The heyday of the public intellectuals came after the Emergency when a shoal of intellectuals fought back to create a vision of civil society. It was at that time that journalists like Arun Shourie, political scientists like Rajni Kothari, economists like Ashok Mitra articulated a powerful vision of democracy. What gave this additional impetus were social movements that provided a critique of science, development, rights and of the tyranny of bureaucracies. This was the heyday of the public intellectual weaving dreams, knitting together socialism and democracy, tradition and modernity. The rise of liberalisation and globalisation created a generation of media lovelies who created controversy but disappeared by the next fortnight. Media did provide us public intellectuals but that faded as the media became more global.

Who are the public intellectuals in India today? Who commands a sweep of ideas without being narrow or reductionist? One can list twelve. Oddly, only one of them is a scientist and there are no members from law or media. All are above fifty. The new generation might need other names.

My happy dozen consists of the following. The psychologist Ashis Nandy for creating a playful dissenting imagination around science, creativity and culture. The novelist U.R. Ananthamurthy as translator and interpreter of cultures, Salman Rushdie for being the novelist of the Islamic Imaginary, Vandana Shiva as the creative source of a feminist science, Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze for an ethical vision of economics, V.S. Ramachandran for his innovative ideas about the brain, the writer Mahasweta Devi for her idea of the tribe and its tragedy, Aruna Roy for celebration of the joys of information, Gayatri Spivak for articulating the vision of the diasporic intellectual, Medha Patkar for singing the dirge of development and C.K. Prahalad for showing that management can have an innovative conscience.

... contd.