Kerala’s Health Minister K. K Shailaja figures among the World’s Top 50 thinkers for the COVID-19 age long list of a magazine in the United Kingdom. Prospect has established itself as a must-read title with key figures in government, journalism, policy making and business. People turn to Prospect for the ideas and trends behind the headlines and for a contrarian view of topics.
The magazine claims that its depth sets it apart. Each issue brings together the sharpest minds on the events and ideas that define the modern world.
Citing the work of Ms. Shailaja, the magazine says in its long list, “The Keralan health minister, now known as “coronavirus slayer,” is credited with flattening the COVID-19 curve in April and securing a low fatality rate in the southern Indian state. Shailaja, a former high school teacher, quickly devised a programme of testing and tracing in January, which saw 170,000 people quarantined at the height of the virus. This wasn’t Shailaja’s first time warding off a potentially deadly disease. In 2018, her masterful handling of the Nipah disease saw her mythologised in a local film entitled Virus. The minister had her own reservations about the film, though. Her fictional counterpart, she said, “looked desperate and worried all the time… I couldn’t afford to show any fear.”
Writing in the magazine, editor Tom Clark says, “There is nothing like an emergency to make you realise the value of practical ideas. When the chips are down, and death rates are up, the world wants answers—especially from its sharpest thinkers.”
“As Prospect revisits the task of identifying the leading minds of the moment, in the intellectual hit parade which we have produced in varying formats since 2004, that test of immediate and real-world relevance looms large. As we compiled our longlist—drawing on the advice of distinguished experts in various fields who have written for us over the years—and then whittled it down towards 50, we were struck by how different the list looked from 2019’s. It was at the point where we had around 35 confirmed names that we noticed not one of them was a holdover.
“A measure of churn was expected—we put a premium on new books and recent interventions, after all—but not a wholesale changing of the guard. Having previously been sceptical of those claims that Covid-19 would “change everything”— why would it? — I suddenly felt there was something in them. We decided to make a virtue of the disruption, and produce an entirely new list for a shaken world that is beginning to reset,” writes Clark.
The immediate relevance of some of the thinkers to the COVID-19 era speaks for itself: vaccinologist Sarah Gilbert and science writer Ed Yong being prime examples. Stephanie Kelton, Thomas Piketty, Philippe Van Parijs, Ari Ezra Waldman, Jacinda Ardern, Sally Rooney Eric Yuan, Jenny Odell, Thaddeus Metz, Angela Saini, Cornell West, Olivette Otele and William Dalrymple are all top thinkers with things to say about the many warped consequences that can result from one culture subjugating another
The editor says that the diversity of the list is rich. It contains a preponderance of women for the first time ever, and pleasingly mixes brilliant young minds with a couple of nonagenarians. It also includes a good mix of liberal, socialist and conservative voices.
For those of you who would like to read the list and vote here is the link
Prospect’s longlist of World’s Top 50 thinkers
