India's current account deficit has been and continues to be a reason of enormous worry for economists.

The diverse colours that Prime Minister Narendra Modi donned on his recent visit to the United States had one unifying theme - to win America.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told nearly a dozen American chief executives on Monday that he is committed to liberalising the country's economy.

Both countries lay claim to vast tracts of territory and after two decades of talks are no closer to a resolution of a border dispute over which they went to war in 1962.

While China and India have close economic and historical links, there is deep suspicion too, fuelled in part by a festering border dispute.

India, the world's largest arms importer, will spend $250 billion in the next decade on kit, analysts estimate, to upgrade its Soviet-era military and narrow the gap with China, which spends $120 billion a year on defence.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley set the military budget at 2.29 trillion Indian rupees ($38.35 billion) for 2014-15, 50 billion rupees more than what the previous government agreed in an interim budget earlier this year.

\"(The US) President (Barack) Obama should signal his willingness to meet with Modi in Washington on the heels of the September 2014 United Nations General Assembly. This would help set the foundation for improved ties and mend fences over the revoked visa issue,\" Lisa Curtis of Heritage Foundation said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's delay in confirming his attendance in the oath ceremony is being attributed to opposition from hardliners in the army establishment.

The new BJP government has its hands full, with an economy on the skids and an imbalanced fisc. Business leaders are hopeful that quick decision-making will replace the policy inaction that weighed down the second avatar of the Congress-led UPA-II.

The minister's handover note assumes significance as the BJP is against allowing FDI in multi-brand retail, a proposal which was pursued by the Congress-led UPA government.

Many feel if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) forms the next government, as is widely expected, it could mean an end to side-stepping on contentious issues at the cost of national interest.

The United States urged the Indian government that emerges from ongoing elections to follow economic policies that encourage investment, saying Washington would like to see bilateral trade grow to $500 billion a year.

In the last major poll, Modi's party and its allies are forecast to win 38 per cent of votes, news channel CNN-IBN and Lokniti at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies said. Another private news channel NDVT forecast a 32.9 per cent vote share for the BJP and its alliance partners.

Fast forward nearly 60 years and Modi stands on the cusp of leading the world's biggest democracy, after an election beginning on Monday that looks set to make his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the country's biggest.

Strategists in Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, confident that his jobs-first policy pitch will secure a strong voter mandate, suggest that they would prefer to have one of their own at the helm of the Reserve Bank of India.

\"Modi is widely considered to be one of the front-runners as prime ministerial candidate of his Bharatiya Janata Party. If Narendra Modi were to become Prime Minister of India, he would automatically be eligible for an A-1 (diplomatic) visa as head of state, regardless of the purpose of his visit,\" the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in its communication to US lawmakers.

Modi, a Hindu nationalist who is the front-runner to win the five-week election starting on April 7, has taken an aggressive tone against the two neighbouring nations. On the campaign trail, he has warned Beijing to shed its \"mindset of expansionism\" and in the past he has railed against Pakistan, for attacks by Muslim militants in India.

\"We have decided to extend the visa-on-arrival facility to tourists from 180 nations. It will take 5-6 months for the respective departments to put the required infrastructure in place. We hope to implement this from the next tourist session beginning October,\" he said in New Delhi.

Emerging-market economies will feel some impact from the US Federal Reserve's winding down of its stimulus but India is better prepared than last year to deal with it, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.