threat facing humanity from climate change.
The arts have long been considered the ex-
clusive preserve of white people, as have the
media, especially Fleet Street and the world of
national newspapers, where popular percep-
tions are shaped and prejudices confirmed.
Thus, Krishnendu Majumdar’s arrival as the
first non-white chairman of Bafta has been like
a breath of fresh air. He has initiated changes
both in front and behind the camera.
The Power List is being released on March 8,
2022 – international women’s day. A third of
the Power List is made up of women. For exam-
ple, Leena Nair (18) is the CEO of the French
luxury brand, Chanel.
Chila Burman (81) and Rana Begum (87) are
big name artists. Captain Preet Chandi (17) of
the British Army – better known as “Polar
Preet” – is proving to be a remarkable role
model after trekking 700 miles solo to the south
Pole. And the comedienne Sindhu Vee (71), a
familiar figure on television, has explained why
her surname – Venkatanarayanan – is not al-
ways easy to give out over the telephone when
making credit card purchases. Enabling Asians
to laugh at themselves is a cathartic exercise.
A common question to us is, “How do you
compile your Power List?”, followed by, “How
do you rank people?”
Most years we begin with several hundred
names and then whittle them down to a final
Power List of 101. Our selection panel has had
more meetings than I can remember as it be-
came progressively harder to remove people
from the shortlist.
Most years we try and offer a snapshot of
what Asian movers and shakers have been up
to in the previous 12 months. We also endeav-
our to give the list a fresh look with a 25-30 per
cent change from one year to the next.
But Covid put paid to the normal way in
which the Power List is compiled.
We would soon discover the pandemic was
taking a heavy toll among British Asians. It was
not known immediately that living in multi-
generational households or having underlying
conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease,
made Asians more vulnerable to Covid-19.
Lack of proper Personal Protection Equipment
(PPE) put frontline NHS staff, especially Asian
doctors and nurses, at even greater risk.
In the early days of the pandemic, there was
tragedy after tragedy. Dr Abdul Mabud Chowd-
hury, a Bangladeshi-origin consultant urologist
at Homerton University Hospital, east London,
died, aged 53, on April 8, 2020.
It emerged he had written to “Dear and Re-
spectable Prime Minister Boris Johnson”
pleading for better PPE: “Please ensure urgent-
ly Personal Protective Equipment for each and
every NHS health worker in the UK. Remember
we may be doctor/nurse/HCA/allied health
workers who are in direct contact with patients
but we are also human beings.”
Dr Manjeet Singh Riyat, an emergency care
consultant at the Royal Derby Hospital, died,
aged 52, on 20 April 2020. His colleagues said
that “Manjeet was considered the father of the
current emergency department in Derby.”
There were many other losses. On 12 May,
2020, Dr Poornima Nair, a GP at the Station
View medical centre in Bishop Auckland,
County Durham, became the first female doc-
tor to die from Covid-19.
Her son, Varun Nair Balupuri, 28, a data sci-
entist, said: “My mother was kind, caring and
loving to her family, friends and patients, as ev-
idenced by the hundreds of tributes and me-
morials to her. In her 56 years of life, she ac-
complished more than most can even imagine
while always having time and love for those
around her. Her passion for
life and the integrity in which
she faced challenges will
serve as an inspiration to me
and many others.”
That old saying – “Cometh
the hour, cometh the man” –
has certainly been true in the
case of Dr Chaand Nagpaul
(5), who has been chairman of the British Med-
ical Association, during this critical phase.
He is the first non-white BMA chairman in
the history of the organisation, which was set
up in 1832.
He told the BMJ which kept a roll call of doc-
tors lost during the pandemic: “The vast major-
ity who have sadly died are from a BAME back-
ground, with many coming from overseas to
contribute their valuable skills and expertise to
the NHS to save the lives of others, only to trag-
ically lose their own.”
When GG2 interviewed Nagpaul for the
Power List, he revealed he very nearly did not
make it as a GP. Despite qualifying with a bril-
liant academic record from the elite St Bar-
tholomew’s Hospital Medical College,
he received “nine rejections in a
row” when he applied for a place
on the GP training scheme.
Someone explained the
sticking point to him: “It’s
your name.”
Nagpaul hadn’t en-
countered such racism
before: “It didn’t strike me that my name would
be a barrier.”
He pressed the government to procure safer
and adequate PPE for doctors. He also sought a
level playing field for Asian and black doctors
by starting to tackle the racism in the NHS laid
bare by the pandemic.
“Sadly, in the NHS, there is plenty of evi-
dence that the experience of BAME doctors is
not equal,” said Nagpaul, who persuaded the
government to introduce more “culturally sen-
sitive” Covid messaging.
The pandemic has thrown up new figures,
such as Dr Nikita Kanani (23), medical director
of NHS England, who has sometimes been by
the prime minister’s side during his live brief-
ings from Downing Street.
The Britain of 2022 may not be recognised
by those who came to these shores more than
50 years ago from India, Paki-
stan and East Africa. The days
of “No dogs or coloureds” in
rented accommodation have
long since gone. The changes
in British society plus the bat-
tles fought by black people
from the Caribbean and from
Africa on behalf of the ethnic
minorities have ushered in radical changes. To
the credit of the indigenous British folk, it also
has to be recognised that the seeds of Asian
success have been planted in fertile soil.
That said, many racist attitudes remain en-
trenched, often at the higher levels of society.
There is, for example, a refusal to recognise
that the British Empire was not always a force
for good, as argued in Sathnam Sanghera’s (64)
Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped
Modern Britain.
Many on the Power List have risen despite
the obstacles they have encountered. As East-
ern Eye reports have revealed, there clearly is
an entrenched problem in the legal world,
where senior white judges find it all too easy to
bully junior Asian colleagues, especially if
they are women. We also saw how See-
ma Misra and other subpostmasters
and subposmistresses, many of
them Asian, were wrongly accused
of theft by the Post Office and
even sent to prison by a vengeful
white coterie consisting of the
CEO Paula Vennells and her sen-
ior executives.
However, Asians who ran cor-
nershops and convenience
stores – rightly deemed an “es-
sential service” – did a heroic job
during the long, dark months of
lockdown. The way that the
Asian community came to-
gether to see the coun-
try through the pan-
demic represent-
ed the best of
Britain.
GG2 Power List
GG2 Power List | 2022
Her passion for
life and integrity
will inspire many
Dr Chaand Nagpaul with wife;
(right, from left) Shlokarth
Balupuri, Dr Poornima Nair,
and Varun Nair Balupuri
Harpreet
Chandi; (inset
right) Rana
Begum
© Royal Academy