DIASPORA

Indian envoy to receive Liberia’s highest award

India’s Honorary Consul General to Liberia

Upjit Singh Sachdeva will receive the West African nation’s highest award, the Knight Grand Commander, from President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf during its 164th independence day celebrations Tuesday

Sachdeva, a prominent businessman and humanitarian, was selected for the honour by the president.

He will become the first Indian to receive the award from a Liberian president in recognition of his contributions towards the country’s reconstruction programmes. He is also being honoured for his commitment to philanthropic causes as well as contributions to the betterment of India-Liberia relations.

He was appointed honorary consul general by the Indian president in 1998.

Liberia declared independence July 26, 1847. This year’s celebration will be held in the northern city of Voinjama in Lofa County, 400 km from Monrovia, the Liberian capital.

“This investiture is therefore a matter of extreme pride and delight for all Indians, both within and outside Liberia,” Sachdeva, who is also popularly called Jeety, told the Daily Observer, the country’s oldest independent daily.

On Jan 9 this year, Sachdeva was honoured with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award by Indian President Pratibha Patil.

Along with Sachdeva, Liberian Vice President Joseph N. Boakai and Legislature Speaker Alex Tyler, among others, will be honoured at the special event.

The presidents of Nigeria and Sierra Leone are among the foreign guests expected to attend the celebrations.

The Knight Grand Commander of the Liberian Humane Order of African Redemption was set up on Jan 13, 1879, during the presidency of Anthony W. Gardiner. It is awarded to individuals for their meritorious humanitarian work.

Indian American to lead US efforts to expand ties with diaspora

Mitul Desai, an Indian American international finance and law expert, has been brought in to State Department’s South Asia bureau to lead its efforts to expand “partnerships and engagement with the private sector and diaspora groups” in the US.

Announcing the appointment of Desai at an India Donor Roundtable here last week, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake said “The US-India relationship has never been stronger,” thanks to the “important role” that the Indian community has “played in creating and strengthening these ties.”

“Indeed I have made it a priority for the South and Central Asia Bureau to expand our partnerships and engagement with the private sector and diaspora groups here in the US,” he said.

Desai, who has been named Senior Advisor for Outreach, comes from a private sector career in international finance and law, where he worked on many issues, including global health, Blake noted.

“He also has extensive experience working with diaspora communities. I know he is very excited to work with you in his new capacity,” he said.

Desai received his BA in Chemistry and Philosophy at Rudgers University and his JD from the Boston University School of Law. He was born in Kankakee, Illinois, and lived in South Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania before moving to Succasunna, New Jersey, where he spent most of his childhood.

His parents, Indirajit and Surekha Desai who hail from Gujarat, came to the US in the 1960s, when they were both in their early 20s. He has a younger brother, Amit.

NRI IT professionals move back to India

With declining wages abroad, an increasing number of non-resident Indian IT professionals are moving back to their home country, says a survey.

IT and IT-enabled firms in India hired 28 percent more non-resident Indian (NRI) professionals in the first quarter of 201112, according to the survey conduced by recruitment consulting firm MyHiringClub. com.

Among 11 surveyed industries, IT and ITenabled services registered highest growth, with 28 percent increase year-on-year in the first quarter of the current fiscal. It is followed by pharma and healthcare, up by 20 percent, automobile and manufacturing, up by 18 percent, telecom, up by 14 percent, banking and financial services, up by 10 percent and FMCG, up by six percent.

“The high economic growth in India with many good opportunities has fuelled the NRI thought process to head back. In addition to that, many US companies are opening their offices in India and hiring more to target the growing market in Asia,” Rajesh Kumar, CEO of MyHiringClub.com, said in the survey report.

He said an increasing number of high value NRI professional recruitment is likely to take place in the coming years as wage gaps have declined sharply.

“Increasing number of people are now returning because now the advantages of returning back to India outweigh the disadvantages by far,” said Kumar.

The highest number of NRIs who returned home found jobs in Bangalore, followed by Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad.

The NRI professional hiring trend survey was conducted online between July 1-15. Senior human resource professionals and top management of 237 firms and 690 recruitment consultants participated in the survey.

India urged to issue global white paper on mining

With the Karnataka mining scam making news in Canada, Indo-Canadian honchos have urged New Delhi to address concerns of foreign investors eyeing the Indian mining sector.

