Modi remains overwhelmingly popular

NEW DELHI: Nearly nine out of 10 Indians hold a favourable opinion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and more than two-thirds are satisfied with the direction he is taking the country, a Pew survey has found, two years before he heads into a general election.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition won the biggest parliamentary majority in three decades in a 2014 election and the poll by the US-based research centre showed that his personal ratings remain high.
Critics have accused hardline Hindu groups linked to the ruling coalition of promoting a partisan agenda, including targeting minority Muslims, since he came to power.
They have also blamed Modi for slowing economic growth and for failing to generate the hundreds of thousands of jobs needed for young people joining the workforce each month. But the Pew poll found that 88 percent of Indians held a favourable view of Modi, a shade higher than the 87 percent who gave him a thumbs-up in 2015, a year after he swept to power promising to transform India into a high-growth economy. Such high ratings are unusual for political leaders three years into office in south Asia, where governments are more often voted out than retained as people become frustrated with broken campaign promises.