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Asia Times (17 February 2020)

By Saikat Datta

US President Donald Trump is likely to finally get a wall, but it will be coming up thousands of miles away from the US-Mexico border in the city of Ahmedabad, India. The wall will greet Trump on his two-day visit to India starting February 24.

The wall is being built on the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to hide the slums that lie along the road that Trump will take on his visit to the city. Ahmedabad is in Modi’s home state, Gujarat, and began serving as a destination for visiting dignitaries soon after Modi came to power in May 2014.

A few years ago when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Ahmedabad, the slums were hidden from view using swathes of cloth. This time the Indian government wanted a more permanent wall.

But much like the wall that wants to hide some obvious unpleasant failures, the visit by Trump is likely to be more optics than substance. Just weeks before the planned visit, the US government ended any Indian hope of getting market access under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) scheme.

Read more at: https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/president-trump-getting-a-wall-in-india-too/