(This story originally appeared in on Mar 28, 2014)

LONDON: Five Indians — of which four are economists — are in the running for the title of "the world's most important thinker 2014" as part of an annual global poll taking place for the past 10 years.The Prospect magazine has been inviting the public to vote on its list of influential thinkers since 2004 when it drew up a list of the top 100 British public intellectuals. In 2005, they extended the search to the rest of the globe and readers voted online.The 2014 list has four Indian economists — Amartya Sen Partha Dasgupta and Raghuram Rajan . The only other entry from India is writer and Booker prize winner Arundhati Roy Last year's winner, the author of 'The God Delusion' — Richard Dawkings has failed to make it on to the magazine's 2014 list.The other heavyweights in contention are Pope Francis — the only religious leader to make it to the annual list — American philosopher Thomas Nagel, responsible for some of the most important contributions to the philosophy of mind in the 21st century and international lawyer and political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter who is former director of policy planning at the US state department and former professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.The list also includes South African businessman Elon Musk — co-founder of the online payments service PayPal and now heads two companies: Space X, which from 2015 will be running flights to and from the International Space Station under a $1.6bn contract from Nasa , and Tesla Motors , which is developing affordable electric cars. Myanmar historian Thant Myint-U, now a member of Myanmar's National Economic and Social Advisory Council is also in the running for the award. He one of the president's special advisors on the peace process.