Team Blitz India
HIROSHIMA: US President Joe Biden’s statement that “You are so popular that I should take your autograph’ hogged headlines. But a more telling testimony to Indian PM Narendra Modi’s presence at the G7 and Quad summits came from unexpected quarters.
The New York Times, notorious for its anti-India stance, described PM Modi as the ‘Envy of Hiroshima’ with the highest approval ratings among world leaders gathered in the Japanese town. The comment was published on the day US President Biden walked up to PM Modi to greet him at the G7 meeting.
“Survey data compiled by Morning Consult in recent days indicated that the leaders of only four of 22 major countries studied had approval ratings above 50 per cent: Narendra Modi of India, Alain Berset of Switzerland, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico and Anthony Albanese of Australia,” the newspaper said.
“Modi, who is in Hiroshima as an observer, is the envy of the town with a 78 per cent approval score,” it noted.
The same article noted that “relatively weak approval ratings for US President Biden and his Group of 7 partners highlight the fragility of free societies facing deep political divides.”
This was a reluctant acknowledgment of PM Modi’s rising global stature by the US daily that was recently attacked by India’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur as the ‘News Distort Times’.
