I asked a Turkish shopkeeper in Singapore, two years ago, what he thought of Recep Erdogan, the Turkish president. He blinked and laughed and said, "Erdogan is not as big a crazy as Trump." The shopkeeper's derisive remark popped out of my memory as I heard the news that the American President Donald Trump, whose trip to India begins today, will hold a roadshow and address an expected crowd of 1.25 lakh in Ahmedabad. Such a mammoth gathering undeniably reflects Prime Minister Narendra Modi's adulatory following in Gujarat and the Bharatiya Janata Party's formidable organisational skills.

Yet the Indian, unlike the Turkish shopkeeper, is quite approving of Trump, which is testified to by the Pew Research Centre's most recent survey, released in January, of the opinion in 32 countries regarding the United States leadership. Against Trump's global disapproval rating of 64 per cent, 56 per cent of Indians said they were confident he would do the "right thing regarding world affairs" and only 15 per cent said he would not; the rest did not have an opinion. Trump's approval rating in India, significantly, has grown by 16 percentage points over what was registered in 2017.