WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi are among 16 Indians who have found a place in the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine’s list of the 500 most powerful people on the planet.
Apart from them, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Defence Minister A K Antony and External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid are also in the list.
Indian spiritual leaders Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravishankar are also in the list along with the BJP leader Sushma Swaraj.
The list of ‘500 most powerful people on the planet’ also lists India’s top most intelligence official Alok Joshi of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon.
Two Indian industrialists Mukesh Ambani of the Reliance Group and Lakshmi Mittal of ArcelorMittal also figure in the list along with the Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit; Unni Karunakara, who is president of Medecins Sans Frontieres; the Mumbai Mayor, Sunil Prabhu, and Salil Shetty, general secretary of Amnesty International.
From Pakistan, Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the ISI chief Zaheer ul-Islam; the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, and the Karachi Administrator, Syed Hashim Raza Zaidi, figure in the list.
China has more than 30 people included in the list, which of course is dominated by those from the US and European countries. The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, is also in the list.
“Is it possible to identify the 500 most powerful individuals on the planet — one in 14 million? That’s what we tried to do with the inaugural FP Power Map, our inventory of the people who control the commanding heights of the industries that run the world, from politics to high finance, media to energy, warfare to religion,” the Foreign Policy magazine said.
