Flash. Dash. Cash. It is tempting to think of those three words when the eye skims over the power list.

After all, it has some of the richest men in the world, a few stratospheric stars and cricketers who are rapidly acquiring the status of cash magnets. But look again and a pattern will emerge. A narrative of modern India, a thoroughly less glamourous one, but one that tells of a more quiet yet profound change.

This is the India where entire townships are being built to house a billion aspirations, where multi-lane highways are hurtling affordable cars to offices housed in glass and chrome, where mall atriums are replacing town squares and where airports are being refurbished to meet with the image of a world beater greeting visitors on arrival. This is an India which is building its future brick-by-brick, even as its better travelled counterparts sell its soft power to the world. This is an India that is preparing itself for an army of new consumers, new residents, new commuters and new citizens.

At every point in the list, the reader will encounter these men, some who have conjured skyscrapers out of barren lands and yet others who have tamed wild rivers for power to the people. These are men and women who could be satisfied with toasting and coasting, who could relax in the afterglow of their success. But there is a striver in all of them, a readiness to think the impossible.

And to create wealth not just for themselves but others as well. These are devotees of what Nehru once called the temples of modern India but they are driven by a motive now acknowledged as the ultimate propeller and not corrupter: profit. So reader, don’t be blinded by the bling. Instead hunt for the heart. It’s in the right place. And it beats for new India.