During the 2006 Oxford India Business Forum, Amanullah met the deputy chairman of the Indian Planning Commission. ‘I got just 30 seconds of his time while he was trying to manoeuvre away from the media’, he explains. ‘I told him that I was returning to India after a decade away to serve the country. He invited me to the Indian Planning Commission to participate in India's Infrastructure PPP policy-making.’ Amanullah moved back to India first to work at the Planning Commission (New Delhi) and then later to work in Corporate India (Mumbai) and during his first year began to re-explore his home state, Jharkhand (formerly Bihar).
 
Amanullah grew up in a below-the-poverty-line family who lived in a small town. He was the first family member ever to attend college or university, and his education, including his degree in chemical engineering from IIT (the Indian Institute of Technology) in Kharagpur, was funded by national and international scholarships. Returning to the state, he found conditions to be even worse than he remembered. 
 
Jharkhand is among the least developed states in India, lacking basic infrastructure like electricity, water and roads.  ‘What I saw was eye-popping and completely changed my view of rural India’, says Amanullah. ‘In the last decade, Jharkhand has produced dead generations: it is churning out young people who are a dead weight on the Indian economy. The state has entered into an absolute abyss: 30 million people living in chaos, confusion and depravation.’
 
In the run-up to the Indian general elections in 2009, Amanullah was approached by a newly formed Jharkhand regional political party who had heard about his interest in the state. ‘The party was looking for a capable minority candidate to stand for the Ranchi parliamentary seat and decided I was the perfect “son-of-the-soil” representative
 
Amanullah spent a week criss-crossing the state, but with just one month left to campaign before elections, a mutual decision was taken to elect an established party member. However, the experience left him with an appetite for party politics. ‘I decided to wholeheartedly participate in the parliamentary election campaign’, he enthuses. The Times of India subsequently ran an article on him, calling him 'the star campaigner for the party'. ‘Since then, I've been continually meeting and interacting with political leaders, big and small, to learn about Indian politics.
 
Now director and CEO of an infrastructure development and investment company based in Mumbai, Amanullah implements core and soft infrastructure development (roads, motorways, ports, power plants) across several Indian states. ‘But I have realised that my passion to service India is most fulfilled by working in my native state’, he confides. He works with student and university organisations, NGOs and registered societies across India, but focuses largely on improving education in Jharkhand and being a social activist for the state's many other causes.
 
Amanullah recently organised a multi-religion mass marriage. ‘Hindu, Muslim and Adivasi [indigenous] people from the state's poorest communities tied the knot under one roof, in front of thousands’, he says. ‘This show of solidarity among different religions was a first for Jharkhand.’ He sees many firsts for his homeland in the future. ‘I have a dream to make Jharkhand one of India's top five states in terms of self-sufficiency and one that contributes significantly to India's development rather than taking away from it.’