SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — India Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been ranked No. 9 among the world’s most powerful people, according to Forbes, where Russian President Vladimir Putin was ranked No. 1 for the fourth consecutive year.
It was the eighth annual ranking of the world’s 74 most power people from Forbes. The only other Indians to make it to the list were Reliance Industries chairman and Managing Director, Mukesh Ambani, ranked 38, and Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella, who was ranked No. 51.
“Modi has raised his profile as a global leader in recent years during official visits with Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. He has also 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,” Forbes said.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump fell in at No. 2, a dramatic improvement from his 2015 standing of No. 72, the first time he appeared on the list. The leap is the most unprecedented the list has ever seen, Forbes said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is ranked third, followed by Chinese politician Xi Jinping; while Pope Francis, current Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, takes the current position.
The list also has Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, Apple CEO Tim Cook, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Among the new entries on the list are US vice-president-elect Mike Pence, Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, Saudi Arabia Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The list is curated using several different metrics — the number of people over whom a person has power, their financial resources, whether they have influence in more than one sphere, and how they use their power to change the world.
“There are nearly 7.4 billion humans on planet Earth, but these 74 men and women make the world turn. Forbes’ annual ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People identifies one person out of every 100 million whose actions mean the most,” Forbes said.
