India’s PolioPlus Committee chair is honored as a leading thinker.
Though India was declared polio-free in March 2014, Deepak Kapur isn’t one for taking a victory lap. The chair of Rotary’s India PolioPlus Committee remains vigilant, knowing that the scourge can return at any time. His modesty, however, doesn’t mean that he won’t revel in the occasional good news, such as being named a Leading Global Thinker of 2014 by Foreign Policy magazine, a glossy bimonthly for political wonks. The journal conferred the recognition on roughly 100 people who, in its words, “smashed the world as we know it – for better and for worse,” in an annual compendium of sinners and (mostly) saints. “I immediately realized that it wasn’t me they were honoring,” says Kapur, 59, a third-generation Rotarian and a member of the Rotary Club of Delhi South. “It was Rotary and its work in polio eradication.” In India, a confluence of factors made the virus hard to defeat: overcrowding, impure drinking water and poor sanitation, and malnutrition, Kapur says. The accolade from Foreign Policy was not the big news of the year, he says – it was the notification of a polio-free India months earlier, an achievement made possible by the work of about 130,000 Indian Rotary members, their family and friends – and a large cast of Rotarians from around the world. “They left their homes and gave so much of themselves and their emotions,” Kapur says. “Without them, perhaps we wouldn’t have gotten there as fast as we did.” The celebrity, he adds, is all theirs. – Brad Webber