Indholdsfortegnelse for January 4, 2021 i India Today

KUMAR MANGALAM BIRLA,53 As chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, he has transformed the conglomerate from a $2 billion business into a multinational behemoth spanning 36 countries and businesses as diverse as textiles, cement, chemicals, retail and telecom with an annual revenue of $46 billion Kumar Mangalam still vividly recalls the day his father, Aditya Vikram Birla, told him he had only a few more months to live. At first, the young Kumar Mangalam (he was 28 at this point) refused to believe him. After all, at 51 years of age, Aditya Vikram was at the prime of his life. He had successfully diversified the business group he had inherited into textiles, petrochemicals and telecommunications and was among the first Indian corporates to go international, taking the worth of the…

ASHOK GEHLOT, 69 The Congress veteran and Rajasthan chief minister has made compassion for the poor the guiding principle of his politics and governance Ashok Gehlot credits his illustrious political career, which has seen him become Union minister at 31, Pradesh Congress Committee chief at 34, chief minister thrice and MP and MLA five times each, entirely to the ‘Gandhis’ (the Mahatma and the Nehru-Gandhi family). It all began with his regular visits, as a school and college student, to the Jodhpur office of the Gandhi Peace Foundation. While his school and college friends indulged in interests of their age, Gehlot was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and his values. Apart from developing his own ideas about politics, he imbibed the Gandhian abhorrence for liquor and embraced vegetarianism early in life.…

“We were two rustics who had just returned from the Himalayas... but the people accepted our knowledge with enthusiasm and warmth, and they benefitted immensely from it” BABA RAMDEV,54 The yoga guru first appeared on TV in 2000 and created a massive following on the ‘religious’ channels. He and Acharya Balkrishna set up Patanjali Ayurved in 2006 The 21st century was here. Swami Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna, two former students of a gurukul in Haryana, had just returned after spending seven years in the Himalayas discovering the secrets of yoga and ayurveda. In the year 2000, executives of two devotional TV channels—Aastha and Sanskar TV—got in touch with Ramdev and Balkrishna and one of them—Sanskar TV—offered them a 20-minute slot—from 6.40 am to 7 am—to showcase their yoga skills to…

DEEPIKA PADUKONE,34 The actor faced harsh criticism for her performance in Om Shanti Om (2007) and even for her accent, but it only drove her to find success As I reflect upon my personal and professional evolution, the distinctions between the girl I was growing up and the person I am today, the journey from then to now has been one of immense growth and learning. I was acutely under-confident and socially awkward. I still am. I vividly remember the stares I would get as a little girl walking into school (St Sophia’s High School, Bengaluru) every morning. Was it because I was tall? Was it the way I looked? Or was it because I wasn’t the brightest student in the classroom? I didn’t know. Growing up, I wasn’t exactly…

“One should not be demotivated by a crisis—one should take it head-on and use it as an opportunity to disrupt the status quo” AMITABH KANT,64 From the tourism secretary of Kerala to creating the Incredible India campaign to becoming CEO of the NITI Aayog, Kant has displayed an astonishing ability to turn crisis into opportunity, which has catapulted him up the ranks in the Indian bureaucracy In a career spanning over four decades, Amitabh Kant, currently chief executive officer of NITI Aayog, has reimagined himself into many roles—from the man who put Kerala on the world map as a tourist destination, to the one who designed and executed the memorable ‘Incredible India’ campaign and the celebrated ‘Make in India’ mission. Now, at the helm of India’s policy think-tank, Kant is…

Only seven people attended his first session in Mysuru. But what were to be 2-hr daily sessions for 4 days stretched to 6-hr sessions over 5 days SADHGURU JAGGI VASUDEV,63 The spiritual leader’s first transcendent experience in 1982 made him believe it could happen to anyone. It eventually led him to start the Isha Foundation, an NGO dedicated to achieving physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is an anomaly. When one hears “spiritual leader”, a leather-clad biker is not really what comes to mind. And yet, that is exactly what the 63-year-old made news for in October—a 10,000-mile motorcycle journey across North America. A spiritual leader, yoga guru and founder of Isha Foundation, a non-profit spiritual organisation, Vasudev has also been making headlines for his conservation efforts. In…

BYJU RAVEENDRAN, 40 His learning app BYJU’S—one of India’s fastest growing startups—achieved decacorn status in June 2020 with a valuation of over $10 billion, boasts of 75 million registered users and has 5.2 million paid subscriptions When Byju Raveendran speaks, you listen. After all, he is a 40-year-old who founded a company that has achieved phenomenal growth and is now India’s most valued edutech venture. In June 2020, BYJU’S attained the coveted status of a decacorn when its valuation crossed $10 billion (Rs 74,000 crore). Given that it had become a unicorn just two years ago, when it was valued at $1 billion, BYJU’S is undoubtedly one of India’s fastest-growing startups. It roped in Shah Rukh Khan as its brand ambassador and displaced Oppo as the Indian cricket team’s key…

SABYASACHI MUKHERJEE,48 Having witnessed his father’s tribulations first-hand, the young Sabyasachi vowed to build a career that would shield them from similar struggles in the future. Today, he is the favoured bridal couturier for most Bollywood celebs My father is my hero. Nearly infallible, he was always even-keeled even after life had thrown its fair share of challenges at him. He came from a single parent household, who, by sheer dint of will for a better life, overcame great adversity and daunting odds. He got himself an education, an honest job, and a family, creating the life he had dreamed of. However, this changed drastically the day my father was laid off from his job at the wool-combing mill. Overnight, I witnessed him transition from a working-class father to a…

SHASHI THAROOR, 64 That setback laid the foundation for his political innings in India as a member of Parliament, apart from his rise as a public intellectual and author with a wide following on social media A three-time parliamentarian and one of India’s most recognised public voices, Shashi Tharoor has donned many hats in a career that is over four decades long. Between 1978 and 2007, he was a career diplomat at the UN, rising to the rank of under-secretary-general for communications and public information. In 2009, he decided to join politics and contested and won the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat. An accomplished author, Tharoor has penned over a dozen books, ranging from fiction to foreign affairs to philosophy. He is widely followed on social media, with nearly eight million…

ByAMITABH SRIVASTAVA ANAND KUMAR, 47 His ‘Super 30’ programme, offering free entrance coaching to 30 students every year, has produced 510 engineers since its launch in 2001 One of Anand Kumar’s childhood memories is about his father Rajendra Prasad waking him up every morning for school by touching his feet. An embarrassed Anand would ask Prasad why. His father, a junior postal department employee in Patna, would explain: “I may not be around the day you scale the heights of achievement and people hold you in high regard. So I am doing my part today itself.” Those days, Anand’s family lived in a rented house by the railway tracks in Patna—their four walls would rattle every time a train went by. His parents struggled financially and Anand often had to…

K. SIVAN,63 His decision to join MIT led him to study aerospace engineering and subsequently join ISRO where he made a mark in launch vehicle systems and rose to become chairman Few can forget the sight of Dr Kailasavadivoo Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), weeping on the shoulders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the mission control centre after India’s moon lander failed to land in the final phase of its descent on the lunar surface. As the prime minister consoled the ISRO chief, the scene, telecast live on national television, saw a wave of sympathy for Sivan and his colleagues despite the setback in their ambitious goal to make India the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft in the moon. Yet, while Sivan may…

ARVIND KEJRIWAL,52 His work as a social volunteer shaped his thinking and led him to confront the rampant corruption in the government. He quit the IRS and formed an NGO to address people’s grievances. That laid the foundation for the Aam Aadmi Party Arvind Kejriwal captured the imagination of millions of Indians across the world as he, along with social activist Anna Hazare, raised difficult questions for the government of the day. The year was 2012, and Kejriwal’s stirring speeches raised pertinent issues like the abuse of power and taxpayers’ money—questions that dominated the national conscience. The movement redefined the spectre of national politics in many ways—a Lutyens outsider, he stormed the Delhi bastion. Eight years on, his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is in its second term in power and…

“There have been numerous life-changing moments. But I have taken every setback in my stride. I have let things happen the way they were happening” GENERAL BIPIN RAWAT, 62 The Chief of Defence Staff did not let injuries suffered in Pakistani firing in 1993 impede his military career or life It was May 17, 1993. I was a 35-year-old army major deployed with my unit, the 5/11 Gorkha Rifles, in Uri (in Kashmir) and out on a patrol. We came under heavy cross-border fire from Pakistan. A bullet hit me on my ankle and a piece of shrapnel grazed my right hand. I was fortunately wearing a canvas anklet, which bore the brunt of the bullet, but it penetrated my ankle and shattered it. I was taken to the 92…

