Tuesday, 7 May 2013

The Dalai Lama among FP’s 500 Most Powerful People on Planet


His Holiness the Dalai Lama answering questions from students during his visit to Dalhousie Public School in Dalhousie, HP, India, on April 28, 2013. (Photo/OHHDL/Tenzin Choejor)
His Holiness the Dalai Lama answering questions from students during his visit to Dalhousie Public School in Dalhousie, HP, India, on April 28, 2013.
DHARAMSHALA, May 3: Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been named by the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine in its list of the 500 most powerful people on the planet.

The Dalai Lama’s name features alongside some of the most powerful and richest people in the world including US President Barack Obama, China’s new leaders, Xi Jinping and Li Keiqiang, Indian PM Manmohan Singh, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon among others.

The magazine in its May/June issue launched the inaugural FP Power Map, representing what it calls “0.000007 per cent of the world's population.”

“That's what we tried to do with the inaugural FP Power Map, our inventory of the people who control the commanding heights of the industries that run the world, from politics to high finance, media to energy, warfare to religion. Think of it as a list of all the most important other lists,” the magazine said.

The list has been broken into categories indicating the source of the person's power - silos, bully pulpit, force, brains, money and good and evil.

143 Americans are featured on the list alongside 16 from India and more than 30 from China.

The 77-year-old Tibetan Nobel Peace Laureate has regularly featured among varied lists and surveys of top global leaders.

In 2011, His Holiness the Dalai Lama was listed by TIME magazine among its "Top 25 Political Icons" of all time, along with father of the Indian nation Mahatma Gandhi.