New Delhi: Five Indian-origin personalities, including Bhim Army Chief Chandra Shekhar Azad Ravan and Vijaya Gadde, have made it to the TIME magazine’s annual list of 100 ‘Emerging leaders who are shaping the future.’
The 2021 TIME100 Next, released on Wednesday, is an expansion of TIME’s flagship TIME100 franchise of the most influential people in the world and highlights 100 emerging leaders who are shaping the future.
“Everyone on this list is poised to make history. And in fact, many already have,” Dan Macsai, the editorial director of the TIME100, said.
The list includes Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde, UK’s Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, Instacart founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta, Doctor and Executive Director of NGO Get Us, PPE Shikha Gupta, founder of non-profit Upsolve organization, Rohan Pavuluri and Bhim Army Chief Chandra Shekhar Azad.
Vinaya Gadde’s profile reads, “Gadde, 46, is one of Twitter’s most powerful executives. Her boss, Dorsey, has delegated to her Twitter’s content-moderation decisions; she was the architect of the 2019 decision to ban all political advertising and is responsible for the warning labels that Twitter applied to COVID-19 and election-interference misinformation in 2020. While Twitter is still home to much misinformation and harassment.”
Azad’s profile says, “Chandra Shekhar Aazad, 34, is a Dalit—a member of India’s most oppressed caste group. The movement he leads, the Bhim Army, runs schools to help Dalits escape poverty through education. It also practices a distinct brand of assertiveness, sweeping into villages on loud motorbikes to protect victims of caste-based violence and organizing provocative demonstrations against discrimination.” It also quotes Dhrubo Jyoti, a Dalit journalist at Hindustan Times, who says that Azad and the Bhim Army have “have visually and psychologically changed the pitch of caste resistance in India.”