Modi and Swaraj makes to the honor lists

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been ranked among the top 10 most powerful people in the world by Forbes. Narendra Modi ranks 9th on the list of 74 topped by Russian President Vladimir Putin for a fourth straight year.  Forbes said, India’s populist Prime Minister remains hugely popular in his country of 1.3 billion people. It said, Mr Modi has raised his profile as a global leader in recent years during official visits with Barack Obama and Xi Jinping.  Forbes said, that Modi has emerged as a key figure in the international effort to tackle climate change, as planetary warming will deeply affect millions of his country’s rural and most vulnerable citizens. It also took note of Mr Modi’s demonetisation decision.

On Putin, Forbes said, the Russian President has exerted his country’s influence in nearly every corner of the globe, from the motherland to Syria to the US Presidential elections. Second on the list is US President-elect Donald Trump who rose from number 72 last year. Outgoing US President Barack Obama dropped from number two to 48.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was third, followed by Chinese President Xi Jinping at fourth, and Pope Francis at fifth. Forbes said, there are nearly 7.4 billion people on Earth, but these 74 men and women make the world turn. 

Also India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has been included in Foreign Policy magazine’s 2016 list of 15 Global Thinkers “for fashioning a novel brand of Twitter diplomacy”.

In a website posting, the magazine recalled how, when around 10,000 Indian workers in Saudi Arabia faced a “food crisis” earlier this year due to job losses, Sushma Swaraj tweeted about the issue to six million followers on the social media website.

“What followed was a weeks-long social media operation in which Swaraj posted information for migrants about rations provided by the Indian embassy, claims for unpaid wages, and government-organised transportation home,” it said.

Stating that this was not the first time that Sushma Swaraj used the internet to reach out to people abroad, the posting said: “From evacuating Indians from Yemen to helping replace lost passports, Swaraj has earned the nickname ‘the common tweeple’s leader’ for her aggressive use of Twitter.”

Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi was among the first to congratulate Sushma Swaraj for this. “Very proud to see our hardworking EAM @SushmaSwaraj part of the @ForeignPolicy Global Thinkers list 2016! Congrats,” Modi tweeted.

Among others who are on the list are German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sushma Swaraj is currently recuperating from a kidney transplant operation at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences here.