Ajay Mathur - Agenda Setters 2008

Name: Ajay Mathur

Title: Indian energy czar

Position: 39    Last year: Not ranked

Why? Taking on India's looming energy crisis

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• Mark Shuttleworth
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• Aaron Seigo

While India's economy has grown at breakneck speed over the past decade, energy output has not kept pace - so leaving the country with an impending energy crisis. And a crisis for India is a crisis for the whole high-tech industry.

As the first full-time director general of India's Bureau for Energy Efficiency, Dr Ajay Mathur is the man tasked with dealing with this predicament - and promoting the development of renewable and alternative energy.

The Agenda Setters panel singles out Mathur because he will wield the power to designate who is entitled to be a commercial consumer of energy and conduct energy efficiency audits - so affecting all who do business in the country.

Not just another civil servant, the panel said it is Mathur who is "pushing an energy programme through the Indian government, allocating energy auditors to large energy users and spearheading a scheme for energy rating data centres and IT equipment".