Habitual of doing things in style — including his massive electoral win — Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi also likes to keep a tab on some of the world’s top leaders via twitter.
He follows US president Barack Obama, by far the leader in the twitter among the world leaders with 43.1 million followers, and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
He also follows James Bevan, the British High Commissioner to India, who made the first move to end West’s decade-long disconnect with Modi in October 2012, much before other European countries and the US did.
Modi also follows the Japanese Prime Minister’s office on the microblogging site. Interestingly, Modi is among the three people Shinzo Abe follows, the other two being his wife Akie Abe and noted Japanese journalist-author Naoki Inose.
Obama follows 651,000 people and entities, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif follows 218 and Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa follows 12.
But, Russian president Vladimir Putin only follows himself on twitter (his official twitter handle in English follows his official twitter handle in Russian).
For long, Modi has been closely engaged with the Japanese on the economic front. Japan is also being considered as the first port of call for the new PM, though a final decision is yet to be taken.
{{/usCountry}}For long, Modi has been closely engaged with the Japanese on the economic front. Japan is also being considered as the first port of call for the new PM, though a final decision is yet to be taken.
{{/usCountry}}Among the Asian leaders, Modi could well be top of the heap in terms of followers. He has 4.25 million followers. While Abe has 317,000 followers, Sharif has 153,000 people following him and Rajapaksa has 293,000 followers.
The Indian Prime Minister’s official twitter handle has 1.24 million followers, way below the 2.18 million followers of former minister and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who could arguably be the first Indian politician who started making use of the microblogging site in a big way.