Obama's Visit to India Spotlights Both Prosperity and Dire Need

Nov. 6, 2010— -- Sanjay Garg was among the Indians crowding the stores here to buy gold jewelry and other precious metals on Dhanteras, the first day of a five-day festival during which Hindus pray for prosperity and good health and splurge on coins and baubles.

But the young fashion designer's good luck came in black and weighed 3,200 pounds.

Picking up his new, Indian-made Chevrolet Cruze at a Delhi showroom crowded with buyers keen to mark the special day, Garg, 30, considers the $25,000 price tag very affordable.

India, at least in parts, is booming. "We don't need to serve the white people anymore," Garg says of Raw Mango, his high-end, traditional-clothing business. "Before, everything went for export, but now we can focus on our own domestic market."

India is the first stop Saturday of a 10-day, four-nation Asia swing by President Obama, who said Thursday that he hopes to open up markets to U.S. goods in Asia. He'll find here a more prosperous nation than in past years — but one that is concerned about terror threats and how the United States handles them. His other stops are South Korea, Indonesia and Japan.

Two-thirds of Indians have a favorable view of the USA, a Pew Research Center opinion poll reported last month. But businessmen are alarmed by Obama's perceived opposition to outsourcing, a major revenue-earner for India's surging information technology sector. And then there's the Pakistan factor.

"I want America and India to be closer than America is to Pakistan now," says Sanjay Rana, sales manager at a lights shop crowded with Diwali festival shoppers on Chandni Chowk, the chaotic heart of Old Delhi.

"Pakistan is not a good country," says Rana, 48, of the neighbor and old rival that the Obama administration recently awarded $2 billion for anti-terrorism efforts.