New York: After making waves on the lists of richest and powerful business leaders of the world, four Indians now figure among the 75 most influential persons of the 21st century.
Ratan Tata, Mukesh Ambani, Lakshmi Mittal and Ronnie Screwvala have been listed in the line-up of most influential men of this century.
The four are accompanied by two more persons of Indian origin residing in the US. They are Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and geopolitical analyst Parag Khanna.
The list is compiled by fashion entertainment magazine Esquire.
These six with India link find a place alongside Bill and Hillary Clinton, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, US presidential candidate Barack Obama, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and former US Vice President Al Gore.
The list appears in the 75th Anniversary edition of the magazine, hitting the newsstands this month.
It includes media baron Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, Apple's Steve Jobs, industrial conglomerate GE's chief Jeffrey Immelt, Russian oil oligarch Roman Abramovich, Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and celebrities like Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey.
Besides these people, there are also Hollywood personalities like Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney and Will Smith.
About Mukesh Ambani, the magazine said that he has made the cut ‘because India's rise will be fuelled by its entrepreneurs’.
And Ambani -- with his US $ 43 billion fortune and his oversight of India's biggest firm -- is chief among them."
On Tata's inclusion, Esquire said that he is among the 75 most influential of 21st century ‘because it's nearly impossible to go a day in India without using a Tata product. And it might be that way in many other places, too.’
Esquire said that steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal is there ‘because he heads up the world's largest producer of steel and employs 310,000 people in 60 countries.’
Bobby Jindal has made to the list for being ‘in a party of very few stars’ and he is ‘the brightest by far’.
The report named Ronnie Screwvala, another Indian on the list, as the ‘the king of all Indian media’.
"This entrepreneur has positioned himself as the king of all Indian media. Since helping to introduce Indians to cable in 1981 and daily soap operas in 1994, he has staked out lucrative positions in the country's broadcasting, Internet and video-gaming industries’" states the magazine’s pages.
On Parag Khanna, it said, he has made it because 'he spent two years in 50 developing countries to develop a powerful assessment of global politics and illuminate the world to come.’
About the Hollywood stars, the magazine said that Scarlett Johansson has made the cut because ‘every century needs a bombshell’, while Clooney is ‘for being Hollywood's best case for itself’ and Will Smith for being its ‘last bankable movie star.’
The magazine said about the list that it ‘set out to find them across every field of endeavour, the people who are bending history right now. It was an impossible task, but the result is a determined, defiant, earnest, brilliant, philanthropic, space-going, smoking-hot group, and together they are writing the first chapter of the rest of our lives.’
The list is a fair mix of the society. It includes 13 without any degree, 11 from Harvard, one formally homeless, 16 billionaires, 2 children of accused terrorists, one participated in exorcism, while another has been in prison.
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