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Sketches by aritst Shiloh Shiv Suleman.
  • November 17, 2013

Getting to Know Some of India’s Future Leaders

by Dan Stone
N 13° 0' 10", E 77° 35' 49"

Before I arrived in Bangalore, people told me: Bangalore is different. It’s techy, it’s new, and it has a spirit of entrepreneurialism. Bangalore is full of people too impatient for their economy to fully develop. They’d rather work on start-ups and business ideas now and be the drivers of the new India.

I had planned to visit the city to spend some time with Raghava KK, an emerging explorer for National Geographic, and an all-around innovative thinker. But while in town, I also got to see that creative spirit in action.

Alok Shetty is an example. His idea was to repurpose old shipping containers into stadiums. The giant boxes can only be used so many times to transport goods across oceans. When they pass their usable life, he makes them into stadiums to seat as many as 250 people. These structures give smaller communities places to gather. They can be built within a day, and shipped the next day on a truck.

Alok’s idea provides a public service, too. Each mini-stadium costs about $20,000 and his group is working on building several prototypes. In the meantime, he says, they’ve already received interest from the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets basketball teams. They’re attracted to the idea of using the small stadiums in areas around New York for fans to gather and watch telecasts of games played in nearby big arenas.

Deepak Ravindran is another thinker with a global idea for developing countries. People in rural areas in countries like India don’t have access to search engines, let alone the Internet. But many of those people do have cell phones.

Deepak figured he’d build a search engine to work via text. Text a question and you receive a one-sentence response. More than 130 million now use it. The most popular queries, Deepak says, align with ABCD: astrology, Bollywood, cricket, and devotional (religious queries). And S. “Sex,” he said, “a lot of questions about sex.”

To see real fearlessness in India, you’d have to spend some time with Shilo Shiv Suleman. Shilo’s an artist, but she’s more than just a person who sketches and paints. She’s one of the leaders of Bangalore’s women’s rights movement. India isn’t always an easy place to be fearless about rights, especially in a culture largely rooted in defined gender roles.

Suleman teaShilo had me over for tea and showed me her work. She travels around India to speak out against episodes of sexual assault while encouraging young women to feel empowered. Shilo’s a great artist. But with her poise under pressure, she also seems like a person who might one day be her country’s prime minister.

All three of these thinkers I met dreamed out loud of what India could soon become. Many of their friends made comparisons to Silicon Valley, seeming to want to recreate the drive of California’s innovation epicenter. But if their ideas and energy are any indication, they won’t be lapping for the attention of America. They’ll be competing with it.

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There are 7 Comments. Add Yours.

  1. Bethany Bella (@BethAnnie via Twitter)
    November 17, 2013

    I adore the artwork by Shiloh Shiv Suleman – she seems like a real inspiration to the women of India. I hope she makes it on to the global stage within the next few years! (Still love the updates from the field- you and Spencer are providing great insight on different countries around the world. Always a pleasure to read and to learn.)

  2. Diane Wayne
    November 17, 2013

    The portable stadium made of used/discarded shipping containers is genius. The video depicting how it would work was fascinating. Some amazingly creative people among us. Thanks for bringing these stories to us.

  3. Rajiv Mathew
    November 18, 2013

    Shilo’s work rocks!

  4. Ramachandra
    November 19, 2013

    We are thrilled to read about Alok’s work on portable stadiums . You have a great future.- Shanta,Ramachandra – parents of Meera, USA

  5. Amrutha Bushan
    November 19, 2013

    It is very encouraging to know that artists are looked upon as leaders..

  6. Ashly A K
    January 8, 2014

    I saw her fabulous work on the walls of a college in Bangalore. With the help of Google, I discovered more works of this great artist

Continuing the Discussion

  1. Getting to Know Some of India’s Future Leaders | Technopark TBI

    […] Getting to Know Some of India’s Future Leaders. […]

    November 20, 201314:02 am

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Dan Stone and Spencer Millsap are multimedia journalists for National Geographic magazine. They’re on the move, looking for new ideas and good stories. Tweet them at @DanEnRoute and @Spono.

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