The Faces Of India's Future

The story line for Bill Clinton's visit to India this week, the first by an American President in 22 years, is a travelogue in the "new," high-tech India. But India's realities are far messier. The nation's ongoing cold--and at moments hot--war with Pakistan became more dangerous still when both nations tested nuclear weapons in 1998. And nowhere are the contradictions of globalization more manifest. India's economy is growing at 6%, and software exports are increasing 50% a year; last month an Indian technology magnate--Wipro's Azim Premji--became one of the world's five richest men. And yet more than 300 million Indians live in poverty.

At its current growth rate, India will surpass China as the most populous country by 2015. Because India is a democracy, its destiny--whether it becomes a confident, peaceful global power or remains shackled by nationalist insecurity--depends less on the policies of its government than on the vision of its people. The following are four confident citizens shaping the face of India today and providing a glimpse into its tomorrow.

NANDITA DAS

Dreamy young movie stars usually don't worry about much--other than perhaps how to conceal their age. But Nandita Das doesn't like life to be quite so ordinary. Cross-legged and barefoot in her modest New Delhi apartment, she's steaming about the opposition of Hindu fanatics to a movie she's set to appear in, fretting about the state of artistic freedom in India and getting set to join relief efforts for victims of last October's deadly cyclone. She's also in mid-production on three movies. "I don't think I want to do acting all the time. I don't think it's so important to specialize and be like the No. 1 in something," she says. "Maybe I'll regret that when I'm 50, I didn't make anything of my life." She doesn't say when she'll turn 50.

Her hair cropped for a current role, the petite, doe-eyed Das could pass for a teenager. It is easy to forget she's a bona fide, head-turning celebrity, in part because there aren't too many actresses like her in Hollywood, or even in its Bombay counterpart, Bollywood. She has a master's degree in social work, for one thing, and she regularly takes on politically charged pictures like her latest, Water, which is about the lives of widows in pre-independence India.

The film has placed Das amid a national tempest. In late January, one day before shooting was to begin in the holy city of Varanasi, a group of Hindus stormed the set and burned part of it down. City officials ordered a production halt. Shooting won't resume until fall. Frustrated by the disruption to her work, Das is even more worried about how the uproar has distorted the image of her country. "What is interesting and fascinating about this country is that everything coexists," she says. "You have the extreme fanatics, but there are also very progressive and very open people. What is sad is that the extremists are really much smaller in number. They're just more organized."