LOS ANGELES: With India's top political and business leaders making a beeline to California, holding a diaspora meeting here and launching of direct Air India flight between San Francisco and Delhi next week, America's West Coast has assumed a new meaning in the development of India.
"The West Coast has assumed a new meaning for India in terms of what India can share from the West Coast, but also what the West Coast can get from India," Indian Consul General at the San Francisco Consulate Venkatesan Ashok told PTI.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a tour of the Silicon Valley in September as part of his effort to learn from the ecosystem that has made it the innovation and IT hub of the world. He was preceded and followed by several of his Cabinet colleagues including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
For the first time in several decades, top Indian business and industrial delegations came to California - San Francisco and Los Angeles - five times.
India hosted the inaugural session of the new Regional Pravasi Bharatiya Divas here this month, in recognition of the large presence of the Indian diaspora in California.
And to cap it all Air India would launch a non-stop flight between San Francisco and New Delhi next week.
Ashok acknowledged there has been an unprecedented level of high-level visits between California and India this year, which, he said, reflects the significance that the Indian government attaches to the west coast.
Not only this, in less than two months after Modi's visit to the Silicon Valley - the first by an Indian Prime Minister in decades - top executives have visited India, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft's Satya Nadella.
"The West Coast of the United States has a great deal to offer to India in terms of technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, industry," the Consul General said.
"When you think about what the Prime Minister of India is seeking to do in terms of 'Digital India', 'Make in India', 'Skill India', all these programs require a great deal of external input. And that kind of external input is best achieved through a synergy, through a linkage which exists in abundance in Silicon Valley, California and the West Coast per se," he said.
"It is the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship which has been developed in Silicon Valley which has made it so successful, which we are seeking to imbibe the best practices of into India. So in all these process the West Coast has assumed a new meaning for India," he added.
Ashok said Indian-Americans who came to this part of the world three-four decades ago are now reaching out to India both in terms of setting up industry and businesses, but also in terms of getting talent in terms of startups, and other people and also for seeing how they can use the money, technology and manpower, the innovative skills that they have developed to help their cities, towns and States to develop.
"So, I think there is a large amount of give back also, which is being done by the Indian American community here. This is the special relationship that is developing between the West Coast of the US and India," the Indian diplomat said.
Responding to a question, Ashok said the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, industry, Make in India and education are very valuable in the West Coast.
"I see great benefit in this linkage, this synergy and I see this growing at a fast pace. There is a huge flood of visitors. We are getting as many people as they are going to the East Coast," Ashok said.
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