The excitement amongst the Indian diaspora around the scheduled visit of Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to the US continues to grow.  There is tremendous interest in the community in the US-India relationship. The event at Madison Square Garden, organized by the Indian American Community Foundation, has 18,500 people attending and has been oversubscribed by more than 10,000 people.  “Last minute requests to attend the event are coming in at the rate of hundreds per day,” said IACF President, Dr. Bharat Barai.

The Indian-American Community in the United States is a small, but growing minority.  The statistics are powerful. At 16.4%, Indian-Americans are the third largest Asian-American group in the US, numbering 2.8 million strong, which is almost 1% of the US population. According to the 2010 census, it is one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the country. There are almost 35,000 physicians of Indian origin. Indian immigrants founded more engineering and technology companies between 1995 and 2005 than immigrants from UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined, according to a joint Duke university-U C Berkeley study. Pew research data indicates the average median household income of Indian Americans is $88,000 as compared to $66,000 for other Asians and $49,800 for the total US population. The percentage of Indians with higher education is also higher than other Asian ethnic groups.

The Indian-Americans gathering at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, September 28th are representative of these statistics.  Almost all of the states of India will be represented at the event with Gujaratis, Bengalis, Punjabis, Tamils, Andhras, Biharis, Keralites, Kashmiris all attending the event.  “The diaspora will be traveling from forty eight American states and five Canadian provinces to participate in the event,” said IACF spokesperson Anand Shah, “there will be small business owners, community organizers, doctors, engineers, scientists, academics, writers, chefs, artists and performers along side entrepreneurs, media personalities, elected officials, lawyers, the young and the old, the traditional and the avant garde.” As in India, Indian-Americans represent the diversity, strength and unity of the colorful melting pot that is India.

Please tune into the event on http://www.pmvisit.org or follow us on twitter @pmvisit.

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