Ten most influential political voices on Twitter

Ten most influential political voices on Twitter


Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra, this Harvard graduate took over the reins of the company in 1997 and since then he has expanded into information technology, hospitality, aerospace, retail. A jazz and blues fan, Anand Mahindra was awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Award in 2004 for his outstanding contribution to business and the economy and was named Business Leader of the year in 2011 at The Asian Awards. Under his leadership, Mahindra has made global and strategic acquisitions in Europe and has shown that an Indian automaker can challenge the best.


Digvijaya Singh, Congress general secretary, has a penchant for being in the news for his seemingly outrageous and caustic comments. His eagerness to walk into controversies often leaves the party and senior leaders in a soup. Be it his comments on Hemant Karkare or the Sangh Parivar, his comments always managed to generate a political outcry. When asked why he does this, he once said: "I know I have never made a wrong, false or untruthful statement in my whole life. It is hard to understand why my statements lead to so much avoidable controversies."


The longest serving Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Damodardas Modi, has been the man behind the state's incredible growth. He has single-handedly managed to change the sagging fortunes of the state and given a vibrant economic face to Gujarat. But not everything has been a bed of roses for Modi: the Godhra riots of 2002 have been a major blot on his political career and continue to be a hurdle to his aspirations of growing his clout across India. This April, in a huge relief to Modi, Supreme Court-appointed investigators gave Narendra Modi a clean chit in the Gulbarg Society massacre and recommended closure of the case. But the skeletons of the Gujarat massacre will continue to haunt the senior BJP leader for life.


New Delhi-based Jonathan Shainin is an influential journalist and currently Senior Editor at The Caravan. He has worked on the editorial staffs of the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He was also the founding editor of The Review, a weekly supplement to The National in Abu Dhabi. Jonathan's writings have been published in The Nation, Bookforum, Salon and The Paris Review. His insightful writings have made him a darling of the Twitter world.


A professional quiz master, Derek O'Brien joined politics in 2004. He is currently the vice president of All India Trinamool Congress and also a Member of Parliament. He began his career as a journalist but soon followed in his father's footstep to become India's premier quizzer. His firm, Derek O'Brien & Associates, has been hosting India's longest running corporate quiz show, 'The Brand Equity Quiz'.


An early adapter to Twitter, Shashi Tharoor was a trailblazer among Indian politicians in using it as an interactive medium to connect with people. One of Tharoor's tweets -- where he termed 'economy class' on passenger aircraft as 'cattle class' -- was a major embarrassment for his party. Young, educated, celebrated author and a progressive politician, Shashi Tharoor is popular among the elite and educated young Indians.


Leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, BJP's Sushma Swaraj is a veteran lawyer and was Delhi's first-ever woman chief minister. She began her political career as a student leader in the 1970s, organizing protests against Indira Gandhi's government. In 2004, Sushma had threatened to shave her head, don a white saree and eat groundnuts, if Sonia Gandhi became the prime minister of the nation.


A former minister and Harvard professor who is exalted by his Hindu nationalist followers as a crusading hero, Swamy has waged a decades-long war against the ruling Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi family at its heart. A celebrated economist and noted foreign policy expert, Swamy is perhaps best known as a peddler of conspiracy theories that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. A trail-blazing economist with a PhD from Harvard, Swamy saw his radical policy proposals discredited by Indira Gandhi, who reportedly described him as a 'Santa Claus with unrealistic ideas' and expelled him from the Indian Institute of Technology.


Not a stranger to controversy herself, India's most famous IPS officer, Kiran Bedi, courted notoriety this year with her vociferous support of Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal movement, even resorting to gimmickry and over-the-top antics to get her point across. India's most decorated public services officer and a Magsaysay awardee, Bedi was quick to heap criticism on the UPA government's inaction towards Anna's requests of an ombudsman bill to counter corruption. Alas, after being the most outspoken in Anna's team, she had to swallow a bitter pill when it came to light that she'd herself inflated several travel bills, a move she was quick to defend. She subsequently paid back the overcharged amount.


Vir Sanghvi is one of India's foremost print and TV journalists. Currently, he is Editorial Director of the Hindustan Times. Educated in India and the United Kingdom, Sanghvi's journalistic career began when he started contributing to India Today. He continued writing for the magazine during his vacations and in 1978, the publishers of India Today asked him to start Bombay, India's first city magazine. Sanghvi, then was just 22, and became the youngest editor in the history of Indian journalism. Sanghvi worked with Bombay till 1981 and joined as editorial director of Business Press. In 1986, he was appointed editor of Sunday, a newsmagazine brought out by the ABP Group. In 1994, he took over as consulting editor of the ABP Group. He quit ABP to become Editor of the Hindustan Times in 1999. His column, Counterpoint, appears in the Sunday Hindustan Times and is one of the most influential political columns in India.