'Trump got his wall': Indian city rushes to beautify before visit
“World’s largest democracy meets world’s oldest democracy” reads the welcome daubed in bright letters across a newly built wall in Ahmedabad. It will be a fleeting trip – lasting less than 36 hours – but Donald Trump’s arrival in India on Monday on his first official visit has prompted a frenzied, costly and controversial beautification drive by authorities.
In Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, where the US president will fly on Monday to attend a huge rally with the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, dubbed “Namaste Trump”, this 2 metre (6ft) wall has been a particular point of contention. Quickly erected this week, it serves to hide the stretch of slums along the route due to be taken by Trump’s motorcade.
The outrage at the project was coupled with some amusement in India, with many noting that “Trump finally got his wall”.
Eviction notices were also served this week to more than 40 slum dwellers in the vicinity of the new cricket stadium where Monday’s rally will be held, and street vendors were removed from the motorcade route, destroying their livelihoods. All stray dogs, cats and monkeys have been cleared.
The irony of the climate science denier Trump arriving in Gujarat, a state already suffering some of the worst effects of the climate crisis including mass water shortages and drastically rising temperatures in its cities, was not lost on environmental activists in Ahmedabad.
The activist Rohit Prajapati said some of the beautification measures being rolled out for Trump were environmentally detrimental. Trees are
being chopped down for security purposes, and fresh water is being temporarily released into the Sabarmati River in Gujurat and the Yamuna River in Agra, where Trump will visit the Taj Mahal, to create the illusion that these usually toxic, sewage-ridden and smelly rivers are flowing normally.
Prajapati said police surveillance of activists had increased in recent days to try to stop protests during Trump’s visit. “It is almost like we are under house arrest,” he said. “For the past few days I am under constant surveillance and everywhere I go they follow us. They can’t arrest us because that would make the news so instead they are terrorising our neighbours, family, to create an atmosphere of intimidation.”
Residents have also alleged that the increased security restrictions have led to increased police harassment of the Muslim community in Ahmedabad.
The adulation India typically shows US presidents is likely to play well to Trump’s ego, while Modi, grappling with a huge backlash against his BJP government’s new citizenship law and one of India’s biggest periods of unrest in 40 years, will hope to bolster his domestic image.
Trump has been retweeting Indian accounts of the grandiose welcome that awaits him, including Modi’s farfetched claim that 7 million people will come out to greet him in Ahmedabad – almost the population of the entire city. More realistic estimates say around 100,000 people are likely to line the streets, while the stadium where the rally will be held seats 120,000.
Tanvi Madan, the director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution thinktank, said: “In some ways, American presidents go to India to feel loved.”
Yet it may not be entirely seamless. The two countries have come to blows over trade tariffs over the past year and Trump has already made it clear there will be no major trade deal signed between the two countries on this visit.
“I think partly because they have not been able to get to a trade deal, Prime Minister Modi will make an extra effort in delivering something else to President Trump which is great optics,” said Madan.
There will be some substance underlying the spectacle. US-Indian security cooperation has flourished in recent years, largely because of shared suspicion of China and a mutual desire to keep the Pacific open for free trade. Trump and Modi are likely to sign a deal over advanced helicopters at some point during the trip.
On the journey to India, or on the way back, Trump is also expected to make a detour to Afghanistan to sign a deal with the Taliban.
There is always the risk of surprise with Trump. Modi was visibly bewildered when the president offered to broker a peace deal with Pakistan over Kashmir, the sort of outside intervention India has resolutely opposed.
But Bruce Riedel, who travelled to India with Bill Clinton as a special adviser in 2000, suggested that the prime minister could reasonably expect not to be embarrassed by his visitor over his actions in Kashmir and the erosion of democratic norms in Indian public life.
“The good news for India is that the last person in the world likely to raise any of these issues is Donald Trump,” he said.