RIDING THE NEW WAVE

If disruption was perhaps the most overused word of the past year, there was good reason for it. A year that witnessed immense churn—social, technological and political— has been an unsettling one for the global order and, by extension, for the personalities that stride the corridors of power, whether in Silicon Valley, Washington DC or Whitehall.

Great strides have been made in the tech world this past year, especially in new fields such as Artificial Intelligence. Yet, it has been a public debate on privacy and the manipulation of technology, for instance, to disseminate fake news, that has dominated our attention. And two tech giants, with two global Indians at the helm, have been at the centre of the debate.

The political churn has seen its own contradictions. Growing anti-immigrant and anti-globalisation sentiment has seen the rise of new immigrant political voices. The daughter of Punjabi immigrants has cemented her place as one of the most influential players in a White House that has openly spoken of curtailing opportunities for Indian immigrants, while a junior Senator from California cemented her emergence as a rising star for the Democratic nomination in 2020. Increasingly, global Indians are finding themselves on both sides of the debate, defying both stereotype and convention. Their voices are having an ever greater say in resolving the big questions of our time.