PM, Advani, Tata, Ambanis among India's most powerful

Sonia Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Sachin Tendulkar, Abhinav Bindra & Lalit Modi have also been named among the 50 most powerful Indians by a US magazine.Sonia Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Sachin Tendulkar, Abhinav Bindra & Lalit Modi have also been named among the 50 most powerful Indians by a US magazine.Sonia Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Sachin Tendulkar, Abhinav Bindra & Lalit Modi have also been named among the 50 most powerful Indians by a US magazine.NEW YORK: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Opposition leader L K Advani, business tycoons Mukesh and Anil Ambani, corporate czar Ratan Tata and star cricketer Sachin Tendulkar have been named among the 50 most powerful people in India by American magazine BusinessWeek.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee, music maestro A R Rahman, BSP chief Mayawati, Olympics gold medallist Abhinav Bindra and Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairman C B Bhave also feature in the league of 50.
The magazine pointed out that the list of 'India's 50 Most Powerful People 2009' reflects the impact of the Satyam scandal and the global economic crisis.
CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, Mahindra and Mahindra's managing director Anand Mahindra, steel czar Lakshmi Mittal, telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal, Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi and Indian Space Research Organisation's chairman G Madhavan Nair and bankers -- K V Kamath and Deepak Parekh also feature in the list.
"In modern India, even powerful reigns can be short-lived. In the newest edition of BusinessWeek's list of the 50 most influential Indians, politicians jostle for space with professors, businessmen with cricketers," the magazine said.
"The attempt is to pinpoint the shifts in power that defined India in the past year, and to predict the players to watch for in the next year," the magazine noted.
Businessweek has named Reserve Bank of India governor Duvvuri Subbarao, Rashtriya Janata Dal party's president Lalu Prasad Yadav, Infosys chief mentor Narayana Murthy, Wipro's Azim Premji, TCS chief Subramanian Ramadorai and Google India's managing director Shailesh Rao, among the powerful people.
About Manmohan Singh, the magazine said that he has been an economist and civil servant for most of his life, moving from degrees from Oxford to jobs at the IMF and then the Indian government.
"Less flamboyant than most Indian politicians, he is nevertheless popular for being apparently incorruptible and obviously intellectual.
"He was originally considered a compromise candidate put up by Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi because of her foreign birth, but has since then become a key plank for Congress' re-election," BusinessWeek noted.
Writing on Advani, the publication said, "Best known for his firebrand speeches and controversial embrace of Hindutva (a word that is used to define Hindu-ness), Advani has pushed the Bharatiya Janata Party, India's second-largest political party, into national prominence".