The World's Most Powerful People

Forbes Magazine, for the first time, has come out with a list of “The World’s Most Powerful People”. The magazine allotted one slot for each 100 million people in the world for a total of 67 slots.

What are the criteria for ranking? There are 4 of them.

1. Do they have influence over lot of other people?

2. Do they control large financial resource?

3. Are they powerful in multiple spheres?

4. Do they actually use their power?

They first ranked all the candidates in each of these 4 dimensions. The individual rankings were averaged into a composite score which determined who was ranked above whom.

Here are the top 10 powerful people in the world:

1. Barack Obama, President, United States of America
2. Hu Jintao. President, People’s Republic of China
3. Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister, Russia
4. Ben Bernanke, Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve
5. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Founders, Google
6. Carlos Helu, Chief Executive, Telmex, Mexico
7. Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, News Corporation
8. Michael Duke, President and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores
9. Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, King, Saudi Arabia
10. William Gates III, Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

There are 5 Indians on that list. They are:

36. Man Mohan Singh
44. Mukesh Ambani
50. Dawood Ibrahim (yes, the same Dawood Ibrahim)
55. Lakshmi Mittal
59. Ratan Tata

Three bad guys made the list. Osama bin Laden (37), Joaquin Guzman, Mexican drug trafficker (41), and Dawood Ibrahim (50).

Oprah Winfrey (45) is the only entertainer.

John Roberts, Jr. (49), Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, is the only person from the judiciary.

Three journalists made the list. William Keller (51), Executive Editor, The New York Times, Wadah Khanfar (54), Director-General, Al Jazeera, and Mark Thompson (65), Director-General, BBC.

I noted some interesting points.

Igor Sechin (42), Deputy Prime Minister of Russia is more powerful than Dmitry Medvedev (43), President of Russia?

Kim Jong II (24) of North Korea and Luis Silva of Brazil (33) are more powerful than Man Mohan Singh (36)?

We can take consolation that Man Mohan Singh (36) is more powerful than Syed Gilani (38), Benjamin Netanyahu (46), Nicolas Sarkozy (56) and Hugo Chavez (67).

Osama bin Laden (37) is more powerful than Syed Gilani (38)?

Dawood Ibrahim (50) is more powerful than Lakshmi Mittal (55) and Ratan Tata (59)?

If they give one slot for every 100 million people, then India should have received 11 slots on a mathematical basis. The highest place an Indian could get is 36. This will bring down many Indian leaders to reality.

Following is the total breakdown:

1 Entertainer, 1 Judiciary, 3 Bad guys, 3 Journalists, 20 Leaders of countries, 39 Rich industrialists or people associated with money.

In the end, money talks. You have money. You have power. That is the bottom line.