Over 200 top executives coming with President

Also expected are Honeywell CEO David M Cote, who co-chairs the India-US CEO Forum with Tata group chairman Ratan Tata. So is Terry McGraw, CEO of leading publishing house McGraw Hill, who took over from Nooyi as the chairman of the US Indian Business Council, representing 300 top US companies last June.

Two more of 12 US forum members, Louis Chenevert, CEO of aerospace major United Technologies Corp, and Ellen Kullman, chief executive of chemicals giant DuPont, may also be joining the President. But there is no word yet whether Citigroup’s Indian-American CEO Vikram Pandit is going.

Andrew Liveris, chairman, CEO and president of the Dow Chemical Company had skipped last June’s forum meeting here at the height of the Bhopal gas leakage controversy and it’s not known whether he would give Delhi a miss too.

And to get Washington and Delhi to “catch up to the business and innovation cooperation that is already happening in New York and Mumbai,” as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, the  CEO Forum has recommended several “interesting and ambitious ideas” in four core areas of infrastructure; clean energy; education and e-health/biotechnology.

Among the deliverables recommended for the Obama visit are “creation of $10 billion debt fund for development of infrastructure in India, collaboration under the National Solar Mission of India, a long-term initiative on diabetes research and treatment, linkages between educational institutions and joint research in clean energy.”