NEW DELHI: India’s business community strongly supports Hindu hardliner Narendra Modi to be the next premier, a poll showed yesterday, with the ruling Congress party’s heir-apparent, Rahul Gandhi, trailing a distant second.
Modi, chief minister of the economically thriving Gujarat state, is expected to be tapped to be prime minister if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wins a general election due by May.
The Nielsen/Economic Times newspaper poll of 100 corporate leaders showed 74 percent wanted Modi to be prime minister while just seven percent believed Gandhi would be the best choice.
Modi, popularly known as “NaMo”, was named the BJP’s election committee chairman in June and has sought to broaden his appeal by pitching himself as an advocate of economic development rather than Hindu supremacy, by stressing his achievements in promoting industry.
He has not stated publicly he wants to prime minister, but has painted himself as a pro-business reformist who can revive the fortunes of the world’s largest democracy.
Analysts have raised fears that India could face a crunch of the sort it suffered in 1991 when a foreign exchange-strapped government had to pawn its gold for an International Monetary Fund bailout.
Modi has become popular in India’s corporate world, where he is seen as a market-friendly leader who has energetically wooed industry to set up factories in his state. But he remains a divisive figure after being accused of doing nothing to stop Hindu mobs massacring Muslims during riots in his state in 2002 in which as many 2,000 people died, according to rights groups.
AFP
