Former president A P J Abdul Kalam and industrialist Ratan Tata top the list of 100 most trusted Indians while artist M F Husain is at 91 and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati is at the very bottom, a survey conducted for Reader's Digest has revealed.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is ranked seventh, one place below chess grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand, Sachin Tendulkar is at number eight and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen at 10th place along with Wipro chairman Azim Premji and Indian Space Research Organisation M Madhavan Nair.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi is ranked 29th in the survey published in the March edition ofReader's Digest that hit the stands Tuesday
Others in the top 10 list of India's most trusted Indians are former police officer Kiran Bedi (3rd), Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy (4th), music composer A.R. rahman (5th) and cartoonist R.K. Laxman (9th).
Among India's most trusted professions, teachers are at the top, followed rather surprisingly by firefighters and farmers follow at number three.
Scientists and members of the armed forces share fourth position, with doctors at sixth, pilots at seventh, pilots at seventh, surgeons at eighth, nurses at ninth and engineers at 10th.
At the bottom end of the scale of 40 most trusted professions are religious leaders (35), lawyers (36), police officers (37), government officials (38), realtors (39) and politicians (40).
"The survey was conducted online by market research firm Digital Edge that sent out 5,000 invitations, with 761 people responding by the cutoff date," Digest editor Mohan Sivanandan told IANS on the phone from Mumbai.
"The survey covered 30 cities, with two-thirds of the respondents being under 35, possessing a bachelor's degree and three-fourth's male," he added.