Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a history during his state visit to the United States - from getting a rare invitation from the US President to addressing the Joint session of the US Congress for the second time - the only Indian Prime Minister to get the honor, his visit has been getting extensively covered in India and closely watched from across the globe. 

Now, Modi is the prime minister of the world's most populous country and the leader of one of the largest diasporas in the United States. For Modi too, this US visit adds more weight behind his leadership in India that will go to general elections in mid-2024. Modi's each and every step in the US was disseminated in India, so were the extravagant arrangements made by the Indian disapora in the US to welcome him. 

The rousing welcome awarded to Modi in the US has marked his prominence outside India and reminisced the recent survey from the US-based Morning Consult that rated Modi as the most popular leader in the world. However, here's another survey that gives us the opposite and a question about Modi's popularity in the United States. It may be argued that addressing the Joint Session of the US Congress is reserved for a few leaders who are extremely popular beyond their soil. 

But, Modi's popularity is not as surging as he expected in the United States. According to the recent Pew survey, a sizeable portion of the American population hasn't heard of him. The survey was conducted by Washington DC-based think tank Pew Research Centre and was released on June 21. Titled 'Spring 2023 Global Attitudes Survey', the survey has revealed that 40 per cent of Americans had never heard of Modi - the most for any leader on the survey. 

Furthermore, 35 per cent of the participants said that they haven't heard about German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, while 26 per cent said that they haven't heard about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 24 per cent of the participants said that they don't know about French President Emmanuel Macron. On the other hand, only 13 per cent said they haven't heard about Chinese President Xi Jinping, only 10 per cent responded that they don't know about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, while only three per cent admitted that they haven't heard of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

As per the survery, Jinping, Zelenskyy, and Putin were the three most heard leaders in the United States. It has to be noted that the survey wasn't done parallel to Modi's US visit - it was done from March 20 to March 26 and the results were based on an analysis of 3,576 American adults. According to the survey, younger Americans - under the age of 30 - are more likely to have never heard of Modi as about 59 per cent of them responded with their unawareness about Modi. 

On the other hand, the respondents, who said that they had heard of Narendra Modi, had also expressed that they don't have confidence in him. As per the survey, 37 per cent of the people had expressed 'little or no confidence' in Modi's capacity to rightly lead the international affairs. The survey has also revealed that the Americans who are above 65 have heard of Modi while 28 per cent in this section, with lower levels of education, said they have never heard of him.

On the political front, the Pew survey has shown that about 55 per cent of Democrats and Democrats-leaning independents said that India is in a better light while 48 per cent of Republicans stood otherwise. Moreover, about 64 per cent of Americans expressed that they believe that India's global influence has remain unchanged in the past few years, while 23 per cent believe that the country's influence has surged. Notably, 11 per cent of Americans said that India's influence on the global stage has diminished.