Khaleej Times

Modi in Time’s ‘most influentia­l people list’

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New York. — 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 Modi, 66, written by author Pankaj Mishra, said that in May 2014 - long before 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.

Nearly three years after he came to power, Modi’s vision of India’s economic, geopolitic­al and cultural supremacy is far from being realised, the profile read, but his “extended family of Hindu nationalis­ts have taken to scapegoati­ng secular and liberal intellectu­als as well as poor Muslims.”

“Yet Modi’s aura remains undimmed. He is a maestro of the art of political seduction, playing on the existentia­l fears and cultural insecuriti­es of people facing downward or blocked mobility,” it said.

Modi’s elections victory in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most politicall­y significan­t state, by a landslide confirmed that “elected strongmen are the chief beneficiar­ies of a global revolt against elites.”

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, Sharma “seized the moment”.

As Indians scrambled to exchange the banned notes for new currency, Paytm, Sharma’s digital payments startup, went on a promotiona­l spree, inviting Indians to start using Paytm’s digital wallet to pay for everyday goods and services.—

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