It’s that time of the year again. It’s official. Based on online votes and partnering with digital marketing giants like ‘Open topic’ and ‘IBM’s Watson’, TIME has selected Indian Prime Minister ‘Narendra Modi’ as the most influential person of the year.
Furthermore, beating out other significant personalities such as Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Julian Assange, Mr. Modi came triumphant in the online polls. All the aforesaid personalities got only 7% of the yes vote and other important public figures such as Mark Zuckerberg and Hillary Clinton were able to garner only 2% and 4% vote respectively. The Indian prime minister was way ahead in the poll by 18% of the vote.
The demonetization effect
In the past few months Mr. Modi gained high ratings from Indians according to a ‘September Pew Poll’. His popularity increased for his active role in giving consent to the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
Recently, he was criticised by the opposition and came under radar for getting rid of the 500 and 1000 notes. Although, this did not hamper his popularity and it seems that it has accelerated his reputation amongst the Indian public, in a good way, that is.
His popularity differs across the world and the U.S.A. according to a poll carried out by poll host Apester. He is also popular amongst the Indian Diaspora spread worldwide along with the Indian public. No wonder TIME’s selected him the person of the year -2016.
