Modi State VisitModi Promotes India to Congress After Meeting With Biden

The visuals from Washington played into what Mr. Modi has already set as one of his main campaign themes: tying India’s rise as a major economic power with his rise as a global statesman.

“The scale, the splendor, the warmth,” one headline enthused. Others, such as “Modi’s breakthrough diplomacy” and “Watch history being made,” flooded Indians’ homes Thursday evening as Mr. Modi walked the red carpet to meet President Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden.

“Their body language reflected that they were incomplete without one another,” one news anchor said as visuals of the two leaders shaking hands played on the screen.

Mr. Modi has carefully crafted his relationship with traditional news outlets, using a mix of incentives and pressure tactics to get most of them on his side.

When uncomfortable issues arise — a state election loss, an ethnic war resulting in weeks of unrest and bloodshed in a northeastern state, a deadly three-way train crash — they are quick to deflect blame away from Mr. Modi.

And when a major moment like the state visit to Washington comes, they are happy to join in the cheerleading — a factor that, combined with how Mr. Modi’s party has mastered social media to take his messages viral, helps explain Mr. Modi’s talent for shaping politics to his benefit.

The coverage of Mr. Modi’s visit to the United States is a political boon, setting the agenda in his favor before he launches himself full-time into campaign mode for parliamentary elections next year.

While many channels showed the White House dinner menu ad nauseam, calling it “dinner for friendship,” some others waxed eloquent about the importance of the gifts Mr. Modi had carried for the Bidens. One anchor declared of a military deal between the two countries: “The biggest defense deal. The hearts of enemies will burn!”

And when, at his news conference with Mr. Biden, Mr. Modi skirted a question on India’s grim human rights record and suppression of free speech, one Hindi-language news anchor came to his rescue on her show, saying he had “very bravely” faced the question.

The Biden administration did not announce any direct U.S. funding for India. But senior administration officials said the governments had agreed on a plan they believed would encourage banks to give loans for electric buses, which are seen as a high-risk investment in India.

India aims to deploy 50,000 public electric buses over the next five years. The plan includes establishing three months of delayed payments so that companies can secure loans at lower rates. Biden administration officials said the payment security plan will help underwrite at least 10,000 electric buses.

The United States and India also announced a separate investment plan that officials said will be joined by private companies and others that aims to lower the cost of capital and attract international private finance for large-scale renewable energy projects. The joint announcement billed it a “first of its kind, multibillion dollar” package but no specific dollar figure from the United States or any other country or organization was announced.

For the Biden administration, helping India expand its defense manufacturing tracks with its efforts to further isolate Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. India has long relied on Russia for a majority of its military equipment, and any increase in manufacturing capability at home or diversification of its arms sources would lessen its purchases from Russia.

For India, the United States’ latest efforts to improve defense ties is in line with its attempt to grow its domestic manufacturing and reduce its reliance on foreign partners.

India’s military forces have stuck to most of the same weapons systems that they began using during the Cold War. India was neutral but tended to side more closely with the Soviet Union. Indian officials have said their dependence on Russian weapons over the decades was simply out of necessity: The U.S. long held back on sales of military equipment to India, and that has only started to change over the past two decades. As a result, the Indian armed forces still use equipment of Soviet design and specifications. Parts cannot be swapped out, piecemeal, for American-standard weaponry. In some rare cases, as with India’s use of Lockheed’s C-130 Hercules transport plane, a stand-alone American platform can be soldered onto the existing framework. But for the most part, the systems are not interoperable.

Technical challenges aside, one thing that the defense road map seems to be addressing is the reluctance that has kept the world’s biggest two democracies from seeing eye-to-eye. They have a long history of disagreement, over matters including Pakistan, Iraq and United Nations votes. But tensions with China are bringing them to the same table, especially after Indian and Chinese troops started clashing along their Himalayan border in 2020.

Australia and Japan, the other members of the fledgling security bloc aimed at containing China around the “Indo-Pacific region” (as the Americans renamed it, to include the Indian Ocean, in 2018), have long-established military partnerships and even alliances with the United States.

The “Roadmap for U.S.-India Defense Industrial Cooperation,” published earlier this month, illustrates the American goal of making India into something more like a formidable ally — and the Indian goal of beefing up its own capabilities. They find common cause in trying to “cooperatively produce the systems required to meet India’s military modernization objectives.”

But India’s ties with Russia are deep and cannot be undone quickly or with good will alone. Ajai Shukla, a retired colonel with the Indian Army who writes extensively about defense, is skeptical that America will find any durable role to play. He recalls how Alexander Kadakin, a Russian ambassador to India, liked to tell the story about visiting the Indian space centers and feeling more at home there than he did in Russia — because so many of the scientists were speaking Russian.

While a family-centric image is often a political selling point in the United States, in India, many top leaders — the prime minister among them — are proudly unattached, to make a statement that no other commitment can come between them and the nation.

Work-life balance? Not for politicians in the world’s largest democracy, who stay busy attending to the needs of 1.4 billion people and compete with one another in their declarations of sleep deprivation. (Mr. Modi clocks only four hours of slumber a night, his aides say.)

“Every moment of my time, every pore of my body, is only for my countrymen,” the prime minister said in 2019 after winning re-election.

India may seem a strange place for expressions of solitary political devotion. Here, family comes before self and arranged marriages keep families together. Nearly a third of new members of Parliament have had a relative in elected office or a prominent party position, according to one study.

But in a country tired of official corruption, with lawmakers enriching themselves and their families and ensuring political futures for their children, many voters have come to believe that single politicians are less likely to steal.

