Final preparations are afoot to welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a diaspora rally on Sunday where more than 16,000 people will gather at the Nassau Coliseum.
The program is sandwiched between his participation in the Quad summit convened by US President Joe Biden in Delaware on Saturday 21 Sept, and his address to the United Nations ‘Summit of the Future’ on Monday 23 September.
The organisers were overwhelmed by the number of people who wanted to attend the event billed as “Modi and US, Progress Together”, according to Avinash Gupta, the President of the tri-state chapter of the Federation of Indian Associations (FIA).
More than 25,000 applications were received for the event and the organisers had to winnow it down to about 16,000 to fit the venue, he said.
A cultural programme will be held before Prime Minister Modi’s speech.
Gupta said that 159 applications were received for participating in the cultural programme and 15 were selected.
Priority was given to children’s performances and these will reflect the diversity of India’s culture, he said.
Because the event is taking place only 44 days before the US election, there won’t be any politicians on the stage, though some may come as audience participants, he said.
The Quad summit is being hosted at President Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
The bilateral meetings between leaders will also be held here.
The ‘personal‘ aspect to it all, this time round, will also be seen in a visit to Biden’s school for ‘an intimate‘ dinner.
Later, Prime Minister Modi will address the ‘Summit of the Future‘ at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 23, the theme of which is ‘Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow’ this time.
The Summit, according to the UN, aims to bring world leaders to chart the course of the world organisation to “accelerate efforts to meet our existing international commitments and take concrete steps to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities.”
“Following the request of the US side to host the Quad Summit this year, India has agreed to host the next Quad Summit in 2025. At the Quad Summit, the leaders will review the progress achieved by the Quad over the last one year and set the agenda for the year ahead to assist the countries of the Indo-Pacific region in meeting their development goals and aspirations,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a release.
Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese of Australia and Fumio Kishida of Japan will represent their countries at the summit of the four-member group formally known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
The leaders are expected to adopt the ‘Pact of the Future’, a visionary document that will include a Global Digital Compact that deals with both dangers and opportunities of technology.
“The Prime Minister is also expected to interact with thought leaders and other stakeholders active in the India-US bilateral landscape,” the MEA added.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has said he will meet “fantastic man” Prime Minister Narendra Modi next week when he visits the US.
“He happens to be coming to meet me next week, and Modi, he’s fantastic. I mean, fantastic, man,” Trump said at a town hall meeting in Flint, Michigan.
The former president mentioned the meeting with PM Modi while talking about trade imbalances and how he would hike duties on imports from India through a Trump Reciprocal Tax Act.
He called India “a very big abuser” of the tariffs system because of the high duties it imposes on some imports from the US and said New Delhi “is very tough” in negotiations.
Listing India among them, he said that countries the US was trading with are “the sharpest people. They’re not a little bit backward … they’re at the top of their game, and they use it against us”.
Even though they had differences on trade, PM Modi and Trump developed strong personal ties.
Before the 2020 election that Trump lost, PM Modi appeared alongside him at a community event billed as “Howdy Modi”, in Houston in 2019 and, in a play of his own election slogan, cheered him, “Abki baar, Trump sarkar” ie ‘This time round, a Trump government.‘ Whether a similar endorsement comes from Modi this time round, remains to be seen.
That and a spectacle for Trump with over 1,00,000 people in Ahmedabad in 2020 became an embarrassment when Biden defeated him, but Biden and PM Modi brushed it aside and further developed ties between their nations.
READ MORE: As the Quad meets again, is it all optics and no substance?