Lack of information about policy goals and current negative news about this sector are not “the way to position India’s mining sector” in the global market, Hari Panday, who started the ICICI Bank in Canada, said.

Canada is the “mining guru of the world” and India should lose no time in explaining its mining policies to this country as well as Australia and South Africa, he said.

“Last year, 70 percent of the world’s mining funds were raised here at the Toronto Stock Exchange. India should issue a white paper at this mining centre of the world to tell global players about their mining policies. Carry out road shows across Canada to woo investors, professionals, regulators and stock exchanges which are clueless about Indian policies,” Panday who is currently president & CEO of Toronto-based PanVest Capital Corporation which promotes two-way investments between India and Canada, told IANS.

He said Indian mining delegations come here regularly each year, but “these visits are meaningless unless you tell global investors that India means business.”

The Kanpur-born honcho was also critical of Indian policies which create stumbling blocks for its companies trying to raise money abroad.

“Currently, any Indian company wishing to list on the Toronto stock exchange should be first listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Worse still, the BSE is not even an accredited exchange at the Toronto stock exchange. It means if Canadian investors buy and sell Indian equities, their capital gain is hundred percent taxable. This is not the way do business,” Panday said.

He said India should allow foreign investors to take their money back and forth.

Hemant Shah, sales director at the Canadian mining equipment leader Cubex Ltd., told IANS, “Canada can be India’s one-stop mining shop as it has the all global are today able to communicate to everyone back home in Punjab and India that all 17 of our compatriots who were condemned to the gallows in Sharjah will now finally be freed and return to their loved ones,” the communication said.

Oberoi said that Mishri Khan’s father, mother, widow, daughter and all four brothers, had agreed to a monetary compensation of eight crore Pakistani Rupees. This amount includes Dihrams 442,000 as ‘blood money’ and the balance as ‘compensation’ for the family.

He said the breakthrough in the case was achieved through the efforts of Amarinder Singh and other Indian community members based in UAE. Amarinder Singh had met the 17 Indian men in a Sharjah prison last year and assured help. He later met the Shiekh of mining companies listed here. In Toronto, you can raise money not only from Canada, but also from all over the world.”

Shah, who has been selling mining equipment to India for three decades, said, “Indian bureaucrats come here, but they have failed to sell India. Instead, ministers should visit here to assure companies which are jittery about investing in India.”

Hope for Indian men on death row in Sharjah

There is hope for the release of 17 Indians, who are on the death row in Sharjah for the murder of a Pakistani national, after the victim’s family agreed to “pardon” them after accepting compensation.

The 17 men, 16 from Punjab and one from Haryana, had been sentenced to death by a Shariat court in Sharjah, March 2010. They were convicted of murdering a Pakistani man and injuring three others January 2009, following a fight over illegal liquor business.

The murder took place in Al Sajaa area of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The victim, Misri Nazir Khan, died of stab wounds and also suffered brain damage, police had said.

Dubai-based businessman S.P. Singh Oberoi, founder member of the Indian Punjabi Society (IPS) and president of voluntary group ‘Sarbat Da Bhala’, through a communication released by Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh, said that the efforts to save the youth had proved successful.

“It is with the greatest sense of pride and hard earned accomplishment that we

Abu Dhabi and the police chief of Sharjah.

“The late Mishri Khan’s brother, Sarfaraz Ahmed Khan accepted the ‘token’ amount of one million Pakistani Rupees and gave a written legal undertaking that he and his family will submit an official letter legally pardoning the accused on receipt of the full monetary compensation,” the communication said.

“The ‘undertaking’ was submitted during today’s (Wednesday) court hearing at Sharjah, duly acknowledged by Mohammad Ramzan, the official ‘negotiator’ for Mishri Khan’s family.

“Accepting the arrangement, the court has granted us a week to finalise all paperwork and deposit the balance blood money and compensation on Wednesday, July 27.

Following that, the honourable judges are expected to announce an early judgment date to ‘pardon’ all the 17 accused men,” Oberoi said.

The Indian men had all along maintained that they were not involved in the murder of the Pakistani national and that they had been framed in this case.

Certain NGOs and the jailed youth had even opposed earlier attempts to pay blood money to the victim’s family saying that this would mean admission to the guilt of murder which they had not committed.

All the convicted men in UAE are between 17 and 30 years of age and all of them belong to lower middle-class families in India. The Indian consulate had hired a law firm in UAE to defend the case.