CHENNAI: The
BBC
's 100 Women season unveiled its chosen list of inspirational women for 2016 on Tuesday. From amongst 100 globally chosen women the list includes Bollywood actress
Sunny Leone along with four Indian names – Gouri Chindarkar(Sangli),
Mallika Srinivasan
(Chennai),
Neha Singh (Mumbai) and Saalumarada Thimmakka (Karnataka).
Mallika Srinivasan, 57, CEO of Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd (TAFE), is also known as the ‘Tractor Queen of India’ and has grown her family company into the third largest tractor manufacturer in the world.
Sunny Leone (Karenjit Kaur Vohra), 35, is a Canadian and also a leading Indian film actress and model.
Gouri Chindarkar, a 20-year-old computer engineering student from Sangli in Maharashtra, was one of the first children in India to experience a unique learning experience now known as 'School in the Cloud.'
Neha Singh, a 34-year-old actor and writer, founded a movement to encourage women to walk the streets in Mumbai to defy harassment.
Saalumarada Thimmakka is a 105-year-old environmentalist from Karnataka who has planted more than 8,000 trees in 80 years, a project which first started in response to social ridicule at not being able to have children. She is the oldest woman on the BBC 100 women list.
Some of this year’s high profile women include singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, US gold medal winning gymnast Simone Biles, French politician Rachida Dati and Chairman of Santander UK Dame Shriti Vadera.