Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi on the List of Top 20 Most Powerful People of the World

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were named in the list of top 20 most powerful people in the world by the Forbes Magazine in annual power rankings which were declared on 5 December 2012. Enjoying the first position for the second year consecutively is the US President Barrack Obama.

Prime Minister Manmohan Sign was ranked at number 19. Sonia Gandhi dropped from the rankings of 2011 to number 12 in 2012. Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, the richest business tycoon of India as well as Arcelor Mittal CEO Lakshmi Mittal also appeared in this list. Ambani is ranked at number 37 and he outranked Mittal by various positions.
 
Forbes Magazine also noted that Rahul Gandhi was next to reign the most popular political dynasty of India. The magazine also described Ambani’s Reliance Industries as the most valued company of India and Mukesh Ambani’s home called Antilia was described as the most expensive private residence of the world. Antilia is the 27-storeyed 400000 sqft private residence of Ambani in Mumbai.

Criterion of ranking by Forbes magazine:

In order to create these rankings, Forbes editors grade the candidates on the basis of four main criteria for the power. These are:

•Power over a lot of people
•Power in various arenas and spheres
•Active use of the power
•Control of a person over the financial as well as valuable resources

There were certain measures such as power over a lot of people which went in favour of the leaders like Pope even though the richest man of the world, Carlos Slim Hula, the Mexican telecom tycoon had the wealth 72 billion dollars. Carlos Slim Hula was ranked at 11th position because of the power of his wealth. Pope was ranked at number 5 position.
 
Other powerful people in the list

•Army chief of Pakistan Ashfaq Parvez Kayani ranked at 28th position and the magazine described him as the most powerful person in the unstable country.
•Age-wise, the CEO of social networking site Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is among the youngest people on the list. He is ranked at number 25.
•Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York billionaire was ranked at number 16. He scored well in all the areas.
•Francois Hollande, the French President was placed at number 14 position.
•Among business tycoons in the list of top 20, Warren Buffett the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway was at number 15, CEO of Wal-Mart, Michael Duke was at number 17 and co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page shared the position at number 20.