Great Expectations from the President of US

Barack Obama's historic visit to India, which kicks off today in Mumbai, is generating more excitement and heat than any Bollywood blockbuster being released this Diwali. Be it the political babus, the Page 3 crowd, or the aam janata, the US President's trip is the hot topic of discussion in buses and trains, boardrooms and bedrooms.

While the Mumbai police goes bananas over security issues and cordoning of roads, a couple of senior ministers in Mantralaya are crying foul about having to provide pan card details, and celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor are tweeting or fielding interviews on what they expect from the US’s first African-American President. Brouhaha is all around. And for good reason.

Consider this: How often has the President of the most powerful country in the world come calling to Indian shores (and there have been 44 in all)? It was only after Y2K and Bill Clinton's visit in 2000 that Indo-US relations began to climb on the growth graph.

Prior to that, only three men from the White House made trips to India - Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959, Richard Nixon in 1969 and Jimmy Carter in 1978. Most were actually stopovers on their forays into Asia (Nixon's trip lasted a mere 23 hours).

None of the visits, with the possible exception of Eisenhower (who did his bit to strengthen Indian-American friendship), were significant from an Indian perspective. Carter, who professed goodwill for India, was, in fact, caught on microphone, delivering a rather curt message to the then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, over India's nuclear ambitions.

Worse still, most US Presidents between the 1960s and 1990s chose to give India a miss. And that includes big names like John F. Kennedy (1961-1963), Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969), Gerald Ford (1974-1977), Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), and George H. W. Bush (1989-1993). India didn’t fit in their plans then.

A slew of media houses, academics and knowledge gurus may smugly discuss India's potential of becoming a great power, particularly in the last decade or so. But if truth be told, it wasn't until the turn of the millennium that the US — the only country considered to be a superpower — started to take India very seriously.

The good times for India really began when Clinton became only the fourth US President to visit India. That was after a 22 year hiatus! His five-day itinerary, which was crammed with visits to Agra, Delhi, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Mumbai remains the longest by a US President to date. As a matter of fact, it was his visit to Andhra Pradesh that went a long way in trumpeting India's arrival on the IT platform.

Six years later, his successor, George W. Bush, arrived in India, at a time when Indian Muslims were staging vociferous protests against the Iraq War. And though he may not have won many popularity contests (remember the stream of Bushisms making the rounds on email and SMS?), it was indeed Bush Jr. who enabled India to enter the world of civil nuclear commerce, easily making him the best US President from an Indian standpoint.

Now, as Barack Obama arrives in the land of the Mahatma, India's expectations will naturally run high. What is even more momentous is the fact that he is only the second US President (after Nixon) to visit India in his first term in office — a strong indicator of the importance he accords to India in the global arena, and its steady rise as a powerhouse.

It must be remembered that Obama specifically chose Manmohan Singh as the first state guest of his Presidency in November last year. And in their numerous meetings that followed after that, Obama has been warming up nicely to the Indian Prime Minister.

As the two leaders meet again in New Delhi, several questions are bound to be raised. Will the US take note of India's strategic concerns in the region? Can we count on unequivocal support on India's cry for candidature in the UN Security Council? Will India get access to dual-use technologies from the US? Will the US allow India to play a bigger role in Afghanistan? And the topic of terrorism is bound to get dragged into high-level talks in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.

Says R.K. Chopra, Secretary General, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce: "The visit of President Obama has heightened expectations of business and industry from India and the US on many counts. One can legitimately expect a continuation of the Focus India Policy followed by his predecessors."

Whatever the outcome, one thing's for certain. Obama sees India as a key partner of the US, not only in Asia but across the globe. Either which way, the answers should unravel over the next four days.