A huge crowd awaits Narendra Modi, on his first trip to the United States as leader of India, the most populous democracy in the world. More than 18 thousand people - rock star numbers - will attend his speech at Madison Square Garden in New York, and his greeting in Hindi, addressed to the Indian diaspora in the United States, will be broadcast on large screens scattered throughout the main American cities and, of course, from Indian television.
Indians residing in the United States expect a lot from a visit from a leader who until recently was disliked by American authorities; the welcome bestowed on Modi therefore has the flavor of a revenge, a way of underlining the weight that Indians have in the economic and social life not only of the United States, but of all the states affected by the diaspora.
“Both Indians living in India and those residing abroad” says Dinesh Patel, head of a ward at Massachusetts General Hospital, “are asking Modi's new administration to decisively fight bureaucratic burdens and know how to put people and their problems”. “Among the Indians living in the United States,” Patel continues, “there is great excitement about Modi's arrival. Narendra comes here to let the US know what India really is”.
The Indian diaspora in the United States numbers over three million people, constituting 1% of the US population, and is on average highly educated. “The Indians who come here are generally very ambitious and enterprising,” observes Mike Narula, founder, president and CEO of a Long Island-based telecommunications company.
Speaking of the difficulties that his company has encountered trying to operate in India, Narula forcefully underlines the need for Modi to make a clean sweep of all those "red tapes" - an expression used in the English-speaking world to indicate the lethal grip of the bureaucratic grip - which bridle the business world. Modi's journey therefore begins under the best auspices, but on the margins of this success, tensions, particularly on the issues of trade and espionage, remain.
Washington moved late and tried to establish good relations with the Indian leader only when the victory of the nationalists was now a certainty.
