How will Narenda Modi shape India’s role in the world?

The meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday between U.S. President Barack Obama and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi can best be described as a getting-to-know-you visit.

Modi is leading a country he promised to bring into the 21st century — a new India that offers opportunity and prosperity to all. But India still has a long way to go. Hundreds of millions of people live in poverty, unemployment is high, and infrastructure lags far behind the needs of the world’s largest democracy.

Over the weekend Modi was greeted at a reception at New York’s Madison Square Garden like a rock star. Thousands of Indian-Americans attended to hear his vision of what a new India will be. “All the old laws that have become obsolete. I have taken the responsibility to destroy all of them,” he told the crowd in New York.

There are 2.8 million Indian-Americans in the United States — one of the most productive and affluent diaspora communities in the nation.

Scenes like the one at Madison Square Garden are meant to show Washington that Modi has a lot of support in the U.S. as well as at home.

But even far from home, controversy follows him. Outside the Garden was a vocal group of opponents who are wary of his Hindu nationalist roots and are concerned about his attitude toward India’s minority Muslim and Sikh populations.

Since winning office in May, Modi has been busy, telling the New York audience he has not yet “taken even a 15-minute vacation.”

Along with hopes for change, the Indian stock market has surged, its $15 trillion economy is poised for growth, and Modi has increased his role on the world stage. And India is now part of a huge new bank for lending to developing nations — imagined as an alternative to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Modi arrived in the U.S. seeking investment partners. On Monday he met with the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Google and Boeing, to name a few, and offered an open market and hungry consumers.

The U.S. has long seen India as a bulwark in Asia, a regional counterweight to China, India’s powerhouse neighbor. But with Modi’s promises of change — and the needs that come with it — the question is whether the U.S. stands to share, with China, all the new India has to offer.

Will Modi deliver on his promise to rejuvenate India’s economy?

Will the United States and its corporations play a major role in Modi’s efforts?

How will U.S. concerns about China’s growing influence affect U.S.-Indian relations?