iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
TIME magazine has announced several Indian-origin personalities as a part of its annual list of 100 “emerging leaders who are shaping the future”.
On Wednesday, February 17, the magazine released, the 2021 TIME100 Next, an expansion of its flagship TIME100, a franchise of the most influential people in the world and highlights 100 emerging leaders who are shaping the future, reported PTI.
“Everyone on this list is poised to make history. And in fact, many already have,” Dan Macsai, the editorial director of the TIME100, said.
Some of the personalities who have featured on the magazine’s list include Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar Aazad, a top Indian American lawyer of Twitter Vijaya Gadde, UK’s finance minister Rishi Sunak, Instacart founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta, doctor and Executive Director of nonprofit Get Us PPE Shikha Gupta, and founder of nonprofit Upsolve Rohan Pavuluri.
Aazad is featured for his contribution towards the Dalits of the country and bringing many other reforms to lower caste of whom the country has primarily ignored. He has helped in building schools for Dalits to escape poverty and also “practices a distinct brand of assertiveness, sweeping into villages on loud motorbikes to protect victims of caste-based violence and organizing provocative demonstrations against discrimination,” the TIME profile on him says.
In case of Rishi Sunak, the TIME feature says that a little over a year ago, the 40-year-old was an “unknown junior minister in the British government” but after he was named to lead Britain’s Treasury last year, he “quickly became the benevolent face of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, approving large handouts for many citizens whose jobs were disrupted by the virus.”
“Sunak remains the country’s most popular politician, according to the pollster YouGov. And he’s the oddsmakers’ favorite to be Britain’s next Prime Minister,” it added.
On Mehta, 34, the TIME profile said that in the initial days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Instacart “faced a tidal wave of orders, as people with means opted en masse to pay the service’s workers to buy groceries for them.” Mehta describes that period as a “wartime moment,” it said.
However, later Instacart also “faced new criticism about the way it treated its workers, including labyrinthine sick-pay policies, frequent rule changes for shoppers and demanding performance metrics.” Instacart continues its focus on expansion. “The smartphone is the supermarket of the future. We are going to help co-create that,” Mehta said in the TIME article.
The TIME profile described Gadde, 46, as “one of Twitter’s most powerful executives” who was the one to convey the news to CEO Jack Dorsey that President Donald Trump’s Twitter account had been suspended following the Capitol attack of January 6.
Dorsey “has delegated to her Twitter’s content-moderation decisions; she was the architect of the 2019 decision to ban all political advertising, and is responsible for the warning labels that Twitter applied to COVID-19 and election-interference misinformation in 2020.
On Gupta, the TIME said her team stepped up to meet the growing demand for personal protective equipment for healthcare professionals at a time when there was a “leadership vacuum” from the White House.
“In a crisis, small acts can make a big impact. And in extraordinary times, ordinary people, driven by service, can do extraordinary things. The early days of the Covid-19 pandemic were some of the darkest in America’s history. A leadership vacuum from the White House contributed to health care professionals across the country lacking the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe and save lives,” it said.
Rohan Pavuluri is the 25-year founder of the free online tool that helps users fill out bankruptcy forms on their own.
TIME said that as the COVID-19 pandemic brought varied economic hardships to Americans, filing for personal bankruptcy was seen as an effective way to eliminate debt but entailed high legal costs and complex paperwork.
Upsolve, which Pavuluri founded in 2018, has till date helped American users relieve more than USD 300 million in debt, the TIME profile of him said.
“We’ve found a way to use technology to address a civil rights injustice at scale,” Pavuluri said in the TIME profile.
