Mumbai: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Deputy Prime Minister of Afghanistan Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar have featured in Time Magazine's 2021 global list of 100 most influential people. The two however have been introduced in the list as having contrasting profiles.
While Afghanistan Mullah Baradar - said to be the key negotiator on behalf of Taliban with the United States that ended its 20-year long bloody stay in Afghanistan on August 31, 2021, has been described as the "fulcrum for the future" of Afghanistan, India's Prime Minister Modi has been accused of eroding the rights of India’s Muslim minority, intimidating journalists, and passing laws that crippled NGOs and advocacy group.
Profiling Modi, the Time compared him with stalwarts Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi and admitted that despite mishandling Covid-19 and shocking death toll, the Indian Prime Minister’s approval rating is still at 71%, the magazine accused him of pushing India away from secularism.
“When he was elected, many believed that Modi would finally move India off its socialist past and into a capitalist future. He’s done some of that but more determinedly, he has pushed the country away from secularism and toward Hindu nationalism”, CNN journalist of Indian origin, Fareed Zakaria, wrote.
“In addition to eroding the rights of India’s Muslim minority, Modi’s government has imprisoned and intimidated journalists who shine a light on its abuses and has passed laws crippling India’s thousands of NGOs and advocacy groups”, he added.
“It was responsible for 70% of Internet shutdowns on the planet in 2020. Two international think tanks concluded this year that under his watch, India has veered away from democracy, toward what V-Dem Institute calls ‘electoral autocracy’. Modi must decide if that is what he wants as his legacy”, Zakaria wrote in the magazine that had called Modi “India’s divider in-chief” in a 2019 cover story.
In contrast to Modi, the Time has described Afghanistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and top Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar as a charismatic leader and fulcrum for the future of the war-torn country.
The Time also credited Mullah Baradar for bloodless and peaceful transition of power in Afghanistan after the fall of US-backed Ashraf Ghani government.
“When the Taliban swept to victory in August in Afghanistan, it was on the terms Baradar negotiated. He was said to be making all the major decisions, including the amnesty offered to members of the former regime, the lack of bloodshed when the Taliban entered Kabul and the regime’s contacts and visits with neighbouring states, especially China and Pakistan”, Ahmed Rashid, a journalist in Pakistan and author of Taliban, wrote about Mullah Baradar.
“Now he stands as the fulcrum for the future of Afghanistan. In the interim Taliban government, he was made a Deputy Prime Minister, the top role given to another leader more acceptable to the younger, more hard-line generation of Taliban commanders”, he wrote.
“A quiet, secretive man who rarely gives public statements or interviews, Baradar nonetheless represents a more moderate current within the Taliban, the one that will be thrust into the limelight to win Western support and desperately needed financial aid. The question is whether the man who coaxed the Americans out of Afghanistan can sway his own movement”, Rashid wrote.
Others from India who figured in the Time 2021 list are West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and SII CEO Adar Poonawalla.
Apart from these leaders, the list also includes US President Joe Biden, his deputy Kamala Harris, Chinese President Xi Jinping, former US president Donald Trump and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - Prince Harry and Meghan.
Strangely, the Time did not include any Arab leader in the list, not even Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman whom it had included in the 2018 global list of 100 most influential people.
Nonetheless, the Time has included Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the 2021 list. Former Defence Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett had played pivotal role in ending Benjamin Netanyahu’s 20-year rule in the Jewish state.
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