Now, the world too looks up to India- The Times of India

I came across this article about India and felt like blogging it. Feels really nice to know that the world is looking up to India.

The world views India's role more positively than it does the role of the US, China or Russia, according to a BBC poll of close to 40,000 people across 33 countries. What's more, unlike these other countries, India is seen positively even by people living in its own neighbourhood. Overall, about 35% of all the respondents saw India's role in global affairs as positive against 25% who said it was negative, a sizeable 41% having no opinion. There were only six countries in which India was perceived by a majority as playing a negative role. The list of these six countries is a rather unexpected one — Brazil, Argentina, Finland, France, Turkey and the Philippines. The only country with a majority negative view on India is Philippines (57%), while in the other five, the number of those who saw India’s role as negative was more than those who felt it was playing a positive role. Pakistan was not among the countries in which the poll was conducted, but 71% of Iranian respondents, 59% of those in Afghanistan, 49% in Sri Lanka and 39% in China viewed India’s role positively, given the fact that only 47% of Indian respondents were of the same view. These are among the results of a poll of 39,435 people conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland. The poll was conducted in 33 countries across the globe and the respondents were asked to give their opinion — positive, negative or neutral about India, China, Japan, US, Europe, Britain, France, Russia and Iran respectively. India also has reason to be pleased, as nine countries in which Islam is the major religion, only in Turkey does it get the thumbs down. In all the others, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania, India was viewed more positively than negatively. Not surprisingly, the US comes out worst apart from Iran. Not only is opinion overwhelmingly against it in its own backyard — Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina — it is seen as a negative influence in all of Europe except in Poland. Africa is the only continent on which it is by and large viewed positively, while in Asia, the US gets a mixed response. Even South Koreans and Australians are not too pleased with the US role in world affairs. Europe and Japan received the most enthusiastic endorsements from the respondents. There was in fact, not a single country which viewed Europe’s role as negative, whereas Japan was viewed unfavourably only by its immediate neighbours and long-time rivals South Korea and China. Like the US, Russia was disliked in neighbouring countries like Poland and Finland, though not in China. In fact, like the US, Russia could garner support for its role mainly from the African continent. China was viewed positively by most of Asia - barring South Korea - Latin America and Africa, but negatively on the whole by Europe, apart from Spain, and North America. Iran was easily the country seen as the one with the most negative role, with respondents in only five countries saying it had a positive role to play.

Source- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1400412.cms