By IANS,
New Delhi: A large number of people feel that they are worse off at the end of the first year of the second United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, a NDTV opinion poll said.
The poll, which surveyed 34,277 persons around the country, said that 44 percent of the respondents felt that they were worse off, while 35 percent said that they were better off in the second tenure of the UPA.
This feeling of disappointment was spread across both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) voters – which listed 41 percent and 49 percent respectively.
However, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a high approval rating of 70 percent of respondents, who said they were satisfied with his performance.
At the same time, 63 percent of respondents consider Congress president Sonia Gandhi is more powerful than Prime Minister Singh.
A question was also asked on who would make a better Prime Minister, Rahul Gandhi or Manmohan Singh – 46 percent voted in favour of the younger leader. Similarly, 55 percent said that the next Indian prime minister is likely to be Rahul Gandhi.
Among the cabinet, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P.Chidambaram had high approval ratings of 59 percent and 61 percent respectively.
Significantly, 62 percent said they were very much affected by the inflation.
An overwhelming 77 percent were in favour of reservation of one-third of seats in parliament for women, with most of them feeling that women make better leaders.
Though politicians continue to be the most pilloried, with respondents of the NDTV opinion poll saying that 90 percent of politicians are corrupt, 88 percent also felt the police force was corrupt.