RITU JHA
Indian Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu met with TiESoCal Charter members last week in Cerritos, California, and urged the Indian-American community to think big.
He highlighted “five main baskets” that he said will help in stronger business ties between the United States and India with the support of the Indian diaspora.
“One of those is the strategic and defense which includes the Indo-Pacific,” Ambassador Sandhu said. “Second, Covid is an immediate priority for both countries. Affordable healthcare, affordable vaccines, which are a domestic priority in the US as well as in India.
“Third, many of you are very closely connected, the ICT digital startup space which has the ability to transform our lives forever,” he said.
“Fourth is clean energy including LNG, renewables especially solar, which helps all coming together in fighting climate change and preserving the environment. And fifth and last but not the least is education and knowledge partnership.”
Ambassador Sandhu, who was on a visit to the West Coast, also took questions from the audience on trade, manufacturing in India, education, OCI, and even dual citizenship.
“Be it the world’s largest biometric program or the world’s largest financial inclusion program, Jan Dhan Yojana, or the world’s largest health insurance program, Ayushman Bharat, all have technology and innovation embedded in them,” he said.
“It is critical to see the big picture,”he asserted. “…We cannot afford to work in silos or look at the thing, piecemeal. I urge you to think big.”
He said education cooperation was something close to his heart.
“It is something personal as well. Both my parents were educated in the United States from 1956 to ‘58, and went back. I see tremendous confidence in the transformative power of education. This is a pillar of the India-US relationship.”
Anshuman Sinha, president of TiESoCal, told indica News that Ambassador Sandhu’s focus on Southern California was welcome. “We are such a vibrant community and business people at TiE want to get more involved and learn how TiESoCal can work with them,” Sinha said.
Ashish Saboo, president-elect 2022 of TiESoCal, told indica News: “TiE members are interested in the student exchange program. TiE has 61 chapters…and we can work with each other and promote some of these.”
Asked if it would be TiESoCal’s initiative, Sinha said: “Yes, for the student exchange program, they would be working through TiE because TiE has a network with more than 3,000 charter members and 61 chapters globally.”