India’s first (and only) governor-general, he later founded the Swatantra Party which became the pole around which those opposed to the Congress coalesced, awakening us to the importance of a strong opposition in a democracy.

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Homi J. Bhabha
Atomic Genius

He planted the seeds of India’s advanced research capabilities, especially in harnessing atomic power—to ignite both bulbs and the bomb. A genius in every area of fundamental physics, he was also a visionary builder of institutions and cultivator of future talent.

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Vikram Sarabhai
Space Dreamer

What Bhabha was to the atomic project, Sarabhai was to the space project. He established the Indian Space Research Organisation and dictated its lasting creed—that our goal in space would be development on the ground, and the dreams of every Indian would be tethered to every rocket sent into the skies.

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M.S. Swaminathan
Green Revolutionary

India was barrelling towards a Malthusian crisis when he hybridised local wheat and rice with imported high-yield varieties. With his passionate commitment to the adoption of modern agricultural techniques, he has done more than anyone else to banish the spectre of famine and hunger from our land.

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Salim Ali
Great Birder

India’s "Bird Man", he became an ornithologist before Indians learnt to spell the word. His books are seminal, definitive works on birds of our subcontinent. But his work goes deeper—he helped create environmental consciousness of a new nation, barely aware of the natural wealth that was theirs.

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Ela Bhatt
Self-help Pioneer

Guiding spirit behind the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), she opened everyone’s eyes to what collective action by the country’s poorest women could achieve. And inspired millions of other Indian women to reach for self-reliance with confidence, courage, negotiating power—and yes, access to credit.

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Medha Patkar
Voice of Narmada

An unstoppable force wrapped in a handloom sari, Patkar has emerged as an implacable challenge to the Indian state, forcing it to become accountable for the development paradigm it follows. With every agitation, every hunger strike, she has grown in stature and emerged as the conscience-troubling voice of an India that isn’t so shining.

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Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
Handloom Heroine

A path-breaker and institution builder, her contribution to preserving, reviving and promoting Indian art and culture—handlooms and handicrafts to theatre and dance—is unequalled. As impressive was her work as trade unionist, social reformer and activist. She crusaded for women’s rights (she was a child widow herself) and achieved miracles in rehabilitating refugees after Partition.

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Arundhati Roy
Writer-Activist

Booker Prize-winning novelist and activist, she arouses anger and admiration in equal measure.