In an article adapted from his new book, “India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking,” online columnist Anand Giridharadas writes about an energetic young man named Ravindra Misal. “Misal embodies the type of person who will truly transform India: not an engineer or a financier, but an average person who refuses to be satisfied with the status he was born to. He rejected tradition to become a self-made man. With his ‘personality contests’ and idiomatic-English lessons, he’s trying to help others do the same. …I began to see self-invention as a theme of India’s unfolding drama.
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The People Transforming India
Misal embodies the type of person who will truly transform India: not an engineer or a financier, but an average person who refuses to be satisfied with the status he was born to.
Monthly Issue
April 2026
In this monthly issue, we examine how our understanding of energy — and how we source and use it — is evolving.
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