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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Modi remains popular: Pew survey

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NEW DELHI: Nearly nine out of 10 Indians hold a favourable opinion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and more than two-thirds are satisfied with the direction he is taking the country, a Pew survey has found, two years before he heads into a general election.


Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition won the biggest parliamentary majority in three decades in a 2014 election and the poll by the US-based research centre showed that his personal ratings remain high.


Critics have accused hardline du groups linked to the ruling coalition of promoting a partisan agenda, including targeting minority Muslims, since he came to power.


They have also blamed Modi for slowing economic growth and for failing to generate the hundreds of thousands of jobs needed for young people joining the workforce each month.


But the Pew poll found that 88 per cent of Indians held a favourable view of Modi, a shade higher than the 87 per cent who gave him a thumbs-up in 2015, a year after he swept to power promising to transform India into a high-growth economy.


Modi’s favourable rating is 31 percentage points higher than that of Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the main opposition Congress party, and is 30 points more than that for her son, Rahul Gandhi, who is expected to take over the party leadership.


“Three years into Modi’s five-year tenure, the honeymoon period for his administration may be over but the public’s love affair with current conditions in India is even more intense,” Pew said in comments on its findings.


The survey was conducted in February and March, a few months after Modi withdrew most high-value bank notes in a shock move aimed at illegal wealth, but which put millions of people in difficulty as cash was sucked out of the economy.


Modi defended the measure as an attack on the rich hiding their wealth from the taxman and said gains would come to the poor. The next general election is due in 2019. — Reuters


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