Speakers 2011
Mohammed Hanif
The Satirical Storyteller Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan and joined the Pakistan Air Force Academy at 18, only to leave it a few years later. Literature will forever owe the Academy, because that is where Hanif stumbled on reading. “Discovering books was like stumbling on a second adolescence,” he later said. Thus started Read More…
Naresh Trehan
The King of Hearts Trehan is among India’s top cardiac surgeons, and definitely its most famous. He is the country’s First Doctor, serving the President of India since 1991. He has performed close to 50,000 surgeries, and is the president of the Indian Healthcare Federation. After several years of practice in the US and UK, Read More…
Nitin Gadkari
The Able Tactician It’s almost cinematic in its irony and drama. When he started his political career as a grassroots worker for the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, India’s main Opposition party, Nitin Gadkari often had the job of laying out red carpets — literally — prior to events that Read More…
Omar Abdullah
The Savvy Scion “I am a Muslim and I am an Indian, and I see no distinction between the two”, Omar Abdullah said in a widely acclaimed 2009 Lok Sabha speech. It may not sound much to those unfamiliar with the intricacies of Indian—especially Kashmiri—politics, but to those in the know, it was an unmistakable Read More…
Pavan Sukhdev
The Green Conscience-Keeper Pavan Sukhdev’s proposition that protecting the environment can lead to GDP growth and enormous employment creation makes many traditional environmentalists twitchy. The 51-year-old is behind a critical momentum building up to operationalize and account for ‘externalities’ in the National Income Accounting of countries as well as the balance sheet of companies, so Read More…
Pavan K. Varma
The Renaissance Man Pavan K Varma’s career will remind you less of the prosaic 21st century emissary and more that of the polymath diplomats of more genteel times. A member of the Indian Foreign Service, he has served in Moscow, in New York at the Indian Mission to the United Nations, in London, where he Read More…
Pervez Hoodbhoy
The Scientific Activist Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff offered him the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, the third highest honour in the State of Pakistan, but Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, 61refused it. A Pakistani scientist, essayist, and political-defence analyst, Hoodbhoy is a professor of nuclear physics and heads the physics department at Quaid-e-Azam University. A strong and avid supporter of nuclear disarmament, non-nuclear proliferation Read More…
Prakash Jha
The Ace of Champaran Prakash Jha is a man with a mission. Nietzsche once said that a philosopher is born of his perspective, not the other way around and Jha (57) — born in Champaran, Bihar is evidence of this. His oeuvre — socio-politically charged films like Damul, Mrityudand, Gangaajal, Apaharan and Rajneeti bear witness Read More…
Prashant Ruia
The New-Age Entrepreneur When you’re a young boy born into one of India’s most wealthy business families, you can be forgiven for living it up as a teenager. Instead, Prashant Ruia showed up at the offices of his family corporation, Essar, at age 15. “In 1985, it was an exciting time for the company — Read More…
