After undertaking a five-day state and summit-level visit to the United States, Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to New Delhi late on Wednesday night.
Upon his arrival, the Prime Minister was welcomed by Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and ministers at the airport.
During the New York part of his trip, Prime Minister Modi delivered his maiden address at the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and had bilateral deliberations with the leaders of Sri Lanka (President Mahinda Rajapaksa), Nepal (Prime Minister Sushil Koirala), Bangladesh (Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina) and Israel (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu).
He also met former U.S President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and held parleys with Indian-American South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and American business magnate and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.
He also met representatives of a powerful Jewish delegation and addressed an over 20,000-strong crowd of Americans and Indian Americans at the Madison Square Garden.
He also met and interacted with 17 leading CEOs of American companies. The Prime Minister is believed to have pitched the India story in his interactions with the top executives, including Indian-origin PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Google chairman Eric Schmidt and Citigroup chief Michael Corbat.
Significantly, all companies already have considerable presence in India and their chiefs are believed to have expressed intention to further expand their engagements with the Indian government and enhance their business presence in the country.
Those present at the breakfast meeting also included Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, Cargill's president and CEO David W MacLennan, Caterpillar's Douglas Oberhelman, AES' Andres Gluski, Merck's Kenneth Frazier, co-founder and co-CEO of Carlyle Group David Rubenstein, Hospira's Michael Ball and Warburg Pincus's Charles Kaye.
The over one-hour-long breakfast meet was followed by one-on-one meetings with six CEOs of Boeing, KKR, BlackRock, IBM, General Electric and Goldman Sachs.
During visits to New York and Washington, the Prime Minister discussed and deliberated on a wide range of issues, including his pet objective of making India the next big manufacturing hub and foreign investment destination of the world.
He also promoted the idea of having a "Clean India", interacted with American and Indian American businessmen to re-emphasize his Make in India pitch.
In Washington, he met the who's who of the American leadership, including President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Maryland Governor Michael O'Malley.
Prime Minister Modi also visited the Martin Luther King Memorial and Lincoln Memorial in Washington and offered floral tribute to Mahatma Gandhi's statue in front of the Indian Embassy in Washington DC.
The Washington leg of the trip focused attention on larger, more complicated and serious bilateral issues of mutual interest to the two countries, including a decision to start a dialogue on security and sustainability of outer space, renewal of a science and technology agreement, recognizing the critical role that women play in society and how to enhance and acknowledge their contribution, dealing with the threat of terrorism on land and sea, enhancing the bilateral counter-terrorism partnership, discussions on launching a partnership for climate resilience, re-commitment to implement a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, to work on providing sanitation for all and to establish an Indo-US investment initiative.
The popularity of Prime Minister Modi in the United States could be gauged from the way tens and thousands of Indian Americans gathered at the Andrews Air Force Base near Washington to wish him farewell, as also the crowds that gathered on every day of his five-day visit to cheer and welcome him at all events.
