Hello
The virtual meeting comes amid some disquiet in Washington over India's position on the Ukraine crisis as well as its decision to procure discounted Russian oil.
It will be Blinken's first India visit as President Joe Biden's secretary of state and he will meet on Wednesday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
The United States remains India's largest and most important trading partner, with total bilateral trade increasing to USD146 billion in 2019.
The US has said it welcomes steps that would improve the efficiency of India's markets and attract greater private sector investment.
India-US relations cannot be correlated to changes in the US leadership. It transcends party and personal considerations to be shaped by geopolitical developments, twists and turns in the priorities of the two countries and global milestones, such as the Cold War, the emergence of a unipolar world, terrorism, climate change, rise of China and now the coronavirus.
Biden is known to be a strong proponent of closer India-US ties since his days as a senator in the 1970s and played a key role in getting the approval of the Senate for the bilateral civil nuclear deal in 2008.
The Biden administration will place high priority on strengthening the Indo-US relationship by pushing India to became a permanent member of the UN Security Council, continuing co-operation on terrorism, climate change, health and trade.
Even while maintaining strong relations with the Trump administration, the Indian team in Washington is in regular touch with the Joe Biden team, many of whom were in the Obama administration.
Presidential elections in the US will held on November 3 and the 77-year-old is challenging incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in the polls.
Trump also said the US and India were cooperating to develop a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus.