By IANS,
London : Bobby Jindal, Indian American governor of Louisiana, has been named by a British publication among “10 people who could change the world”. The list also includes Regina Papa, a social activist from India. “Ten people who could change the world: it sounds like a bold claim”, says the New Statesman and Society, introducing the list that it plans to make an annual feature.
“We offer a strongly political list of leaders of varying ethnicity and continent, people who will or who already are making changes in the US, Britain, South Africa and Iran, whether it be bringing the prospect of hope for genuine multiparty democracy to a new nation, vitality to a moribund political movement or the chance for better dialogue in the Middle East, or forcing governments to keep their promises on the environment.”
Calling Jindal, 37, the “saviour of the Republicans”, the New Statesman says he is “perhaps the best prospect for revitalising a Republican Party that has just started its tour of the wilderness, with little else to keep it going other than the sustenance provided by occasional caribou kills by its new folk hero, Sarah Palin”.
“Jindal says he has no plans to run for president in 2012. While it is possible he will wait until 2016 if Obama is looking too formidable, it’s the rare Louisianan who is actually taking him at his word,” the news magazine said.
“Anybody who knows Bobby Jindal knows he desperately wants to be president,” it quoted Bob Mann, a former top aide to a Democratic senator, as saying. ”
The list also names Papa, who set up India’s first department of women’s studies at Alagappa University, Tamil Nadu, in 1988. She is currently associated with the Bangladesh-based Asian University for Women (AUW), which will be launched in September.
The other eight faces to watch out:
* Chuka Umunna, 30-year-old British lawyer and prospective parliamentary candidate for Streatham
* Xian Zhang, 35-year-old Chinese music conductor
* Joshua Foer, 25-year-old writer and US ‘memory champion’
* Athene Donald, professor of experimental physics at Cambridge University
* Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, mayor of Tehran, academic and former police chief
* Laura Robson, British tennis player
* Mosiuoa Lekota, president of the Congress of the People, South Africa’s new opposition party
* James Thornton, chief executive of American charity ClientEarth that takes up legal battles to protect environment
Should this list be taken seriously?
The New Statesman reminds the reader that the last time it compiled such a list, in 2005, it had picked Barack Obama.