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Mamata Banerjee among world’s most influential people

Thursday, April 19, 2012 By
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is the only Indian leader on Time magazine’s 2012 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, joining the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  (Here’s the full Time magazine list.) Ironically, the news came on a day when teachers in her state capital, Kolkata, staged a protest rally because a university professor was arrested by the police for emailing a cartoon about her. 

Honest, plain-living, courageous but intolerant of criticism, she has already alienated some people after coming to power last May after 34 years of communist rule in the state.  Five days ago, Kolkata’s leading newspaper published a fiery article demanding her resignation.  The newspaper didn’t even carry the news of her making the Time magazine list, as Derek O’Brien, a Trinamool Congress member of parliament, pointed out.

Mamata Banerjee’s influence doesn’t really extend beyond West Bengal.  Her party, Trinamool Congress, holds only 19 seats in the 542-member Lok Sabha, the Lower House of the Indian parliament. All  the 19 Trinamool Congress members of parliament in the Lok Sabha were elected from West Bengal. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition government needs their support to remain in power.

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Not educated enough

Wednesday, December 7, 2005 By

Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s words made me smile. "Couldn’t you have been lighter on the opposition — not sue?" he was asked in an interview published in Time magazine this week. "No," he said. "If you don’t sue, repetition of the lie (makes it credible)," Time quoted him as saying. And then came the bit that made me smile. "When we have a large enough educated population like America, able to make independent judgments, we will loosen up."

Singapore has more than two million Internet users in a four-million-plus population, two universities ranked among the top 50 in the world by the Times Higher Education Supplement, Singapore consistently ranks among the best in the world in maths and science at the secondary school level, almost everyone in Singapore can speak at least one foreign language — usually English — and yet Mr Lee says, "When we have a large enough educated population like America…"

So, in his opinion, Singapore still does not have a large enough educated population.

But a man with his sharp intellect — and a son like Singapore’s current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who has a first from Cambridge — is bound to have high standards.

He looks up to America and admires China as well. But which country does he admire more? 

Filed Under: Singapore Tagged With: , , , ,
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