April 25, 2012
Narendra Modi's Ratings
Hartosh Singh Bal in the International Herald Tribune:
Narendra Modi, the leading figure of India’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.), didn’t make Time magazine’s list of the 100 most powerful people in the world this year. Midway through the online polling, after Modi’s stock had started to surge, liberals in India organized a counter-campaign. In the end, 256,792 votes were cast for him and 266,684 votes against.
Too bad for Modi: it’s an election year in the state of Gujarat, where he is chief minister, and he is known to be eyeing the country’s prime minister slot. But I, for one, am relieved: finally a defeat for Modi’s formidable PR team, which routinely manages to whitewash his responsibility for fueling sectarian strife and oversells his economic accomplishments, especially to Western journalists.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 11:47 AM | Permalink
Comments
Why should anybody give a shit about TIME's ratings? Really.
Posted by: Pepito | Apr 25, 2012 12:12:43 PM
The same who give a sht that Slumdog Millionaire won an Oscar, or fawn over William Dalrymple.
"...a grotesque figure, a man become obese on the affections of Indians! He lay on a stage, this great whale of a man, dressed in a mirrorwork kaftan, if you please, his dirty feet hanging off. And all about him, like little pixies, Baul singers skittered around…And to complete this awful scene was an audience of embassy trash. They sat among bolsters and fountains, sipping white wine. You’ve never seen anything more hideous in your life. But we mustn’t blame him alone; the fault is as much India’s; it is India who makes giants of these mediocrities, fattening them up till they’re as corrupt as Kurtz....In a more confident country—like Russia, say, in the 19th century; or, even China today—a man like that would have been booted out. He would have been a figure of fun and contempt. He would not have been able to position himself as a gatekeeper to intellectual life. But in India, he can; we love a man like that!"
Aatish Taseer
Posted by: Sam | Apr 26, 2012 12:37:32 AM
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