PM Narendra Modi in Silicon Valley

Tesla’s famed electric vehicle will take a back seat when Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives at its factory in Fremont on Saturday evening on the first of his sorties to Silicon Valley famed companies.

As his Air India jumbo jet landed, a few hundred local Indian-Americans erupted in song and shouts of “Welcome Modiji!” – a term of affection for the 65-year-old politician – and the phrase vande mataram, which translates as a salute to the motherland. “He really does seem to understand the significance and importance of tech”.

Modi has his own plan to plug while he’s in the Valley: Digital India. “We live in a digital age”. They say it could be a veiled attempt to enable the government to monitor private communications and suppress dissent.

Modi’s government has raised privacy fears with a proposal that would have required Internet users to save unencrypted copies of their texts and posts on social networks, an idea that Wadhwa describes as a blunder conceived by lower-level bureaucrats in India. His visit to there – the first by an Indian Prime Minister in 33 years – is part of his strong push to drive technological innovation in India. More than 45,000 people had requested tickets. His trip follows one by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who met with several tech leaders in Seattle earlier this week.

Singer Kailash Kher shared the stage with Modi at the community reception hosted by the Indian diaspora at the Imperial Ballroom of Hotel Fairmont here. The New Suez Canal that was recently opened offered India investment opportunities, Modi was told during the bilateral meeting at the UN.

Modi visits the campus of Tesla Motors.

The deep ties between India and Cyprus that go back to the early days of the Non-Aligned Movement were recalled during Modi’s meeting with Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades at the Waldorf Astoria.

Meanwhile, net neutrality rules approved stateside in February by the Federal Communications Commission have earned the support of many tech companies, including Netflix, Amazon and Google.

Just over a year after he took office in May 2014, more than 85 percent of people in India have a favorable view of him, according to a Pew Research Center survey published this month.

Although the country has produced many successful engineers, technology entrepreneurs and executives, much of the population in India still isn’t using computers. He will meet privately with the CEOs of Apple, Facebook, Google, Tesla, and Adobe, and he will participate in a Facebook town-hall question-and-answer event that’s sure to be hugely popular. That’s just one reason why Wadhwa believes Zuckerberg and other Internet executives are trying to woo Modi as an ally.

The Prime Minister decided to visit Silicon Valley to experience and learn firsthand the success story of iconic companies and leaders here with the sole objective of building a similar ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship in India, said Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh.