Speakers 2011
Dayamani Barla
The Ground Warrior Born in Arhara village in Jharkhand, Dayamani Barla, 44, could have been one of the faceless thousands displaced by India’s largest steel plant.Today, she leads the mass movement against it. She could have been another Adivasi with a crumbling house and a buried story. Instead, she chose to become a storyteller, the Read More…
Dibakar Banerjee
The Shape-shifter It is hard to pin down the animal that it is Dibakar Banerjee. You could call him an avant garde filmmaker, but he’s also a clued-in-to-the-masses ad-film maker on the side. You could peg him as the new-age Hrishikesh Mukherjee and thank god that someone was finally making family entertainers like Khosla Ka Read More…
Dinesh Trivedi
The Ballast Beneath the suave, settled exterior of India’s new Railway Minister, is a force that caused a tectonic shift in Bengal, unseating the red bastion after 34 years, and promising change to a desperately seeking people. 61-year-old Dinesh Trivedi has been the rock behind Mamata Bannerjee’s fire, zeal and promises in the Trinamool Congress. Read More…
Esther Duflo
The Poor Economist When you’re a 38-year-old economist and have already won a ‘Genius’ fellowship, are tipped to be a future Nobel-prize winner, have addressed a committee of the General Assembly of the UN and can pick up the phone to call Bill (that would be Gates, though we’re betting Clinton would just as easily Read More…
Frank Gehry
The Skyline Artist At 82, architect Frank Gehry is credited with bringing back the strut and sparkle of the New York skyline with 8 Spruce Street, a 76-storey skyscraper, the tallest residential building in New York. Covered in sculpted, muscular folds, the building has been commended for both elegance and originality. This is his first Read More…
Gregory Stock
The Ethical Futurist It’s one thing to make massive advances in genetic research and the life sciences, and entirely another to understand what these advances will mean for humankind. The latter question, rather than just scientific advancement, constantly occupy Gregory Stock’s mind. He kickstarted the debate about the social and policy implications of modern technologies Read More…
Hari Kunzru
The Live Wire Author Of mixed English and Kashmiri Pandit ancestry, Kunzru burst into the literary world at 32 with a million-pound advance for his first novel The Impressionist. He studied English at Oxford, completed an MA in Philosophy and Literature from University of Warwick. Following this, Kunzru worked in Wired UK as an award-winning travel journalist, interviewed Read More…
Hasan Elahi
The Surveillance Subverter When some people get picked out of the line for a ‘random’ security check they get mad. Justifiably so. When Hasan Elahi was the victim of racial profiling he didn’t get mad, he got even.The Bangladeshi-born American artist was detained at a Detroit airport in 2002 by FBI agents. The FBI admitted Read More…
Himanshu Kumar
The Gandhian Fighter In December 2009, Gandhian activist Himanshu Kumar fled Chhattisgarh by leaping over the back wall of his two-room ashram and disappearing into the jungle darkness. As founder of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA), an NGO in Dantewada, Kumar had been a key bridge between the State and the tribals, the government and its Read More…
