PM, Paytm owner among Time’s 100 influential people
New York: PM Narendra Modi and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma were the only two Indians to make it to the Time’s annual list of “100 most influential people in the world” released on Thursday. The Time list also has US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and British PM Theresa May on it.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma were the only two Indians to make it to an annual list of “100 most influential people in the world” this year released by the Time magazine on Thursday.
The list features pioneers, artists, titans, leaders and icons from around the world honoured for “the power of their inventions, the scale of their ambitions, the genius of their solutions to problems that no one before them could solve.” The magazine has also included US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and British Prime Minister Theresa May in the new list of 100 most influential people.
The profile of Mr Modi, 66, written by author Pankaj Mishra, said that in May 2014 — long before Mr Trump seemed conceivable as a US President — Modi became the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy.
“Once barred from the US for his suspected complicity in anti-Muslim violence, and politically ostracised at home as well, this Hindu nationalist used Twitter to bypass traditional media and speak directly to masses feeling left or pushed behind by globalisation, and he promised to make India great again by rooting out self-serving elites,” it said.
For 43-year-old Sharma, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani wrote that when India’s government unexpectedly scrapped 86 per cent of the country’s currency notes in November, Mr Sharma “seized the moment”.