Obama on top; Osama, Dawood make it to the Forbes list, too.
Four Indians, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and fugitive Dawood Ibrahim, have made it to the Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people. US President Barack Obama topped the list.
Obama is followed by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the Forbes annual rankings that also features world’s most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Among the four Indians, Singh has been ranked highest at 36th position, while the country’s top corporate house Reliance Industries’ chief Mukesh Ambani finds himself ranked 44th, ahead of Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata (59th). Ranked next to Singh is al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden at 37th place, while Indian underworld don Dawood Ibrahim is at 50th position.
Dawood, head of the infamous ‘D-Company’, is wanted by India in connection with the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai and has been listed by the US as ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ for funding al-Qaeda.
Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terror strike on US, too has been eluding US-led multi-national armed forces. The list also features the Dalai Lama at 39th rank and Pope Benedict XVI at 11th place.
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The Forbes ranking comprises 67 persons from across the world. Among the top-ranked, Obama, Jintao and Putin are followed by US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (4th) and internet giant Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page joint fifth.
Steel baron and non-resident Indian Lakshmi Mittal has also found a place on the list of most powerful people in the world. Mittal, who heads the world largest steel company, ArcelorMittal, has been placed 55th on the list.
The top-10 also include Mexican industrialist Carlos Slim Helu (6th), media moghul and News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch (7th), retail behemoth Wal-Mart chief Michael Duke (8th), Saudi Arabia King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud (9th) and software czar and Microsoft founder Bill Gates (10th).
The magazine took into consideration various dimensions of power for compiling its first ranking of the world’s most powerful people. It covered areas like influence of the person over lots of other people, whether they control relatively large financial resources compared with their peers and are they powerful in multiple spheres.
“There are only 67 slots on our list — one for every 100 million people on the planet — so being powerful in just one area is not enough to guarantee a spot,” Forbes stated.