The event started with a welcome address by the IANH President Mr. Balaji Radhakrishnan. After that IANH Vice President Mr. Manoj Chourasia welcomed the CGNY Mr. Jaiswal and gave a brief overview of IANH and its glorious history of over 30 years of service to the Indian-American community, fostering the wellbeing of Indian community in NH, and organizing the social, cultural and educational programs. Manoj also invited the CGNY Mr. Jaiswal to be a chief guest of a future annual event like Vasant and Diwali festivals organized by IANH. Manoj also introduced the executive members who were present at the virtual event.

The event moved on to the next agenda item of introduction of CGNY Mr. Randhir Jaiswal by the IANH Treasurer Mr. Anand Thippeswamy. Mr. Jaiswal took over as the Consul General in July 2020. Randhir Jaiswal is a career diplomat who joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1998. In his over two decades of diplomatic career so far, he has served in Portugal, Cuba, South Africa and at the Permanent Mission of India in New York.

Mr. Randhir Jaiswal was delighted to speak to the Indian community on the celebration of India’s Republic Day and thanked the Indian community and IANH for organizing the inviting him for the event.

Mr. Jaiswal talked about India doing well on Covid-19 front in terms of vaccination and a large portion of the population having developed antibodies. India hopes to vaccinate about 300 million people by the summer of 2021. India has two vaccine candidates being rolled out that are manufactured in India and as a goodwill gesture being provided to many neighboring hood countries. Digital media had helped the country in staying connected, moving forward and also the work of the consulate despite it being affected by the pandemic. India has also supplied medical equipment’s, PPE and medicines etc. to the other counties during the pandemic.

The CG talked upon about strengthening of the relationship between India and the new government in USA. He expressed the possibility of a lot more engagement between the two countries in the fields of health, pharmaceuticals, deepening of trade & technology investments, digital, economic, and innovation, and enhanced collaboration in the climate change, renewal energy and education space. Also, India will also work on in strengthening global partnership with the US government towards greater stability of the world and contribute towards climate change action.

On the economic front, Mr. Jaiswal indicated that there would be an uptick in the growth rate this year.  India is opening including domestic air travel and the government has enacted quite a few economic reforms like private participation in space, change in food processing, financial services, taxation policies, labor laws and agricultural reforms. If these changes move in the right direction, Indian economy would achieve a growth rate of 7-8% that would propel India as the third largest economy and a world power by 2030.

In relations to the questions related to the engagement of Indian government with the new US government, he mentioned there are six areas of interactions like climate change, renewal energy, digital technology & innovation, health & pharmaceutical, economic, education and geo-political. Mr. Jaiswal talked in detail about the farming reforms recently enacted by the government. India has gone from food deficient to food surplus so the infrastructure and laws need to be improved for the future growth. Farming sector was the only area that did not see reforms and benefits of globalization when country started modernization and brought prosperity since 1990. Despite being one of the largest producers of the food, India’s market share in food export is only about 2%, buffer stock is about 100m tons and about 50% of the food goes waste. The government wants to increase the income of the farmers, improve the infrastructure, enhance the shelf life of food, and free up the bottleneck of trading on farm foods, modernize technology and take advantage of e-markets. So these reforms are very important. The government remains committed to working with the farmers and resolving the situation in a peaceful way.