Narendra Modi's Rise to Prime Minister of India.
ALLEN: The U.S. president's visit to India will be a welcome spectacle at a challenging time for the country's prime minister. Narendra Modi faces a sagging economy, protests over a citizenship law, and increased tensions with neighboring Pakistan. Bianca Nobilo has more on Mr. Modi's rise to power.</s>BIANCA NOBILO, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: He is a leader of the world's biggest democracy, with the fate of well over a billion people in his hands. Narendra Modi is India's prime minister and the leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. He was born in 1950, the first prime minister to be born in an independent India. As a young adult, he got involved in Hindu nationalists politics, then joined the BJP as secretary in 1987. After more than a decade of climbing the ranks, he was named as chief minister in Gujarat in western India in 2001. A year later, crisis on his watch. A fire on board a train killed at least 58 people. The victims were largely Hindu pilgrims who'd stopped in a Muslim majority area. Tensions between the two communities flared. Riots erupted in the following days, and Modi was accused of condoning the violent protests that killed nearly 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. In fact, three years later the United States declined to issue a diplomatic visa to Modi for his suspected role in those riots. A 2013 ruling from India's supreme court found that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him. Modi was thus cleared for a national breakthrough. He became BJP leader ahead of the 2014 elections. Now, campaigning in a country of more than one billion people isn't easy. So Modi used one of these, a hologram of himself, to appear in dozens of places at the same time. His party swept the elections, propelling the new leader to the global stage. And he hasn't left it since. He won reelection again in a landslide in 2019. But since then, he has faced controversy. Tensions between India and Pakistan spiked in August, after Modi announced that India would revoke a constitutional provision giving the state of Jammu and Kashmir autonomy set its own laws. In the wake of that, Modi's government imposed a communication blackout in the Muslim-majority region. Then, in December, Parliament passed a controversial law that fast- tracked citizenship for members of several religious minorities but not Muslims. The law sparked protests across the country. Modi's brand of nationalist politics has made him some friends abroad. Not least in the Oval Office. Many have compared him to Donald Trump, and both leaders have lavished praise on each other. Modi sold himself for something different in Indian politics, a vision of the future. Indians agreed. They voted him in twice. But with recent controversies and an economy whose growth has halved in just three years, whether he can keep up that level of support remains to be seen.</s>ALLEN: All right, and live video here of the airport where we expect to see Air Force One within the next 15 minutes as President Trump arrives for his visit with Narendra Modi in India. So, stay right here. We'll have that for you. For now, though, I'm Natalie Allen, and WORLD SPORT is next. See you in 15.