The troops are deployed in the city parks, the carefully selected venues have been repainted and the specially trained monkey-catchers are at their posts.
Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive in India tomorrow, the fifth US president to visit India.
Obama and officials have been careful to underline the benefits of the trip for the US economy. "The primary purpose is to take a bunch of US companies and open up markets so that we can sell in Asia, in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and we can create jobs here in the United States of America," Obama said yesterday.
Officials also hope the trip – the longest Obama has undertaken as president – will reinforce ties with "major democracies that share ... values" and mitigate Indian fears of being marginalised as America seeks a way out of Afghanistan.
Obama will land in Mumbai, the Indian commercial capital, and will make his first public statement at a memorial to the civilians killed in an attack by Islamist militants from the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba group on targets in the city in November 2008.
The president and his wife, Michelle, will stay at the Taj Mahal hotel, which was badly damaged in the attack. All 570 rooms have been booked, with an entire floor set aside for the president. The hotel's seafront has been a high-security zone for several days.
"Going [to Mumbai] first will send a very strong signal on US solidarity against terrorism and will help reassure India," said C Raja Mohan, a respected Indian foreign affairs analyst.
One point of recent friction has been question marks over the extent to which US agencies shared intelligence with Indian counterparts about David Headley, an American-Pakistani drug trafficker turned militant who carried out surveillance for the Mumbai attacks. Delhi is also concerned by the flow of aid, subsidies and military technology to Pakistan's military, as well as the role its hostile neighbour is playing in Afghanistan.
"If the price to secure some incremental Pakistani co-operation [in facilitating the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan] is to go slow on a blockbuster strategic alliance with India then [the American attitude is] 'so be it'," Ashok Malik, a political commentator, noted in Hindustan Times newspaper last week.
While Indian officials and diplomats are looking for signs of a new US strategic vision for South Asia giving them a central role counterbalancing China, US officials have restricted themselves to noting the "emergence" of India and its middle class and observing that "regional dynamics will change fast" over coming years.
Obama's entourage is crammed with top officials from departments of commerce and agriculture, and contains 250 prospective investors. In Mumbai the president will meet leading businessmen and visit a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi.
In Delhi, in addition to a visit to a Mughal-era Islamic tomb, an address to parliament and a state dinner, there will be a series of meetings to finalise, it is hoped, multibillion-dollar defence deals and other commercial agreements. India is expected to spend at least $52bn (£33bn) on new fighters, artillery systems, transport planes and helicopters in coming years.
US officials are hoping for measures ranging from reforms of ownership regulations to changes in intellectual property law, which would ease access to Indian markets.
The Indians want restrictions on the transfer of dual-use technology lifted and an explicit statement backing India's bid for permanent membership of the UN security council. The former is considered possible by analysts, the latter extremely unlikely.
On a visit in 2006, George Bush controversially gave formal blessing for India's civil nuclear power programme. Few expect the same kind of breakthrough this time. "High on show, short on substance," said a headline in the Daily News Analysis last week.
The Guardian
