I heard the following news a while ago.
59 percent of the voters are wanting Mr Modi to be the next PM of the nation.
What is the justification for the usage "wanting"?
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Sign up to join this communityI heard the following news a while ago.
59 percent of the voters are wanting Mr Modi to be the next PM of the nation.
What is the justification for the usage "wanting"?
This is a good question. The short answer is that simple present is much more common in written English. (Indeed, an attempt to get stats from Google Ngrams failed because neither “I’m wanting” nor “I am wanting” is even common enough to index.)
When I’m describing a situation that never changes, or what I normally do, I always use simple present. When I describe something that’s only true for a short interval of time, I always use the present progressive. In most situations, which don’t fall cleanly into one or the other, I use either.
This applies to state verbs such as hope, want and expect, for the most part. I would probably say, “I expect my elected representatives to share my values,” and not “I’m expecting,” because that’s something that’s always true. I would probably say, “Right now, I’m still expecting my party to lose narrowly, but another good poll could change my mind,” because that’s a state I’m in provisionally and temporarily. Similarly, I would say something like, “I normally go for a morning walk, but because it’s so hot, I am staying home today.” The first verb I highlighted is a recurring, habitual action, and the second is a temporary, time-limited one. (And native speakers don’t say “it *is being so hot,” even though we might use other progressive-tense verbs in the same context.) If I could add “always,” “normally” or “usually” without changing the meaning, the verb should probably be in the simple present. If I could add “for now” or “at the moment” without changing the meaning, the verb should probably be in the present progressive. In most cases, though, I could say it either way.
I probably wouldn’t say, “they’re wanting” something here. I’m not sure exactly why, but it might be a legacy of how wanting used to mean inadequate, deficient or insufficient, as in the quote, “You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting.” It’s not that uncommon to hear song lyrics like, “She’s wanting me less and I’m wanting her more,” though. (Some of the comments claim that this is different in India, where the article you cited is from.)
It is similar to "I am loving it", which was used in a commercial. Language changes over time and sometimes ungrammatical usage becomes common, but I wouldn't recommend it in newspaper articles.