|
North East : Investment Conference in New York |
 |
Even as the Congress-led UPA government in New Delhi is struggling with the Left and other opposition parties over the controversial Indo-US civil nucleal deal, the Manmohan Singh Administration is leaving no stone unturned to assure Bush Admin¬istration that it will do all to further cement India’s ties with Washington.
Manmohan Singh’s latest offer to US is the opening up of the North East region of the country for American investment and tourism. But for Tripura, which is ruled by the Left, all other states, will be participating in full strength at the North East India Investment Conference to be held in New Delhi from Oct. 23 to 26.
The Chief Ministers of Assam, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur will all be in New York on the same platform on September 26 to court America. Taking part in the same initiative will be the Deputy Chief Minister of Meghalaya, the Industry Ministers of Assam, Nagaland and Sikkim and the Information and Technology Ministers of Meghalaya and Assam.
The Prime Minister is reported to have decided to stay away from the conference, but it is not preventing his govern¬ment from going into overdrive to woo America.
The event will kick off with Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi acting as Master of Ceremonies at a mini-Pravasi Bhartiya Divas at New York’s spectacular location, Chel¬sea Piers, built on four historic piers on the Hudson waterfront.
The chief guest at the Conference will be Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.
The corporate side will be represented by Sunil Bharti Mittal, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which has put together the event.
In a sense, if any collective decision-making on the North¬east has to be done by the Indian government during that week, it will be done in New York. The Secretary of the DoNER Ministry, the Chief Secretaries of Nagaland and Meghalaya, the Urban Devel¬opment Secretary of Manipur, the Agriculture Production Commis¬sioner of Nagaland and the Power Secretary of Arunachal Pradesh will all be in New York to lend support to their ministers.
The latest effort to deepen bridges with America through the Northeast will be supplemented by at least seven heavyweight Union Cabinet Ministers who will arrive in the US in the last 10 days of this month.
However, one visit being watched with intense interest is that of R. Chidambaram, nuclear scientist and principal scientif¬ic adviser to the Prime Minister, who will be in Washington from September 26 to 28.
Chidambaram will be accompanied by Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, former Indian Ambassador to China, and Prodipto Ghosh, former Secretary to the Ministry of Environment and Forests. They will be joined by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on September 27 for a climate change conference, which is being hosted at the US State Department by Secretary of State Condo¬leezza Rice.
Whether the Left parties like it or not, when a former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission and former secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy - who is still in the Prime Minister’s Office - and the External Affairs Minister meet Rice, it is inevitable that the future of the Indo-US nuclear deal will be on top of their agenda.
There are fears that if the Northeast initiative bears fruit in the US, West Bengal may come a cropper because the state has dallied with the US without making any commitments on anything.
Unlike the Chief Ministers from the north-eastern states, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has shied away from visiting the US despite several invitations.
|
