Murdochs to Disney in 2019. Whether it is buying cricket rights or starting a stream­ing service, Shankar has been at the forefront of transformation. The new journey will be worth watching.

William Dalrymple, 60, Author: India’s Restorer

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World was one of the most important books to come out last year. It is a book that seeks to undo the legacy of colonialism and Victorian ideology, which misrepresented and underval­ued Indian history, culture and science. William Dalrymple maps India’s role as an economic fulcrum and civilisational engine during the ancient and medieval times. India’s role, writes Dalrymple, was on a par with and equal to China’s, if not bigger. In science, astronomy and mathematics, India was a teacher to the Arab world, and so of Mediterra­nean Europe as well.

The Golden Road is a well told account because Dalrymple is an inveterate traveller, a rigorous scholar and a deft storyteller. He is not unearthing completely new facts, but he tells the tale in an engaging fashion, animating it with fascinating charac­ters and revelatory artworks. To popular consciousness he brings the fact that India, not China, is the historic centre of the Asian world. He rightly believes that it is time to appreciate and honour India’s defining contributions.

Amitav Ghosh, 68, Author: Wild Endeavour

The novelist has lately turned his attention to the climate crisis. Amitav Ghosh often accuses modern literature and art of failing to adequately address climate change. He takes it upon himself to understand the lasting influence of colonial­ism and how indigenous cultures are often better guardians of the environment.

In his most recent collection of essays, Wild Fictions, he bears witness to the rupture of time by chronicling the last 300 years, a period that saw the birth of modernity and industry. Unwilling to rest on his accolades, Ghosh’s interests now span climate science, geol­ogy, botany and much else in order to better understand the Anthropocene era. Wild Fictions forces a rethinking of the human relationship with nature.

Vikram Sampath, 45, Author, Redeeming History

Tipu Sultan is not a flame to be admired or extinguished. He is a furnace—dangerous and misunderstood. And Vikram Sampath, in his new book on the Mysore ruler, walks straight into the heat. Nearly 900 pages long, Tipu Sultan: The Saga of Mysore’s Interreg­num is not a work of agreement. It is a work of encounter—between empire and ethics, violence and vision, record and omission. Sampath does not rush to rehabilitate or to damn. He recon­structs. He is, by temperament and politics, a Hindu right scholar. His histo­ries are thick with purpose. They do not seek neutrality; they seek correction. In Bravehearts of Bharat: Vignettes from Indian History, he names the unnamed and lifts the minor chords of India’s martial past to heroic pitch. In Waiting for Shiva, he combs through the debris of a temple-mosque entanglement. This is why he has turned now to the very wires of dissemination: transla­tion. NAAV-AI, his new venture, is an artificial intelligence platform to bring Indian literature into Indian languages, faster and finer.

Abhijit Banerjee, 64, Author: Economics Of Taste

Having won a Nobel, most people would rest on their laurels. But Abhijit Banerjee does something different—he combines his two passions economics and food—to talk about society and sociology. In his new book, Chhaunk: On Food, Economics and Society, which comes after Cooking to Save Your Life (2021), Banerjee uses food to unpack questions of whether economics shapes culture or if it is the other way round. While providing homey recipes like on­ion chutney and high-brow ones like ‘millefeuille of papad and baigan bharta’ he raises the larger issues of economics in connection with psychology, culture and social policy. Part memoir, part cookbook, part economics textbook, Chhaunk is simultaneously intellectual and playful. This cross-genre book is a delight for both the amateur cook and the expert economist as it is for the expert cook and the amateur economist.

Abhijit BanerjeeAmitav GhoshAnand RanganathanAravind SrinivasAshok ElluswamyBalaraman RavindranGautam AdaniJay ShahMukesh AmbaniNikhil KamathOpen Minds 2025Pratap Bhanu MehtaPratyush KumarPublic SquareRam MadhavShashi TharoorShubhanshu ShuklaSunita WilliamsSwapan DasguptaUday ShankarV NarayananVikram SampathVinod DhamVivek RaghavanWilliam Dalrymple