Prime Minister Narendra Modi met American Vice-President J.D. Vance and his family on Monday, the first day of the latter’s largely personal four-day visit to India amid the back and forth on tariffs with the US.

Vance does not have any direct say in trade and tariff matters but the Indian readout on the meeting said the two leaders welcomed the significant progress in the negotiations for a mutually beneficial India-US bilateral trade agreement focused on the welfare of the people of the two countries.

Modi and Vance also "reviewed and positively assessed the progress" in various areas of bilateral cooperation and noted the continued efforts towards enhancing cooperation in energy, defence and strategic technologies, among others. They also discussed regional and global issues of mutual interest, and called for dialogue and diplomacy as the way forward, the Indian readout said.

The conversation happened in a living room setting at the Prime Minister’s residence with Vance’s three children playing on the sofa even as the US Second Lady, Usha Vance, could be seen trying to keep them quiet in a video of the engagement. Ahead of their talks, Modi spent some time with the children and gifted them a peacock feather each and appeared to tell them how it was used as a writing tool in the past. He also took the family around the sprawling lawns.

The two leaders had last met in Paris in February on the sidelines of the AI Summit before Modi proceeded to Washington to meet President Donald Trump.

Vance arrived in Delhi in the morning and was given a ceremonial welcome at the airport. He later visited the Akshardham Temple and is scheduled to travel to Jaipur and Agra. The visit comes amid the tariff war that the Trump administration has unleashed on the world.

Given the nature of Vance's visit, it has been largely ignored by the US media. India, however, rolled out the red carpet for Vance amid protests by farmers who fear that the Modi dispensation will cave in to Trump’s diktats.

The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), which spearheaded the yearlong agitation against the three contentious farm laws, has decided to burn effigies of Trump, Vance and Modi to protest "US attempts to coerce Modi government to impose unfair trade terms and dump US agricultural products in India".

The SKM flagged the "intention" to grant unregulated freedom to US food chains, trading giants and agribusiness corporations to operate in India.