THE INFORMATION EVANGELIST
At 35, Sachin Pilot is minister of state for communications and IT, making him one of the youngest ministers in the government of India. Elected from Ajmer, Rajasthan, he is a member of the Congress and one of a small brigade of young MPs who straddles rural and urban India. While his constituency is largely rural, Pilot himself is a management graduate from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He gave up the chance of a successful corporate career to follow his father – the late Rajesh Pilot – into public life.
As a politician, Pilot has been known for widening the ambit of political discourse from so-called hard issues to concerns of human development and social uplift. He is one of a clutch of young MPs, cutting across party lines, making up the Citizens’ Alliance against Malnutrition, an advocacy group that aims at eradicating hunger and severe nutrition deficiency among millions of Indian children. This Alliance emerged out of a parliamentary group that Pilot was a member of and that travelled across India interrogating the problem of malnutrition and chronic hunger among millions of Indians.
An officer of the reservist Territorial Army – perhaps the first Indian minister to be so – Pilot is widely predicted to have a long and fulfilling career. He has been in the Communications Ministry at a time of great challenges, in the aftermath of the 2G spectrum scandal, and has served as an articulate and dignified spokesperson for his party and government in a stressful year.
