Did Mr. Narendra Modi really made it to the top of TIME 100 annual lists of the most influential people in the world, given the questionable integrity of the poll?
The survey asked the readers to cast their votes "for the people who have changed the world this past year, for better or worse."
The voting closed at 11:59 p.m on April 22, and Time's declared winner is Mr. Narendra Modi with 5,070,865 votes, with 83.7 % saying YES to include him in the list and 16.3% saying NO. The second-highest scorer was Mr. Arvind Kejriwal with 3,168,259 votes, and 60.3% of the respondents said YES and 39.7% said NO. Oddly no one scored over 100,000. The full TIME 100 list will be announced on April 24, 2014.
As an India expert committed to shaping cohesive societies where no human has to live in apprehension or fear of the other, I was curious to observe the poll as it progressed, making notes and taking snap shots of the screen periodically to write on my
India Blog and that I have maintained for nearly a decade.
I was watching, "Which World Figures Should Be on the 2014 TIME 100?" and could not help the disappointment with the authenticity of the poll, an Institution like TIME has erred shamelessly once more. In the interest of integrity, I wish they had verified several things before the winner was announced.
Indians are fascinated with numbers and clamor to get on the Guinness book of world record, and this poll was no exception; it caught their attention and the war between secular and the right-wing Indians began.
When Modi reached a record number of votes at 867, 341 by 5:54 PM on April 21, 64% of them said YES to include him on the TIME 100 whereas 36% said NO. The Kejriwal warriors and the secular Indians hit the gas to the floor, and gave 489, 582 Votes and 78% of them said YES while 22% said NO.
Modi Sena (army) would not take that kindly, and flipped Kejriwal down to 28.9% YES and 71.1 NO today at 3:00 PM. Things turned around immediately, and the Kejriwal Warriors went to war big time, and pulled Modi down to 53.5% at 5:04 PM today, and lifting Kejriwal to 54.6% YES.
The peak points for Modi were 91.4% YES and 57.8% NO, and for Kejriwal, 82.3% YES and 49.4% NO, and the lowest NO for Modi was 8.6% and 17.7% for Kejriwal.
It was a war, you could clearly see who side was on the offensive, and each side has slaughtered the other at different times.
Here are the two snapshots of the screen at 5:32 PM on April 22, 2014.
Given the speed with which clicking was going on with alarming speed, like 100 votes per minute, mathematically, I predicted 90% YES for Modi by late evening and it needed millions of votes to turn the numbers around. Hell, the Modi Sainiks had already figured that out, and knew how many numbers it will take to shrink the NO percentage for their newfound guide; Mr. Modi.
INTEGRITY OF THE TIME POLL
The Modi supporters are outdoing everything... and they have that right to do that. However, in the interest of integrity of the Time's poll, I wanted to check what was going on behind the scene.
