Cuckoo for Coconuts

President Obama's three-day state visit to India requires "34 U.S. war ships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast."  With the need to cut spending, avert global climate disorder and the like, couldn't an electronic town hall and webcast suffice?  After all, there will be a TelePromptr either way.

According to the Press Trust of India's ndtv.com . . .

• Obama is expected to fly by a helicopter -- Marine One -- from the city airport to the Indian Navy's helibase INS Shikra at Colaba in south Mumbai.
• Two jets, armed with advanced communication and security systems, and a fleet of over 40 cars will be part of Obama's convoy.
• Around 800 rooms have been booked for the President and his entourage in Taj Hotel and Hyatt.
• The President will have a security ring of American elite Secret Service, which are tasked to guard the President, along with National Security Guards (NSG) and personnel from central paramilitary forces and local police in Mumbai and Delhi.
  Similar arrangements will be in place in Delhi, with the Air Force One to be kept in all readiness throughout Obama's stay here from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning.
• Maurya Hotel, where the President will stay, has already been swarmed by American security personnel and protective measures have been put in place.
• Security drills have already been carried out at the hotel as well as Rajghat, where he will visit.
• Sources said 13 heavy-lift aircraft with high-tech equipment, three helicopters and 500 US security personnel have arrived in India ahead of Obama's visit.
• The US security has also brought interception and obstruction device, sniffer dogs, rescue gadgets.
• All high-rise buildings in the vicinity of Mumbai's Taj Mahal hotel and Delhi's Maurya Sheraton hotel, where the US President will stay, are being sanitised and security personnel will be positioned on rooftops to prevent any air-borne attack.
• The Ridge area - opposite Delhi's Maurya Sheraton hotel - has been illuminated by floodlights as part of the heightened security drill.

And if those precautions aren't enough, the Telegraph reports that:

"All coconuts around the city's Gandhi museum, one of Mr Obama's stops in the city, are being taken down. Mani Bhavan, where Mahatma Gandhi stayed during his freedom struggle against the British, is among five places the US president is visiting in Mumbai.  'We told the authorities to remove the dry coconuts from trees near the building. Why take a chance?' Mani Bhavan's executive secretary, Meghshyam Ajgaonkar, told the BBC."