Primary responsibility to take India and United States relations forward: Das.
AB Wire
The India-America Chamber of Commerce (IACC) welcomed the new Consul General of India in New York Ambassador Riva Ganguly Das, at a reception at Tulsi restaurant, in Manhattan, earlier this month.
In his welcoming remarks, Rajiv Khanna, President of the India-America Chamber of Commerce and Partner at the leading law firm of BakerHostetler stated: “Some of you have expressed reservation over the pace of economic reforms in India. While this Chamber always stands for quicker faster reforms, it is important to objectively analyze India’s report card over the last two years. You would recall that two years back, India was a country with a scam every other year. Almost every time there was a major government concession or contract being given, there was a scam. There was a telecom scam, there was a coal scam and so on and on. The only thing that would grow was the size of the scams, and each scam would make the previous one look insignificant by comparison. In the last two years, high level corruption in India has been exterminated. There has been no reported scam in the last two years, nor is one likely to emerge due to the new measures for avoiding high level corruption.”
He added: “Last May, we hosted Rana Kapoor, the CEO of Yes Bank and the then President of Assocham and to my surprise he came prepared to give a speech with charts, graphs and models advocating the Make in India Campaign and the wonders the campaign would do for India. I had to tell him to tone it down because only eleven months back, the idea of India being a manufacturing power seemed too far-fetched to be credible. Today, while India is still not a major manufacturing power, the country has started seeing the dividends from the Make in India Campaign, particularly in the defense sector. Make in India is no longer a mere pipe dream. It is a reality with a real potential.”
Khanna said: “The foreign direct investment in India has grown by approximately 42.6% in the last two years. The foreign direct investment in India grew from $36.4 Billion in the financial year 2013-2014 to $44.9 Billion in the financial year 2014-2015, an increase of 23.3%. In the first nine months of the financial year 2015-2016, it was $38.9 Billion, which means $51.9 Billion on an annualized basis, reflecting an increase of 15.6% over financial year 2014-15 and 42.6% over financial year 2013-14.”
He added: “India finally has a handle on its inflation. In the last 16 months, India’s wholesale price index has been negative and the consumer index has been in the range of 4 -5%, which is allowing India’s tough Federal Reserve to bring down the interest rates, which in turn will spur further growth in India.”
Das, in her address, mentioned to the audience that “my primary responsibility will be to take India’s interest forward and to take India and United States relations forward. In this task, trade, business and commerce plays an extremely important role. It’s one of the drivers of our relationship.”
She added: “The key objective of mine would be to take this business proposition forward, think out of the box and reach out to those business constituencies with which we have not been able to connect so far.”
She mentioned that “we will need the help of the Chamber members to identify these constituencies.”
Ambassador Das also discussed several mutual goals between the two countries and the governments, and said will be seeking help from the business leaders to leverage theses goals.
Das touched upon few other ideas: Getting young entrepreneurs involved. Having the younger generation attend these discussion and events; that there were a large number of Indian students in Ivy league colleges (Harvard, MIT), young students who are so talented and who need to get more involved in building the India-U.S. business relationship.