Modi among most admired figures: WEF survey

The survey ranks late Nelson Mandela on the top followed by Pope Francis, Tesla Motors' CEO Elon Musk and Bill Gates

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the 10th most admired personality globally, as per a new survey by the World Economic Forum (WEF) that has ranked the late South African President Nelson Mandela on the top. Mahatma Gandhi is ranked as the fourth most admired leader, according to a survey of more than 1,000 millennials. The respondents were spread across 285 cities in 125 countries.

After Mandela, the WEF's Global Shapers Annual Survey 2015 found that Pope Francis is the second most admired leader. Others in the list are Tesla Motors' CEO Elon Musk (3rd rank), Microsoft Founder Bill Gates (5th ), US President Barack Obama (6th), Virgin Group Founder Richard Barson (7th), Apple Founder Steve Jobs (8th), Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus (9th) and US investor Warren Buffett (11th).

Out of the 1,084 respondents, 3 per cent voted for Modi as well as for Yunus while 20.1 per cent favoured Mandela. As many as 12.4 per cent of the respondents voted for Gandhi. All the survey respondents are members of the WEF's Global Shapers Community aged between 20 and 30 years. In the list of 11, three personalities are not alive - Mandela, Gandhi and Jobs.

Modi became the Prime Minister in May 2014. WEF said Gandhi "is known for his doctrine of nonviolent protests in order to achieve progress and he became the leader of the nationalist movement against the British rule of India".

About Mandela, the report said that abolition of apartheid remains his greatest legacy, and under his leadership, South Africa emerged as a genuine democracy that saw many changes.

"Pope Francis is the first Latin American and non-European pope in more than 1,200 years. As the head of the Roman Catholic Church, he is the moral and spiritual leader of 1.2 billion people all over the world - from the Philippines, where 86 per cent of the population identify as Roman Catholic, to Brazil, which has over 125 million Catholics," WEF said.