The leader of the world's largest democracy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, arrived in the United States this week for his first, official state visit.

"This visit will affirm the deep and close partnership between the United States and India and the warm bonds of family and friendship that link Americans and Indians together," the White House said in a statement. "The visit will strengthen our two countries’ shared commitment to a free, open, prosperous, and secure Indo-Pacific and our shared resolve to elevate our strategic technology partnership, including in defense, clean energy, and space."

The statement also teased the focus of discussions between Modi, in his second term as Prime Minister, and President Joe Biden.

The leaders will discuss ways to further expand our educational exchanges and people-to-people ties, as well as our work together to confront common challenges from climate change, to workforce development and health security," the White House explained.

His visit coincides as the prime minister recently celebrated the 100th episode of his monthly radio show, "Mann Ki Baat" – which translates from the Hindu to "Speaking from the heart."

The show is broadcast in over 40 languages native to India and about 11 foreign languages.

According to the Economic Times, the broadcast has nearly 230 million, regular listeners.

A new book called "Collective Spirit, Concrete Action: Mann Ki Baat and Its Influence on India" by Shashi Shekhar chronicles how Modi uses the show to connect with his constituents.

"The Mann Ki Baat broadcast is broadcast in several languages across India and it has focused on the developmental change that India has gone through over the last nine years," the author said in an interview with The National Desk earlier this month. "And what's interesting is that these broadcasts have inspired different people across India to become change agents and to do all sorts of things; Be it you know, building toilets, cleaning up neighborhoods, becoming champions within their local communities.

The author says the story of Mann Ki Baat is an important one for Americans.

When you have a country like India, which has such extremities, such diversity, that it is possible to bring about developmental change – without having to adopt the Chinese model, because the world has only seen the Chinese model which is very authoritarian, very dictatorial – [that] requires a lot of creativity, a lot of patience a lot of persuasion," he explained.

"I think the key takeaway from this book is that politics doesn't have to be about you know, negativity doesn't have to be always about negative issues. What Prime Minister Modi has shown is that you can have a positive approach you can have a glasses-half-full approach to politics.

The prime minister is praised but also criticized for his alleged human rights abuses.

"India is a democracy, and it's a federal democracy. So, you've got the federal government and then you've got state governments," Shekhar explained. "An independent judiciary at all levels of the Supreme Court and you have the high courts and so on. So, they're different levels of checks and balances. So, it's kind of not a very credible argument."

Shekhar is the former CEO of Prasar Bharati, India's public service broadcaster. He also managed the dual broadcast networks of Doordarshan and All India Radio, while also serving as CEO of Rajya Sabha TV, India's Parliamentary TV Channel.