What is Sarah Palin doing in India?

What is Sarah Palin doing in India? The former vice-presidential nominee and Alaska governor is famously travel-shy and a largely unknown entity in the subcontinent. Though her reality Alaska TV show premiered this month (aired on Monday nights) it doesn't appear to have been a hit with audiences addled on political scandals, cricket and soap. People are not even sure what Ms Palin knows about and thinks of India. "I am very excited to visit India," she has been quoted as saying in what appears to be her only observations on the country so far. "Americans have a great respect for the world's largest democracy."

Ms Palin, who arrives in India barely three months after President Obama's high-octane visit, is a key speaker at a glittering annual conclave organised by India Today Group, a large media conglomerate. She shares this widely-attended mega-talkfest with such speakers as Germaine Greer and Fatima Bhutto, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Niall Ferguson and Mohammed ElBaradei.

The theme of the conclave is "the changing balance of power". India Today owner-editor Aroon Purie believes America's supremacy is being challenged. "A feisty former vice-presidential nominee from America," said Mr Purie, while opening the conclave, "who will be our gala night speaker [on Saturday] will surely disagree with this."

Clearly, there are high expectations of Ms Palin, who will speak about her vision of America.Whether or not Ms Palin knows much about India, few Indians know what she stands for. On a frenzied Internet debate on the conclave site, a woman participant says it would be "interesting" to have a woman in the White House "after a black president". She is promptly admonished by another respondent - gender unclear - who writes: "Shaking my head at the naive casual support offered by a woman to a woman who does not support rights of women, such as the right to her own body." Please "familiarize yourself with Sarah Palin [and] her political views before you support her," implores the writer.

The Times of India wonders whether the trip is a build-up to a White House bid in 2012. Others take the opposite view.  A Huffington Post cartoon is acerbic - one of the characters in it says that Ms Palin is going to India "probably because she can't see it from her house in Alaska"
But what is certain is that Ms Palin will be well received. As a newcomer, she has novelty value with the audiences. Also, India loves women leaders - India's most powerful leader is Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party chief and daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, the country's most powerful prime minister ever. Indians also have traditionally loved Republicans. So while Ms Palin's journey to India may never be fully explained -it's certainly interesting. Personally, I think she's there just because she was invited. That doesn't happen much.