“I am from Punjab and I had completed M.Sc Honours & M.Phil in Biology from GND, Amritsar, in 1982-84, when I was even elected the President of the University Student Council for the year 1982-83. At that time, I was quite an active Youth Congress Member as well. In 1984 I went to the UK for higher education, where I took up and completed a M.Sc in Food Technology & Management Science from London University in 1985. Since then, I have made UK as my base. I have managed to garner quality experience in the british corporate world, and have been exposed to entrepreneurship in various sectors. Have also had ample opportunity to gain experience in the social and political fields as well.
“I have had the honour of my name getting proposed for the Global Advisory Council, and I have likewise been nominated for the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council. The nominations have gone to some 20~25 prominent NRIs who are from fields like education, science and academia, industry leaders and entrepreneurs, and politicians. Basically they form a committee which comes to India twice for meetings, and discuss the Global situation. They discuss how India can do better socially and economically through the contribution and participation of NRIs in India’s developmental process. So I have been nominated for that. At the moment I am the General Secretary, and I ams also the coordinator for the party. I have some involvement in the fields of sports, culture and humanitarian advocacy, which is in the form of supporting clubs and organisations that are actually organizing free camps here in India. We are supporting some organizations like the Mohali Welfare Society, who organise camps against drugs, do campaigns for awareness among women, value addition in education, technical training etc. We are also supporting various other individual initiative projects like sanitation where NRIs adopt villages and work for the betterment of the villagers.
“One of the two issues that I am working on is the attempt to connect the next generation of Indian Diaspora directly with India, and the second is an attempt to convert what those days in the 80s and 90s when we left India used to be known as “Brain Drain”, into an advantage today in the form of “Brain Gain.” Basically, we have lots and lots of excellent talent in medicine, in engineering, science and in the field of insustry and business acumen … a lot of overseas Indians are entrepreneurs. They can be of immense help to India, and I think India needs them just as much as they need India. It is a two way street. All we need to do is to make things easy for them, and set up a system where their issues and problems could be addressed. So they will gladly contribute if we tap that resource and see to it that they stay connected to India, come to India more often. It is better for Indian tourism as well, as money will come into India. If the government itself promotes investment schemes that will also bring wealth of overseas Indians parked in foreign shores here. India already getting to be an exciting destination for investments as compared to UK and Europe, but I wopuld say that urging NRIs to make their houses here will be a first step in ensuring that the next generation diaspora are connected to this land.
“India has made a lot of progress in the past few decades, we can see high-rise buildings and skyscrapers, we can see infrastructure coming up. But we do lack world class entertainment facilities especially with relation to sports like golf. There are golf-courses already there but what we need to create is more deluxe facilities to appeal to those living abroad in the western hemisphere.Today the only reason any person from UK , Europe or Canada is coming to India is only because of their familial connections, or because their parents came from here. We got to create more reasons. We need to basically set up world class facilities, like resorts, or it could be safari parks. While the Indian government is doing its bit, what is needed is to speed up that process and create the necessary attraction for overseas Indians to get into this activity. Like right now, we are in the middle span of a connection like a bridge, and reaching out to both sides will be beneficial for both the home country and the diaspora. Then entire families will come, youth will come.