More than 300 Indian Americans, many of them who comprise the elite of the high technology sector in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, were on hand at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center for the launch of the DC chapter of the New Delhi-based NRI Institute, which was instituted with a gala awards ceremony honouring 24 NRIs from the US and overseas and US-India Business Council president Ron Somers.
The event also included the formal investiture of Payal Tak, president and CEO of TELESIS Corporation and one of the leading women entrepreneurs in the DC area, as the first chairperson of the new chapter by the international chairman of the NRI Institute, Rasik Patel.
Tak, who coordinated and emceed the entire event, said "this chapter has been established with the mission to promote the cultural, academic, and socio-economic interests of the Indian Diaspora, as NRIs strive to stay in touch with our heritage while adapting to the lifestyles of the country of our adoption."
Tak said. "Where India has given us our values, America has given us opportunities to realize our dreams. NRI Institute's goal is to maintain our heritage as we embrace newer vistas and pass it on to the generations that follow."
In selecting Somers to be the 25th special awardee, Tak said that he is "one individual who is the primary link between the United States and India and is promoting open access, free trade, and is strengthening commercial relations between the two countries."
She said that Somers -- who was resident in India for over 11 years and is fluent in Hindi and Urdu and even speaks a little Malayalam and Tamil -- was someone "who we fondly refer to as a friend of India," and that was the reason behind his being given a special award along with all of the other awardees -- all NRIs.
Somers, in his remarks spoke of the clout and influence of the NRI community in the US, and said they were the main reason why the enabling legislation to facilitate the US-India civilian nuclear deal was approved so overwhelmingly by both the House and Senate and finally signed into law by President Bush last year.
"It was because of the strength and the fabric of the NRI community. It was thanks to you all," he said, and noted that the politically savvy and influential Indian American community had "politically integrated" and were today "changing the shape of the American democracy."
Somers said it was a no-brainer as to why the United States was seeking to establish a strategic partnership with India, since there were so many factors that behooved Washington to do just that.
"Let's remember for a moment that India is number five in the world in space," he said, adding, "Do you realize that the United States and India are going to launch a mission to the moon this coming April, with US equipment being launched from Tamil Nadu aboard an Indian launch vehicle going to the moon."
Somers also spoke of India being "the fourth largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing parity. It has the fourth largest pharmaceutical industry in the world. It is number three in terms of the producer of wind-power. It is an environmentally conscious nation. Who will believe that India will be number three in wind production?"
Somers, continuing with his laundry list extolling the virtues of India and Washington's rationale for a strategic partnership, said, "It is the second largest producer in the world of fruits and vegetables and it also has the second largest military in the world in uniform."
And, he was not done, since he had to talk of the number one positions in the world India held. "It is number one in the world in milk production, and, of course, it is number one in the world of mango production, but most importantly, it is the largest free-market democracy in the world."
Somers, also made reference to India, each year, producing the second largest number of doctors, engineers, PhDs in the world "and many of whom are here tonight with us in this room."
"It also sends every year to American campuses, 100,000 students and these are good students -- they don't have any bad habits and they contribute to our college campuses."
Somers said, "I guarantee you every chancellor, every college president, will want that number tripled, quadrupled, if only we could get more visas."
Ambassador Raminder Singh Jassal, the deputy chief of mission at the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC, who was among the honored guests declared, "The NRI is supposed to be Non-Resident India, but it should be the Non-Retiring Indian because that is what the spirit of it all is all about."
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