---
title: "Everything’s Coming Up Modi"
description: "The Indian public would prefer Narendra Modi's right-of-center, Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party rather than the ruling left-of-center Indian National Congress party to lead the next Indian government."
date: "2014-02-27"
authors:
  - name: "No Author"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/02/27/everythings-coming-up-modi/"
categories:
  - "International Affairs"
  - "Leaders"
  - "Narendra Modi"
  - "World Elections"
  - "World Leaders"
---

# Everything’s Coming Up Modi

*By Bruce Stokes, Director of Global Economic Attitudes, Pew Research Center*

Special to *Foreign Policy*

On Feb. 13, U.S. Ambassador to India Nancy Powell [met](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/14/narendra_modi_comes_in_from_the_cold_us_india) Narendra Modi for the first time, ending the U.S. policy of shunning the popular chief minister of Gujarat, five months after he [announced](http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/its-official-modi-is-bjps-choice/article5124375.ece) his candidacy for prime minister. Because of allegations of complicity in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, Washington denied Modi a visa in 2005, and until February had refrained from engaging with him. But it's not just Washington that's warmed to Modi. The Indian public, by a margin of more than three-to-one, would prefer Modi's right-of-center, Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party rather than the ruling left-of-center Indian National Congress party to lead the next Indian government, according to a new Pew Research Center [survey](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/02/26/indians-want-political-change/).

Strikingly, the 63-year-old Modi is far more popular than the 43-year-old putative Congress party prime ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi.