Bobby Jindal among '10 people who could change the world'

Indian-American governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal has been named as one of the '10 people who could change the world', according to British magazine New Statesman and Society.

The list also includes social activist Regina Papa, who set up India's first department of women's studies at Alagappa University in Tamil Nadu in 1988.

Hailing Jindal as the 'Saviour of the Republicans', the magazine describes him as, "Perhaps the best prospect for revitalising a Republican Party that has just started its tour of the wilderness, with little else to keep it going other than the sustenance provided by occasional caribou kills by its new folk hero, Sarah Palin".

"Anybody who knows Bobby Jindal knows he desperately wants to be president," a source tells The New Statesman.
The magazine observes, "Jindal says he has no plans to run for president in 2012. While it is possible he will wait until 2016 if Obama is looking too formidable, it's the rare Louisianan who is actually taking him at his word."

Explaining its choice of the ten personalities, the magazine says, "We offer a strongly political list of leaders of varying ethnicity and continent, people who will or who already are making changes in the United States, Britain, South Africa and Iran, whether it be bringing the prospect of hope for genuine multiparty democracy to a new nation or the chance for better dialogue in the Middle East, or forcing governments to keep their promises on the environment."

The magazine's list of ten people who could change the world in 2005 had American President Barack Obama and tennis star Sania Mirza in it.

Other luminaries who make it to the list are British lawyer and prospective parliamentary candidate for Streatham Chuka Umunna, Chinese music conductor Xian Zhang, writer and US 'memory champion' Joshua Foer, professor of experimental physics at Cambridge University Athene Donald, Tehran mayor, academic and former police chief Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, British tennis player Laura Robson, president of South Africa's new opposition party Mosiuoa Lekota and chief executive of American charity ClientEarth James Thornton.