“The very strong perception,” said Ajoy Bose, a journalist and author, “is that they have no personal interest. That they belong to the people.”

India’s expanding economy is already in some ways a star. It displaced Britain as the world’s fifth biggest economy last year, and is on track to outpace both Germany and Japan in the decade ahead. The value of the companies listed on its stock markets are worth $3.3 trillion, more than ever before, and Mr. Modi’s government has tackled some challenges that have long stymied Indian growth, including rickety infrastructure and banks burdened with bad loans.

Foreign investors have taken notice, especially with much of the world’s economy looking shaky. A string of high-tech, high-value companies have flocked to India this year, with Apple and possibly Tesla making it known that they see a big future here.

But there are ominous signs, too. While foreign investment has been pouring in and the government has spent heavily on roads, energy and other public goods, private Indian investment has shrunk in proportion to the whole. And the incomes of average Indians have hardly budged in recent years, with most of the country still dependent on farming and many others working in jobs that barely keep them fed.

Indian and American policymakers and businessmen have been trying to devise ways that the United States could help India meet the moment — through a combination of trade, technology transfer, labor mobility and integration with global supply chains.

India’s trade with the United States is worth about $190 billion now, Atul Keshap, a former American ambassador to New Delhi who is president of the U.S.-India Business Council, said in an online discussion this week. It should soon be worth $500 billion, he argued, on par with the size of the U.S. trade relationships with only a few others: Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China.

The relationship could be boosted by the two countries’ altered relationships with China, not only in geopolitics, but also in civilian business and trade. American companies and political leaders are eyeing India — with its 1.4 billion people, same as China — as the sole country fit to shoulder some of the immense weight that China has carried in the world economy. “It’s a lot easier to invest $100 million in a country with 1.4 billion people than in a country with 40 million people,” said Cate Ambrose, chief executive of the Global Private Capital Association, an industry group focused on emerging markets.

With much of the world’s economy hindered by the war in Ukraine, inflation and other headwinds, the Indian economy’s power increasingly stands out. This week, Airbus, a European airplane-maker, signed deal to sell 500 aircraft to IndiGo, a low-cost Indian carrier founded in 2006. It is the kind of contract that American leaders dream of winning for the U.S. airplane giant Boeing.

Indians’ median incomes may be stagnant, even as gains made by wealthier people have brought the per capita income up to $1,200 a year. But the room for growth makes the country attractive as a consumer market. Last year, for example, 123 million passengers flew between India’s airports. The government’s goal is to reach 1 billion by 2040.

A new emphasis in the U.S.-India relationship is high-value manufacturing, and an initiative on emerging technologies has brought together government agencies from both countries to speed up cooperation on microchips, satellites and artificial intelligence. The White House argues that these projects, which sidestep bilateral trade negotiations, should help foster “resilient supply chains” for both countries.

“These are not just dinners,” said Matthew Costello, a senior historian for the White House Historical Association. “There’s a lot more that goes into them in terms of planning, in terms of invitations, and a lot is geopolitics, a lot is foreign policy.”

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, to the White House in 1959, he was focused on thawing Cold War tensions after the launch of Sputnik. Before President Barack Obama hosted President Xi Jinping of China, the two countries negotiated for weeks over an arms control accord for cyberspace. President Ulysses S. Grant held the first state dinner for King David Kalakaua of Hawaii to strengthen trade.

The dinners can also provide a window into the regions the United States is prioritizing — and the ones being neglected.

European and Latin American nations have received the most state dinner invitations, while sub-Saharan African and Southeast Asian nations have received the fewest, according to a study by the Center for Global Development that tracked 40 years of state visits from the Carter to Obama administrations.

Out of 160 dinners, just 15 were with guests from sub-Saharan Africa, the study found.

“To be a foreign leader and not get the state dinner, you feel snubbed,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “It’s often the smaller countries in the world who don’t get them, but when you’re dealing with big power players like India, it’s a must.”

The invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was not without controversy. Mr. Biden has made the global struggle between democracy and autocracy a key part of his foreign policy, but Mr. Modi’s government has cracked down on dissent in ways that have raised fears of authoritarianism.

Still, the White House views the world’s most populous nation as a potentially welcome addition to its coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as a crucial player in its growing economic competition with China.

The other nations whose leaders received the official invitation to dine with Mr. Biden — France and South Korea — have also been partners in Mr. Biden’s effort to confront Russia.

The state dinner can sometimes be a means of smoothing over hiccups among allies.

Mr. Biden hosted President Emmanuel Macron of France for the first state visit of his administration, more than a year after the two nations feuded over a deal to provide Australians with nuclear-powered submarines. Mr. Biden invited Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia, for a state visit after he canceled a trip there in May because of negotiations over the debt ceiling with congressional Republicans.

“There are multiple times we see presidents using these visits to not just describe immediate concerns, but also to talk through short-term and long-term solutions,” Mr. Costello said.

Domestic politics often hang over the dinner, as well.

Julianna Smoot, Mr. Obama’s social secretary from 2010 to 2011, said she made sure to invite the often-feuding majority and minority leaders of the Senate, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, to state dinners for a rare détente. Governors and mayors who had previously expressed support or campaigned for the president were likely to make the list. And the primary donors of presidential campaigns could expect an invitation, particularly if they had business connections to the visiting nation.

“They didn’t become donors in politics because they were slouches,” Ms. Smoot said. “A lot of them do international work and have an interest” in attending the dinner.

The prospect of strengthening political partnerships overseas and within U.S. borders was usually enough to get a quick response from invitees.

“You’re supposed to say yes,” Ms. Smoot said of responding to the invitations, “unless there’s a death in the family.”