The week of AI, ‘cockroaches’ and courage
Hello and welcome to TOI Bharat Abroad.
This week’s edition takes us from Westminster to Arizona and Sydney. In Britain, a Bihar-born MP has been handed one of the country’s most consequential tech portfolios. In Arizona, a doctor with Gujarati roots has won a primary that could help decide control of the US House of Representatives. And in Sydney, a Hyderabad cab driver who saved nearly 20 lives during the Bondi beach attack has won permanent residency.
Let’s go.
THE BIG STORY
From Muzaffarpur to the heart of Britain’s AI revolution
Britain’s new prime minister has handed one of the country’s most important jobs to a 36-year-old whose journey began thousands of miles away in Bihar.
When Andy Burnham unveiled his first cabinet this week, Kanishka Narayan not only kept his role overseeing artificial intelligence but saw it elevated to cabinet level for the first time. Narayan announced on X that Burnham had asked him to attend cabinet as minister for AI, calling it “a sign of his deep commitment to AI’s importance.”
All about Narayan
Narayan was born in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, and moved to Cardiff with his family at the age of 12. He attended Cathays High School before earning a scholarship to Eton. He read PPE at Balliol College, Oxford, and later completed an MBA at Stanford. He entered Parliament only in 2024, winning the Vale of Glamorgan seat from the Conservatives and becoming the first ethnic minority MP to represent a Welsh constituency.
Before politics, he worked as a civil servant in the Cabinet Office under David Cameron before moving into the private sector advising businesses on financial matters. He also co-founded Attain Wales, a non-profit focused on social mobility and education, and launched a campaign during the pandemic to support struggling high streets.
Why it matters
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the defining policy battlegrounds of the decade. Governments are competing to attract investment, build computing infrastructure and regulate technologies that could reshape everything from healthcare to defence. The minister overseeing that agenda will play a key role in determining Britain’s place in the global AI race.
NRI WATCH
When the NRIs rallied for cockroaches
What began as a student-led protest in India over alleged irregularities in the NEET examination soon found supporters thousands of miles away. Members of the Indian diaspora and students gathered in New York City’s Union Square, near the Mahatma Gandhi statue, carrying placards in support of the Cockroach Janata Party’s agitation and demanding a fair and transparent examination system.
At New York City’s Union Square, demonstrators gathered near the Mahatma Gandhi statue with placards backing students protesting alleged irregularities in the NEET examination. Across the Atlantic, similar scenes unfolded outside the Indian High Commission in London, while rallies were also reported in Manchester, Berlin and the Netherlands. Protesters called for a fairer, more transparent examination system, with many also demanding the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
The movement mirrored demonstrations back home, where Jantar Mantar remained the epicentre of the agitation.
OFFBEAT
Bondi beach hero gets permanent residency
Rehmat Pasha, 37, a cab driver from Vikarabad who had moved to Sydney in 2021, pulled injured strangers behind trees and benches to shield them from the gunmen. He used surfboards as stretchers and spent three hours carrying the wounded to waiting ambulances after the shooting stopped. Doctors later credited him with helping save between 18 and 20 lives.
The Australian government granted him permanent residency. The cap he wore that evening is now displayed at the Sydney Museum, and he has been nominated for multiple bravery awards. Yet he continues to live with PTSD and still wakes after only a few hours of sleep to the sound of ambulance sirens.
“People say my life has changed for the better,” he told TOI. “But images from that day still haunt me.”
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Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
