On Thursday, Joe Biden will meet India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on an official state visit in Washington DC which comes packaged with a South Lawn welcome, a state dinner, and the rare honor of an address to a joint session of Congress. As India takes center stage as the world’s most populous country, an ascending economy, and a tech and innovation haven, the Biden Administration hopes it can enlist them as an ally to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.
Despite all his rhetoric about the struggle between democracy and autocracy, Biden will spare no expense for a leader presiding over democratic backsliding in the world’s most populous nation. To some, but not all observers, it may seem that Modi’s government has eroded democracy in a way not seen since India’s slip into dictatorship in the 1970s.
If Modi’s government continues down its current track, India will fall into the same category as longtime U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, as well as places like the Philippines and other countries that are far from perfect democracies. Being locked in an uneasy standoff with China, requires every partner available and willing to cooperate. The White House certainly sees the Modi visit as a critical moment to cement a relationship with one of the leading so-called “swing states” that are not firmly on one side or another what Moscow and Beijing are doing.
But aside from that, economic talks will be critical as well.
“The U.S. needs India as much as India needs the U.S.,” said Happymon Jacob to the New York Times, who teaches Indian foreign policy at the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University. “The power play in the wake of the Ukraine war and India’s stance drove home the point in D.C. and other world capitals that New Delhi can’t be pushed around and that it must be engaged. For the U.S., India has become an indispensable power.”
It seems that casting the world as a binary between democracy and autocracy is too rigid to duck criticism. Actions, after all, speak louder than words.
