There are 12 media professionals—proprietors, promoters, publishers, editors—in the Indian Express list of the 100 most powerful Indians in 2010, but an irregular columnist is listed to be more powerful than all of them.
The quirky list, which makes no mention of the methodology or the jury, has two newcomers from the 2009 list—columnist Arun Shourie and TV anchor Barkha Dutt—and shows the door to three others.
Like last year, the IE list chronicles the kinks of the boldfaced names. And like year, Express has diligently kept editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta‘s name out of the reckoning.
***
# No. 38: Arun Shourie, journalist turned politician: “He asks all visitors to his library to take off their shoes before they enter.” (new entry)
# No. 53: Sameer Jain and Vineet Jain, chairman and managing director, Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd: “Sameer’s daughter and son-in-law are being groomed to take leadership positions.”
# No. 70: N.Ram, editor-in-chief, The Hindu: “He is very fond of western classical music.”
# No. 72: Kalanidhi Maran and Dayanidhi Maran, Sun network: “Daya never misses his evening walk; Kalanidhi owns a Lamborghini.”
# No. 73: Raghav Bahl, founder Network 18: “The TV veteran is terribly camera-shy.”
# No. 76: Shobhana Bhartia, Hindustan Times: “Owns one of the finest sari collections among women entrepreneurs.”
# No. 77: M.M. Gupta and Sanjay Gupta, Dainik Jagran: “Sanjay is a fitness freak, uncle sets agenda at work.”
# No. 79: Aveek Sarkar, editor-in-chief, Ananda Bazaar Patrika Group: “He is in the business of news but doesn’t like to speak to the media.”
# No. 82: Barkha Dutt, group editor, NDTV: “A blogger who slammed her 26/11 coverage had to say sorry.” (new entry)
***
# Out from the 2009 list: Prannoy Roy, founder, NDTV (No. 61) ; Prabhu Chawla, editor, India Today (No. 71); Ramesh Chandra Agarwal, chairman, Daink Bhaskar (No. 88)
Also read: 26% of India’s most powerful are media barons
IJR 
I don’t know why people misuse the term powerful so much in India ; when we compare and weigh everything with west, we intentionally neglect when flattering some self-defined closets while we are consciously aware of the space where it can ring is extremely limited!!
Shekhar Ji,
Looks like one person on your list just validated his rating. However the need is, to put the whole thing in perspective, else this looks like a start of a ‘match’ to which sane media men like thou would not like to keep score. Hopefully you are in the thick of action already. But we need u on the blogo sphere and twitter, shaping a ‘sane’ opinion.
Regards,
Vibhas K. Dhingra