High and Mighty: The ultimate power list 2024
High and Mighty. The phrase evokes a narrow band of ‘the elect’ up in the sky, like the deities drawn in calendar art. A ‘power elite’ at a remote distance from the rest. As we give you INDIA TODAY’s High & Mighty list of 2024, allow us to add a critical caveat to that. In the old niggardly sense, power was seen to be vested in extraordinary individuals. The Great Man Theory, they called it. The idea that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men”. Who could argue with that? Well, for starters, how about women? In more refined definitions, power belongs to ideas—in their ability to influence, persuade, transform. And ideas are not born in a vacuum.Such an expanded sense guides our hand this year; H&M 2024 reflects a change in how we view power. Firstly, it’s an ex...