Lead India is a television initiative launched on India's 60th Independence Day by The Times of India Group in search of a new bold leader for India. Hosted by Anupam Kher, the program airs on STAR One every Saturday at 8:00 PM IST. Citizens of India aged between 25 and 45 can participate in the three-stage contest whose result will be a winner who will be a worthy contender for participating in India's next assembly elections, besides bagging a seat on the leadership and politics course at Harvard University, and a corpus of Rs 50 lakh for pursuing a public-welfare project of choice.
Lead India is the sequel to the newspaper's earlier India Poised initiative launched in January 2007. While India Poised celebrated India's recent successes and its growing importance on the global radar, it also conducted a critical assessment of sectors where India failed to deliver. Public governance was on top of this list. Lead India, therefore, addresses that concern by offering the most deserving a shot at active politics while cutting short the regular long-winded, and often extremely frustrating, path up the political ladder. It is a new twist to Reality Television.It is a hunt to identify new leaders for a new India, men and women with the vision and ability to empower India with the kind of political leadership that is so conspicuous by its absence.
A program with a similar name was also launched, much before The Times of India's Lead India campaign, by Dr. Abdul Kalam, the then President of India, in the early 2000s.[1]
In episode telecasted on December 22, 2007, Kumaramangalam Birla and Akshay Kumar joined the jury as celebrity judges. Saumya Mishra has left the contest due to personal reasons, hence only 7 contestants are left.
