Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been shortlisted by Time magazine for its annual honour of Person of the Year alongside US President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Time editors shortlisted 11 candidates for the 2016 Person of the Year — the publication’s annual selection of the person who most influenced the news, for better or for worse. On Modi, Time said the Indian Prime Minister has guided his country’s economy into position as the “emerging-market world’s most positive story.”
late in the year, however, he also stoked concern when he unexpectedly banned `500 and `1,000 currency notes — a move that aimed to curb untaxed wealth but now threatens to slow the country’s economic growth, it said. Modi won the online readers’ poll conducted by Time magazine for Person of the Year 2016, second time he emerged winner of reader’s choice poll.
The other contenders are Trump, Putin, Mark Zuckerberg, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, US gymnast and Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, ex-US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, CRISPR Scientists who developed a groundbreaking new tech that can edit DNA, Flint Whistleblowers who along with civil-engineering professor Marc Edwards and pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, blew the whistle on lead-poisoned water in Flint, Mich and singer Beyonce.
Time said after campaigning as an anti-establishment, populist candidate, Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States—a stunning end to a presidential bid that repeatedly broke with political precedent.