AYUSHMANN KHURRANA,36 With three Rs 100 crore hits, one National Award and acclaimed films like Badhaai Ho,AndhadhunandArticle15,the actor’s life decision has been vindicated Since school, Ayushmann Khurrana’s heart lay in creative subjects—music and theatre—and not in numbers. His parents encouraged his penchant for the performing arts on the condition that he didn’t let his grades suffer. But Khurrana also learnt that his interests made him an “aberration” in the eyes of a few. He vividly remembers the day in eighth standard when, as the co-curricular captain of St John’s High School in Chandigarh, he requested his math teacher to excuse three students from class to practise for the annual day function, only to be mocked: “Ayushmann, tum sirf naach gaa hi sakte ho, zindagi mein kuch kar nahin sakte (Ayushmann,…

VIJAY SHEKHAR SHARMA,42 The founder and CEO of Paytm says the language barrier in his English-medium college—his schooling was in Hindi—drove him to spend increasing amounts of time in the computer lab, and that he grew inspired by the digital revolution taking place in Silicon Valley. Though uncomfortable, the isolation paid off—today, the company he built is valued at $16 billion (about Rs 1.2 lakh crore) Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying...” When the legendary rock band Pink Floyd released ‘Comfortably Numb’, they probably didn’t imagine their lyrics would resonate even with 15-year-olds from small-town India. One of those 15-year-olds was Vijay Shekhar Sharma, now one of India’s youngest billionaires, who transformed the country’s relationship with cash. Sharma cites these lyrics to describe his years as…

“I once asked V. Krishnamurthy what made him choose me in his team even though I was not a technocrat like him. His reply was, ‘When I met you (Bhargava) at the ministry of energy, I found in you a bureaucrat who would try to find a solution to a problem and not a problem to a solution’” R.C. BHARGAVA, 86 As chairman of Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest carmaker, he has seen the company sell over 1.5 million vehicles and earn a net profit of Rs 5,650 crore in 2019-20 The year was 1974. Ravindra Chandra Bhargava was working as a special assistant to then Union minister K.C. Pant and got a chance to meet the legendary V. Krishnamurthy, then chairman of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL). In the meeting,…

SWAPNA BARMAN,24 And, true to that promise, the heptathlete returned stronger than ever. In 2017, she won the Asian Athletics Championships, and the year after that, a gold at the Asian Games. In 2019, she was honoured with an Arjuna Award “Staying positive is important in sports. Trust yourself, have faith in your abilities and focus on your goal. Nothing is impossible” Born into a poor family of tea garden workers in Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district, Swapna Barman was pushed into sports at a young age in the hope that this would help her in getting a job to support her family. On this journey, she faced many difficulties—for example, being born with six toes on each foot, she found standard shoes ill-fitting and couldn’t afford customised footwear—but practised for hours…

MITHALI RAJ,38 Her performance in the inter-zonal tournament in 2000 helped her earn a place in the women’s world cup in New Zealand. Two years later, she became the vice-captain of the women’s national cricket team, and its captain in 2005. Today, she’s the only cricketer to have scored 6,000 runs in women’s ODIs As a young girl, Mithali Raj loved accompanying her father to the cricket academy where her brother was learning to play. Often, while waiting for her brother to finish practice, she would pick up a bat lying around and the coach would throw a few balls to indulge her curiosity for the game. “I was just eight or nine at the time. I was pampered by my brother’s friends and trainers. They would allow me to…

PULLELA GOPICHAND,47 Now the National Coach of the India Badminton team, Gopichand’s efforts helped Saina Nehwal win bronze in the 2012 London Olympic and P.V. Sindhu silver in the 2016 Rio Games. Thanks to him, players now don’t need to train abroad but emerge from our own ecosystem ullela Gopichand was just 17 when he participated in his first international, the Malaysian Open championship, in June 1991. He was the youngest member on the Indian team. “All of us lost in the first round,” says Gopichand. “When we sat down for dinner that night, we were all praises for the Chinese, Danes, Japanese and Indonesians for their superior skill and everyone thought we could do no better. I argued that we have a chance with some determination, but the others…

