Greta Thunberg
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist who has gained international recognition for promoting the view that humanity is facing an existential crisis arising from climate change. Thunberg is known for her youth and her straightforward speaking manner, both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she criticises world leaders for their failure to take sufficient action to address the climate crisis. She has since broadened her focus to include human rights and global justice, voicing support for Ukraine, Palestine, Armenia, and Western Sahara. In 2025, Thunberg twice joined a humanitarian flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip.
Greta Thunberg's trajectory reflects a clear shift from a single-issue climate activist into a prominent global voice on systemic justice, human rights, and geopolitical crises. In her early activism from 2018 to 2019, she focused primarily on the climate emergency and government inaction, founding the Fridays for Future movement through localized school strikes, adopting zero-carbon travel, and addressing international summits—efforts that earned her TIME's youngest Person of the Year honor and sparked global youth protests.
As her international recognition grew between 2020 and 2023, Thunberg expanded her tactics to direct civil disobedience against corporate and industrial projects, such as blocking coal mines and wind farm developments, while earning multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominations for driving "the Greta effect" on policy discourse.
In her recent work, she has embraced an intersectional framework that views climate destruction, anti-imperialism, and human rights abuses as interconnected issues. Moving beyond speeches to direct action, she has participated in high-seas humanitarian aid flotillas to the Gaza Strip, joined pro-Palestine and anti-war blockades, and engaged in civil disobedience across Europe to directly confront state policies and systemic inequality.
Kanhaiya Kumar
Kanhaiya Kumar is an Indian politician and former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) who currently serves as the AICC in-charge of the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), a role he was appointed to in July 2023 to lead youth and student outreach campaigns across the country. Born in January 1987 in Bihat village in Bihar's Begusarai district, he belongs to the Bhumihar community and grew up in a traditional stronghold of the Communist Party of India (CPI). He completed his Class XI–XII in science at Ram Ratan Singh College in Mokama, earned his bachelor's degree in Geography with first-class honors from the College of Commerce, Arts and Science in Patna in 2007, and later secured a first-class MA in Sociology from Nalanda Open University. Moving to Delhi after ranking first in the entrance examination, he joined Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and earned his PhD in African Studies in February 2019 for his thesis titled "The Process of Decolonisation and Social Transformation in South Africa, 1994–2015."
His entry into mainstream political prominence occurred in February 2016 when, as JNUSU President, he was arrested by the Delhi Police on sedition charges following a campus event commemorating the hanging of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Kumar denied uttering anti-national slogans, and his arrest triggered widespread national protests, with court proceedings eventually clearing him of the core charges as evidence failed to establish his presence during the alleged slogan-raising.
Transitioning into electoral politics, Kumar first contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from his home constituency of Begusarai on a CPI ticket, finishing second with 22.03% of the vote behind BJP's Giriraj Singh. On September 28, 2021, he formally joined the Indian National Congress. Most recently, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he contested as the Congress candidate under the INDIA alliance banner from the North East Delhi constituency, securing over 44% of the vote share in a loss to the incumbent BJP candidate, Manoj Tiwari.