Crowd chants ‘Modi, Modi’ as India PM winds up Silicon Valley tour

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has addressed more than 350 business leaders in the U.S, urging them to help the country connect digitally while lifting people out of poverty. Modi, the first Indian leader to visit the West Coast in more than 30 years, announced at a dinner on Saturday that Google would bring wireless internet to more than 500 Indian railway stations “in a short time”. Modi also used the speech to sell technology executives on his Digital India initiative, which aims to connect thousands more Indian villages to the internet, create more tech jobs and move more services online.

(India) has moved on from scriptures to satellites. The world has started to believe that the twenty-first century belongs to India.

Prime Minister Modi said.

The first day of Modi’s West Coast visit included a visit to Tesla Motors and a meeting with the chief executive, Elon Musk, where the two discussed renewable energy, which Modi is eager to bring to India. Modi, 65, was the first Indian leader to visit the West Coast in more than 30 years. His trip followed a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who met several tech leaders in Seattle last week. Modi aimed to deepen ties with the U.S. technology sector and boost India’s digital infrastructure by promoting his “Digital India” campaign, which seeks to connect thousands more villages to the Internet. Modi is an avid user of social media and the second-most followed world leader after U.S. President Barack Obama.

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