Prime Minister Modi is all set to welcome the Vance family, and more as an American family with roots in India rather than just as the family of the Vice-President of the US. From the start of Modi 3.0, with the unerring calculation of a compass, PM Modi understood that the key to Superpower India was a close relationship with the US. And that a key figure in the US was the young Vice-President and his telegenic wife. As for Vance, In the days before he began his astonishingly fast ascent up the ladder of politics, he wrote a book, “Hillbilly Elegy”, which merits being read by people across the world, as indeed it has been in India. It is an autobiography written in the most honest of colours. No effort was made to conceal or to embellish the milestones in his life. It tells of a young lad born into a single parent family back of the beyond, hillbilly country.
It describes in stark detail the addiction to alcohol of his mother, something which she subsequently put behind her with courage and endurance. Vance himself showed great tenacity by being admitted to the US Marine Corps and graduating from Ohio State University in law before winning a scholarship to Yale, the university founded by Elihu Yale and named after himself. It was there that she met and afterwards married Usha Chilukuri, a California girl who excelled in her studies from the start under the care of a loving and protective family. He writes of Usha and the way she helped him through patches of self-doubt. There was not a scintilla of doubt in Usha about the quality of J.D. Vance and she helped him get over his patches of self-doubt, until Vance emerged as the winner he always was. It was a book written in the way Giles Lytton Strachey wrote his biography of Queen Elizabeth I and her platonic and ultimately ruined relationship with the Earl of Essex, and he titled his masterpiece with the names of the pair. In a way, the autobiography of J.D. Vance bears comparison with the book by Strachey, for its filigree detail and its effort at telling the truth about the two.
Fortunately for the two and for the US, the relationship between Usha and J.D. Vance did not fall apart, but endured. Her importance in his life was underlined by the fact that President Trump chose her to deliver the address at the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC) introducing her husband.
That speech proved an inspired act by Trump, for it cut to pieces the trolling that he was a racist. Trump called Usha the smartest woman he had met, not at all as farthest from the truth as his or her detractors claimed. By several of his top policy choices, a list that includes the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard or his choice as Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) Jay Bhattacharya. In 2025, Trump did not make the mistake he made in 2017 by choosing several Cabinet officials who sought to sabotage his unique blueprint from the start. He chose those whose views aligned with his, and the difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is palpable. Trump 2.0 was as unique as another underestimated President, Ronald Reagan And now we come to Narendra Modi, who has been the central figure in politics in India since 2011. By 2013, it was clear that he would be the next Prime Minister of India, the successor to Manmohan Singh, who perhaps erred in agreeing to a second term, where he smudged his legacy of the first five years of his decade as the Prime Minister of India. PM Modi sees a meeting of minds with Vance, in a way which advances the interests of both of the largest democracies in the world, as a pathway to the US administration understanding his global vision, especially that concerning the Indo-Pacific. This has replaced the Atlantic as the centrepoint of geopolitical gravity, and the threat to the democracies in Cold War 2.0 is as real as was for quite some time the threat to the values of the Atlanticists as Cold War 1.0 was.
During their visit, Usha and J.D., together with their children, will better understand the unique fabric of Bharat, i.e. India. During Trump 2.0 and Modi 3.0, several key waterways of the world that could serve as chokepoints in a kinetic war have switched from Chinese to Indian hands. There is no doubt that President Trump is serious about ensuring the success of the US side over the Chinese side during the trade war now being witnessed between the two superpowers. A perusal of his speeches will testify that so is J.D. Vance, as also Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In such a conflict, India could play a helpful role not just by its armed forces but by the potential of the country to emerge as the best choice for industrial and service units decoupling from China. Ensuring that the Trump administration fully understands such potential is a key objective during the visit of Usha and J.D. Vance. Given the thoroughness of the preparations being made for the visit of the Vance family, it is a safe bet that this would be fully understood by a very keen mind, that of Vice-President of the US J.D. Vance.