DHAKA: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is The Straits Times Asian of the Year 2014.
The editors of the paper picked the development focused Indian leader, who fashioned an impressive election victory for his party in the national election that ended in May, from a rich field of contesting names.
Last year’s award was shared by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and China’s President Xi Jinping. The inaugural award, in 2012, went to Myanmar's Thein Sein.
The Straits Times' choice of Modi as Asian of the Year was based on several factors. Politically and socially, he has energised India with his stirring calls for a development focus and ‘toilets before temples’.
On the economy, his call for a Make in India campaign, if pursued to its logical conclusion with a friendlier investment climate and less rigid labour norms, could help fire up the growth engines of the US$2 trillion economy and provide welcome ballast to the region when China, the No. 1 Asian economy, is slowing and Japan, the No. 2, is in recession.
‘Economists project that as early as next year, India could pick up the growth baton from China. Given its huge market, its travellers who fill up hotel rooms and cruise ship cabins from Singapore to Sydney, its hunger for capital goods and commodities, a resurgent India will be a boon for the region and the world,’ the editors said in their citation.
‘As much for his performance as a growth-focused provincial administrator as for the promise of what is to come for India under his leadership, The Straits Times declares Mr Modi Asian of the Year.’
Singapore has seen potential in Modi long before the world sat up and took notice.
In early 2006, then Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong led a Singapore delegation to Gujarat. Modi himself has been here, studying the Singapore development model.
In June this year, days after Modi took office, Foreign Minister K Shanmugam was the first senior Asian figure to get a direct meeting with Modi in New Delhi, reports The Straits Times.
BDST: 1245 HRS, DEC 06, 2014
