Mr. Sullivan insisted that Mr. Biden was not betraying his commitment to democracy by hosting Mr. Modi so lavishly and said the president would raise democracy and human rights concerns, albeit diplomatically. Mr. Biden, Mr. Sullivan said, will “try to indicate where we stand without coming across as somehow talking down to or lecturing another country that has a proud history of sovereignty.”
The president will do so, evidently, without the traditional joint news conference that he holds with many visiting leaders. While no official schedule has been released, Indian officials have resisted their American counterparts’ efforts to seek such a session, since Mr. Modi does not hold news conferences even on his own soil and has no interest in subjecting himself to questions from American journalists.
Mr. Modi will arrive at the White House on Wednesday evening for a private dinner with Mr. Biden, who will just be returning from a three-day swing through California. The president then will formally welcome Mr. Modi on Thursday morning with a pomp-filled arrival ceremony on the South Lawn. After meetings during the day, the two will reconvene at a state dinner in the evening, only the third that Mr. Biden has held during his presidency after events for the leaders of France and South Korea, two strong democracies.
Mr. Modi arrives as India has just surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation and feels it is coming into its own on the global stage. Now the planet’s fifth-largest economy, India has a young work force, a strong technology industry, a growing consumer market and barely-scratched potential as a manufacturing hub.
India’s trade with the United States has reached about $190 billion a year, and Atul Keshap, a former American envoy to New Delhi now serving as the president of the U.S.-India Business Council, has forecast that it soon could be worth $500 billion. Only Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China are in that league.
While many of the strategic goals of the United States and India have been reached, Mr. Keshap said in an online discussion, something still “needs to give a boost to these commercial and business ties, because that’s the real muscle and sinew of a relationship.”
That something might be China, as American companies and political leaders eye India as a country fit to shoulder some of the immense weight that China carries in the world’s economy. With 6 percent growth or better expected this year, and with much of the rest of the world economy hindered by the Ukraine war and inflation, India is making itself felt to both buyers and sellers everywhere.