NAWAZUDDIN SIDDIQUI,46 Jibes about his dark complexion and appearance by kids his age and his relatives, plus his father’s financial struggles, drove the actor to do something “special”. With several hits under his belt, he has achieved his goal Growing up, Nawazuddin Siddiqui was seen as an anomaly in Budhana, a village in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. While most preferred to watch popular Hindi films televised on Sundays, he was more interested in the “art” cinema screened on Saturdays. Films like Ek Doctor Ki Maut starring Pankaj Kapur and Shabana Azmi made a profound impression on him. “I remember watching it and deciding that whatever field I am in, I will innovate and have a sense of curiosity,” says Siddiqui. They were also leagues apart from the “C grade cinema” which…

GULZAR, 86 This momentous encounter with director Bimal Roy led the lyricist—and later filmmaker—to give up his job as a mechanic, give songwriting for films a chance, and imbue it with a sensorial richness never seen before The edifice of our life follows no blueprint, nor does it take the shape you imagine. You just have to keep exploring it. Our family had moved to Delhi just before Partition. There was a shop on Roshan Ara Road, where we had to sleep. To spend the hours, I would read books borrowed from a lending library by the pale yellow light of an oil lamp—titles like Behram Ka Chhura or books by Teerathram Firozpuri. It was two annas a day, and I would run through a lot in one night, making the…

CHETAN BHAGAT, 46 Hisfirstnovel,Five Point Someone,becamearunawayhit in 2004. Since then, the IIT Delhi and IIM-A graduate’s subsequent books have also become bestsellers, even leading toblockbusterfilmadaptationslike 3Idiotsand2States When Chetan Bhagat scored 76 per cent in his 10th board examinations, for the first time in his life, he understood the importance of social recognition. He was labelled as an ‘average student’ by friends, relatives and acquaintances. “I was very uncomfortable with this judgement and felt I was being written off,” says Bhagat. “I’d hate to call myself an intellectual. I am an earnest observer of things around me. I was one of the early birds to predict Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emergence nationally” The only way he could change that tag, he felt, was by getting admission to a prestigious college. For…

ANIL AGARWAL,66 As chairman of Vedanta Resources, his businesses now have a combined revenue of $11.8 billion and span metals to mining to oil and gas Some of Anil Agarwal’s earliest childhood memories are of his mother Ved’s struggles to manage the household expenses and education of her four children with the Rs 400 that her husband would give her each month. Dwarka Prasad Agarwal, his father, was a small-time businessman in Patna, making and selling aluminium conductors for a living. At Goria Toli, then a modest settlement in Bihar’s capital, the young Agarwal saw strife everywhere. Women were being exploited at their workplaces, with children dropping out of school to support their families by doing odd jobs. Agarwal himself, who just managed to complete his matriculation at Miller High…

SUNIL BHARTI MITTAL, 64 The Bharti Enterprises chairperson was one of the first off the blocks when the telecom revolution hit India. Decades later, after the bruising tariff wars, Bharti Airtel is among the three big telecom players left standing in India It’s hard to imagine the telecom tsar of India sitting on the floor of railway compartments taking his consignment from one location to another. It was the India of the 1970s and ’80s. We were a deprived lot—from telephone connections to rations—there were curbs and limits to everything, including your ambitions. Sunil Bharti Mittal, then just 19, started with making cranksets for local bicycle manufacturers and used to travel from city to city to deliver parts. He then graduated to importing portable electric-power gensets from Japan. “I was…

AJAY PIRAMAL,65 Piramal grew the business into a Rs 1,800 crore a year concern later before selling the domestic drug business to Abbott Labs for around Rs 18,500 crore in 2010. The funds helped him diversify into financial services and real estate Ajay Piramal’s younger days were quite challenging though he was born into an affluent business family that had its roots in Rajasthan. At the age of 14-15, during school holidays, he was making the ‘rounds’ at the Morarjee Textiles Mill in the then Bombay that was run by his father Gopikisan Piramal. This gave him a sort of informal management education at an early age. In January 1978, a year after acquiring an MBA from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute, his father bought a precision cutting tool company, Miranda…

