Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy, and Jammu and Kashmir activist Khurram Parvez are among the few prominent Indian names to feature in TIME’s list of 100 most influential people of 2022 which was released by the magazine on Monday, 23 May,
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin also feature on the list.
Justice Umar Ata Bandial, the current Chief Justice of Pakistan, also features on the list.
‘He Is the Story and the Storyteller of Insurgency and Betrayal of Kashmiris'
Writing Parvez’s profile, journalist Rana Ayyub said, “He had to be silenced, for his was a voice that resounded around the globe for his fierce fight against human-rights violations and injustices in the Kashmir region.”
Parvez, who serves as the chairperson of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances, was arrested in November last year.
Ayyub added:
"The arrest came almost a year after India revoked the special status given to Kashmir and detained hundreds who protested in the streets. It was not the first time that Parvez was forcibly silenced. The attacks against him speak volumes of the truth he represents at a time when the world’s largest democracy is being called out for its persecution of the more than 200 million Indian Muslims.”
“The soft-spoken Khurram is almost a modern-day David who gave a voice to families that lost their children to enforced disappearances, allegedly by the Indian state. Khurram is the story and the storyteller of the insurgency and the betrayal of the people of Kashmir,” she added.
'A Champion of Women’s Rights'
Writing Nundy’s profile, Menaka Guruswamy, Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court, said, “Often the legal world is seen as an insular realm of stiff shirts and dry arguments. Karuna Nundy, however, is not just a lawyer but also a public activist who ably – and bravely – uses her voice both inside and outside the courtroom to bring about change.”
“She is a champion of women’s rights who has advocated for the reform of antirape laws and fought cases relating to sexual harassment in the workplace. Most recently, she is litigating a challenge to India’s rape law that contains a legal exemption for marital rape,” Guruswamy added.
She added, “Karuna also takes great pains to explain legal issues in a way that engages the media and public. She can discuss the law simply and deftly. By doing so she creates an accessible discourse about rights in a time when those rights are at risk.”
'Adani’s Journey May Have Only Just Begun'
On billionaire Gautam Adani, Debasish Roy Chowdhury, co-author of To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism, wrote, “When Narendra Modi flew into New Delhi after being elected Prime Minister in 2014, he raised a few eyebrows landing in a private jet emblazoned with the word Adani, the eponymous business group from his home state Gujarat. Founder Gautam Adani’s career was about to take off.”
Roy Chowdhury added, “Adani’s once regional business now spans airports, private ports, solar and thermal power, and consumer goods. Adani Group is now a national behemoth in the world’s sixth largest economy, though Adani stays out of the public eye, quietly building his empire.”
“Critics attribute his meteoric rise to his proximity to Modi, whose government is apparently following a policy of creating “national champions,” like Adani, showering business enterprises with favours to help them become global leaders. Like many countries that have in the past created global conglomerates this way, India is also undergoing an unprecedented concentration of economic and political power that reinforce one another. If Modi symbolises the second, Adani is the poster boy of the first, as he competes with Warren Buffett to be the world’s fifth richest person. With Modi’s stated goal of making India a $5 trillion economy by 2025, Adani’s journey may have only just begun,” he added.
See the Full List Here:
Simu Liu
Andrew Garfield
Zoë Kravitz
Sarah Jessica Parker
Amanda Seyfried
Quinta Brunson
Pete Davidson
Channing Tatum
Nathan Chen
Mila Kunis
Jeremy Strong
Faith Ringgold
Ariana DeBose
Jazmine Sullivan
Michael R Jackson
Zendaya
Taika Waititi
Miranda Lambert
Derrick Palmer
Chris Smalls
Josh Wardle
Michelle Zauner
Demna
Timnit Gebru
Mike Cannon-Brookes
Bela Bajaria
Sevgil Musaieva
Francis Kéré
David Vélez
Michael Schatz
Karen Miga
Evan Eichler
Adam Phillippy
Tim Cook
Oprah Winfrey
Christine Lagarde
Michelle Yeoh
Gautam Adani
Kris Jenner
Andy Jassy
Sally Rooney
Hwang Dong-hyuk
Sam Bankman-Fried
Megan Rapinoe
Becky Sauerbrunn
Alex Morgan
Elizabeth Alexander
David Zaslav
Mia Mottley
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Joe Rogan
Xi Jinping
Ursula von der Leyen
Ron DeSantis
Joe Biden
Yoon Suk-yeol
Vladimir Putin
Olaf Scholz
Samia Suluhu Hassan
Kevin McCarthy
Karuna Nundy
Abiy Ahmed
Kyrsten Sinema
Gabriel Boric
Khurram Parvez
Letitia James
Valeriy Zaluzhnyy
Lynn Fitch
Umar Ata Bandial
Sun Chunlan
Mary J Blige
Dmitry Muratov
Issa Rae
Keanu Reeves
Adele
Rafael Nadal
Maya Lin
Jon Batiste
Nadine Smith
Peng Shuai
Hoda Khamosh
Candace Parker
Frances Haugen
Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson
Sônia Guajajara
Stéphane Bancel
Emily Oster
Valérie Masson-Delmotte
Panmao Zhai
Eileen Gu
Tulio de Oliveira
Sikhulile Moyo
Nan Goldin
Mazen Darwish
Anwar Al Bunni
Emmett Schelling
Cristina Villarreal Velásquez
Ana Cristina González Vélez
Gregory L Robinson
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