Modi's ratings soar as Indians put faith in his Covid-19 handling

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now more popular than ever, at a time when many other national leaders have come under scrutiny because of the way they handled the Covid-19 pandemic.

Morning Consult, a US-based global data intelligence firm, said Mr Modi had a net approval rating of 80 per cent on May 4, up from 76 on Jan 7, and his popularity is the highest among all global leaders.

It said Mr Modi's rating was higher than that of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Mr Trump's rating, for instance, was 41 per cent.

The firm said its online poll is based on an average of over 3,000 weekly interviews for non-US leaders and 49,000 weekly interviews for Mr Trump.

A separate poll by television channel Times Now and Ormax Media on May 9 found Mr Modi's popularity grew from 7.1 per cent to 7.9 per cent between April and May 2020.

As Mr Modi eases a nationwide lockdown, many Indians have full faith that he will successfully steer the country out of the coronavirus crisis, which has upended the economy and put public health at risk.

India has recorded over 101,139 Covid-19 cases and 3,156 deaths as the government has continued to ease a stringent lockdown that shut down economic activity.

Most supported Mr Modi's decision to enforce the lockdown even as it led to hundreds of thousands of daily wage migrants losing their city jobs and making a desperate dash on foot for their rural homes.

"He is brilliant and a master communicator and has clearly been able to impress a vital segment of society, at least the lower middle class, middle class and upper middle class, through his address to the nation. These polls are talking about this section, who believe what he is asking them to do is what should be done," said Dr Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist and pro vice-chancellor at Jain University.

"The question that still remains unanswered is, do the poorer sections of society feel that enough has been done for them?"

Mr Modi was re-elected last year with a huge majority, continuing his dominance over Indian politics.

Even before the pandemic, India's growth had been slowing, reaching a six-year low of 4.7 per cent in the last quarter of 2019. Moody's Investors Service has cut its forecast for India's growth for 2020 to 0.2 per cent.

To spur recovery, the government has unveiled a 20 trillion rupee (S$378 billion) economic package containing measures for different sectors, including 3 trillion rupees worth of collateral-free loans for small businesses and free food - including 5kg of wheat or rice - for every poor family for two months.

"The package is very multidimensional and there are a lot of things they have announced. But in big picture terms, we were hoping for short-term measures to boost demand," said associate professor of economics Amit Basole at Azim Premji University.

Enforcing the lockdown is seen to be the easy part. Mr Modi will face the toughest challenge to his leadership yet as he navigates the country out of the crisis. Jobs are already being lost, poverty is expected to deepen and businesses are struggling to stay afloat.

Still, his party's spokesman Nalin Kohli said the "economic package" would "take care of immediate as well as long-term implications and measures for economic revival", and maintained that the migrant debacle was a state issue.

Mr Modi's dominance is also expected to continue. "In the absence of another leader and with the kind of popularity and image Mr Modi has, I don't think erosion (of popularity) is going to happen overnight, if at all," said political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.