RITESH AGARWAL, 27 The founder-CEO of OYO Rooms, evaluated at $10 billion, has created a network spanning 80 countries, 43,000 hotels and 150,000 vacation homes On a chilly winter evening in 2012, Ritesh Agarwal sat at the local market in the middle-class neighbourhood of Delhi’s Masjid Moth—pockets empty and weighing his options. The 19-year-old from Rayagada in Odisha had set foot in the national capital for his college education, but things had gone awry. “I was left with Rs 30 in my bank account and had almost made up my mind to go to a public phone booth, call up my parents and seek help,” says Agarwal. Those were eventful times for entrepreneurship in India, with graduates from premier institutes, such as the IITs and IIMs, quitting their jobs to…

KIRAN BEDI, 71 The reforms she instituted when she became the inspector general of prisons in Delhi in 1993 won her the Magsaysay Award the following year. It has been a long journey since and even though her policing career is behind her, she brings the same reformist zeal to her position as the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry From being the first woman to serve as an officer in the Indian Police Service (IPS) to becoming the lieutenant governor of Puducherry, Kiran Bedi is an institution. In the course of her career, she has ushered in prison reforms, both in India and abroad, and set a template for humanitarian policing. She has a well-earned reputation for fearlessness, applying the law in a country where the powerful are frequently able to…

M.C. MARY KOM, 37 The Padma Vibhushan this year was only the latest in a series of honours. She is the only boxer in the world, female or male, to have won eight World Championship medals, of which six are gold. Her international medals tally of 18 includes a bronze at the Olympics, a gold and a bronze at the Asian Games, a gold at the Commonwealth Games and five golds and one silver at the Asian Women’s Boxing Championships Until the turn of the century, Mangte Chungneijang Mary Komthe only boxer in the world, male or female, to have won eight World Championship medals, six of them gold—did not even know that she would become a boxer. Born in Kangathei village in Manipur’s Churachandpur district, Mary grew up helping…

NARESH TREHAN,74 Driven by the desire to set up a hospital that would ensure world-class cardiac care in the country, the US-trained surgeon returned to India in 1988. Besides setting up world-class hospital groups such as Escorts and Medanta, he has till date performed 50,000 successful open heart surgeries In 1967, while studying for MBBS at King George’s Medical College in Lucknow, Dr Naresh Trehan recalls feeling an overwhelming sense of helplessness as he watched many of his patients die of heart disease. And so, almost immediately after graduating, he applied to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia to specialise in cardiac surgery. “In those days, most Indians had no option but to go abroad for cardiac treatment. It was very disheartening to not be able to help your patients. So…

PERUMAL MURUGAN,55 When the unexpected affects our life, it can sometimes become a turning point. In our society, individual freedom is not respected as much as it should be. “I wanted to be educated and this wish led me to this point in my life,” says Tamil writer Perumal Murugan, whose many awards and achievements now include being nominated twice for the US National Book Award for translated literature. In Murugan’s town, his clan consists of 30 families. Among all of them, he was the first to finish Plus 2. In the generation before him, no one even believed they would one day be able to read and write. If someone knew how to sign, it was considered an achievement. Thanks to the programmes of the late Tamil Nadu chief…

As INDIA TODAY celebrates its 45th anniversary, a look back at its major milestones reveals the determination with which the publication has documented every major event in India’s public life, providing context, perspective and analyses to its readers across the nation and abroad. From its very first issue, published in December 1975, the magazine has gone from strength to strength, becoming one of India’s most-read publications. These excerpts from the letters from INDIA TODAY Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie to its readers give a glimpse of the hard work and passion that have gone into building the magazine into the institution it is today. First issue, December 15, 1975 The purpose of INDIA TODAY is to fill the information gap that exists among persons residing abroad interested in India. The…

Q Was venturing into conscious clothing always on the agenda? I’ve always wanted to launch a fashion label but wasn’t sure if we needed another one. I felt we were missing a world-class, Indian kids’ clothing brand. I was working on a series of stories about a little girl and her dog saving the planet from ecological harm. I thought to continue telling the stories through clothes and other products. We had planned to launch earlier in 2020 but the lockdown meant we had to restrategise. Q How much are you able to practise conscious clothing? Do you seek designers that prioritise conservation in their work ethos? It’s not easy. One of the reasons is accessibility. There aren’t too many brands that have successfully adopted an eco-efficiency strategy. But I…