Who is India’s smartest person?

3 blog postings, all 3 saying Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is not the best, now its time to talk about people I think are smart, intelligent and among the most enterprising.

I have been publishing like crazy, people who read this (is there anyone?) might start thinking I am jobless. If you thought so, you are totally wrong. I write more when I have more work, because I take more breaks in between working, and when I take a break, I blog. You get it?

Anyway, getting back to our question, who is India’s smartest person?

The Nominees are (in no particular order)
1) Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar
2) Dhirubhai H. Ambani
3) Jamshedji Tata
4) Mahatma Gandhi
5) Azim Premji

According to me, being smart is all about being rich and famous, and maybe a few other minor things. 4 of the 5 people above are definitely rich, and famous, and they have made a difference to the lives of hazaar people. Mahatma Gandhi is the "FOT" nation, so he's in.

But who has made the biggest difference. I think its Jamshedji Tata. 91 operating companies across some 10 sectors, employing about 220K people, and supporting another 200K, a shareholder base of 2 million people and contributing to about 3 % of the country’s GDP. And all this, has played a key role in building a nation-India.

Sachin falls out of contention because he hasn’t contributed to the wealth of the country. Mahatma Gandhi is a tough call. But you can never tell for sure what would have happened if he wasn’t there during independence. There’s too much unproven information about the Mahatma, and It’ll be an interesting thing to find out, what would have happened if there was no Mahatma Gandhi during independence. Azim Premji is India’s richest right now, he’s famous, he employs close to 300K people, maybe more, but he didn’t build his wealth from scratch. Ambani and Jamshedji did. It’s not Premji’s mistake though.

Dhirubhai Ambani is my No.2, typical rags to riches story, and he can boast of the same contribution to India’s wealth and GDP, but Jamshedji won because he has contributed more to the fundamental growth of a nation.