India can't wait to see Trump back in the White House

The incoming US president and India’s prime minister get along well, though some friction is inevitable.

- Ravi Velloor

Midway through his Nov 6 victory speech at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald Trump paused his words to acknowledge a section of the audience that had started to shout, "Modi, Modi..." "He is a great guy," said the once and future president of the United States, referring to India's prime minister, and smiling benignly at his admirers. "We're going to do some great things together." Across Asia, leaders of many countries, especially those with outwardly oriented economies, are fretting about what is to come with the Trump presidency - by way of tariffs, a retrenchment from globalisation, and perhaps long-enduring security commitments. India's leadership is relatively sanguine.

The Modi government is eagerly looking forward to seeing Trump back in the White House, after a testy relationship with the Biden administration ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022 an assault that New Delhi refused to condemn. Latterly, those difficulties have included the embarrassment New Delhi suffered from accusations by US law enforcement that Indian officers were involved in a thwarted plan to assassinate an India-born Sikh separatist who has dual American and Canadian nationality.

More recently, US federal prosecutors have indicted the billionaire Gautam Adani, Mr Modi's staunchest ally in the business community, for paying millions in bribes to key Indian politicians to secure power contracts on favourable terms.

While the Adani group denies the allegations, Mr Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party has accused the US State Department and the American "deep state" of colluding with the "clear objective to destabilise India" - a phrase redolent of the 1970s when New Delhi, then a close security partner of the Soviet Union, tended to look upon American diplomacy towards the South Asian region with intense scepticism.