By Shilpa Jamkhandikar
MUMBAI (Reuters) – More than 40% of Indians polled in a survey by India Today magazine think U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term will be favourable to their country, in findings published a day before Trump meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington.
Trump also enjoys a positive image among most supporters of Modi and his party, the “Mood of the Nation” survey showed, and only 16% of those polled felt he would be bad or disastrous for India. The balance of those surveyed saw Trump as having no impact on the country either way.
The findings were published late on Wednesday, hours before Trump said he would impose reciprocal tariffs on every country that charges duties on U.S. imports, and a day before Modi is scheduled to meet Trump at the White House.
The Trump administration has complained that India has high tariffs that lock out U.S. imports.
“There is a classical division on the left and right, and you find that supporters of Modi, of Trump, they tend to ally,” said Yashwant Deshmukh, a psephologist with CVoter, the agency that conducted the poll, on the India Today news channel.
The poll also showed that Modi and his party’s alliance would get a 47% vote share if general elections were to be held now, while the opposition alliance led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi would get 41%.
India Today’s biannual poll is one of the few to gauge the mood of Indians on a broad range of political issues and is tracked widely.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its majority for the first time in ten years in general elections last year and relied on alliance partners to form a government.
Since then, the BJP alliance has won three key state elections, in spite of India’s sluggish economy.
(Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Editing by Tom Hogue)
