NRIs favour real estate over stocks

Primary objective of the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre (OIFC) was to lead Indian diaspora up the investment avenue, but one would certainly not have expected real estate to be the area of greatest interest. At least, not one in which NRIs would want OIFC help. But that’s exactly what’s happened.

We are getting a lot of queries from overseas Indians about investing in property in India. OIFC, a one-stop shop to help overseas Indians invest in India, was launched by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) on May 28. The CII is the private sector partner and host institution of this not-for-profit trust.

According to initial trend, real estate tops the list in terms of interest shown by overseas Indians while stock market investments come second.

With the surging demand for investment in real estate from domestic and overseas investors, real estate investment trusts when operational in India would enable a larger number of players to participate in investment grade buildings. These are currently worth $ 83 bn in India.

Currently, Indian REITs are entering the Singapore market. Ascendas India, the Business Park developer has already applied to the Monetary Authority of Singapore to raise $357m to invest in integrated real estate projects in India.

DLF and Unitech are also deliberating on this option. While Unitech is going in for an overseas listing, DLF Assets has kept its options open for an Indian listing if the trusts are allowed to operate in the next 12 months.

Bangalore’s Real Estate Bank International (REBI) has ambitious plans to reach out to overseas markets with an investment of Rs. 250 m, reports NRI Realty News.

Offices in Sri Lanka, US, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia will enable real estate services to reach out to non-resident Indians, while REBI’s domestic network will be expanded to 3000 franchises over the next three years.

Pearl Global is also venturing into real estate, as it ties up with Ansal Properties to develop 9.26 acres of commercial land in Gurgaon.

Earlier this month, the Bhoruka Group from Bangalore announced its intention to diversify from its existing power generation business to develop a premium residential project in south Mumbai. The defunct Mukesh Textile Mill property, covering 10 acres will be the site of the new project. The company will also construct an IT Park on 34 acres in Whitefield, Bangalore.
Kolkata based Bengal Shrachi Housing Development in a joint venture with two NRIs has announced the launch of a housing complex, Rosedale Garden, specially designed for non-resident Indians (NRIs). Tapping the desire for fully furnished ready-to-move in apartments for NRIs, the joint venture has invested Rs3bn in this mega project.

Premier realty firm Parsvnath Developers Ltd is set to develop their existing land bank over the next five years by investing over $4 bn. Launching over 100 real estate projects in all its segments, they aim at developing their saleable land bank of 153m sq feet.

They have six projects lined up for Delhi metro as well. Speaking in terms of growth, the company had reported a profit of Rs 2.92 bn in the financial year 2006-07 at an annual growth rate of 110 per cent.

The real estate sector has recorded commendable profit margins, evident from the profits posted by major real estate developing giants in the first quarter. The first quarter was beneficial for almost all real estate developers. Parsvnath Developers posted a record net profit of 179.56 per cent at Rs 1.02 bn against its previous Rs 365.5 m.

Unitech on the other hand has been registering a consistent growth of 8.6 per cent for the last four years. Ansal Properties and Infrastructure Ltd. (Ansal API) reported a net profit of 16 per cent.

Indian realty is growing at 30 per cent, particularly in Tier II and Tier III cities. The $15 bn realty market is expected to reach $ 90 bn within the next eight years. Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Vizag, Coimbatore, Kochi, Jaipur and Nagpur are some Tier II cities witnessing unprecedented boom.

Research has it that realty can give an average return of eight per cent. Realty prices are doubling in some Tier I cities like Bombay, Chennai, Bangalore etc. Residential prices have gone over Rs 5,000 per sq feet and commercial prices are over Rs 10,000 in Tier I cities.

NRIs May Face 3 Year Pre-IPO Realty Lock-In

The government is planning to plug another potential source of foreign funds for the real estate sector. Non-resident Indians planning to invest in real estate projects ahead of initial public offers could face a three-year lock-in along with foreign institutional investors (FIIs).

The government is planning to introduce a lock-in for pre-IPO FII investors in realty companies in bid to prevent a possible real estate bubble. The restrictions are also aimed at checking sudden flight of capital.

By putting a lock-in period for NRIs, the government could also effectively discourage the promoters' own funds coming into the company through the NRI route. Indian promoters are generally known to use NRIs as fronts to get their own money abroad invested in their companies. A lock-in period might act as a deterrent for promoters bringing such funds through the NRI route.

The government is likely to amend the Foreign Exchange Management Act to make all pre-IPO investments face a three-year lock-in, a government source said. However, the other conditions such as minimum capitalisation and area of development will be limited to foreign direct investments.

Real estate companies which are planning to hit the capital market will have to tweak their plans to meet the proposed norms, expected to be notified shortly. Some real estate companies that have sought permission for making pre-IPO placement to FIIs have been told to wait till the government finalises the foreign investment norms for the real estate sector.

Up to 100% FDI is allowed in realty projects with certain conditions like a three-year lock-in on investments, minimum capitalisation of $5 million and development of at least 10 hectares of land. These conditions are applicable on all foreign investors, including NRIs.

Earlier, there were differences between the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion and the finance ministry on the treatment of pre-IPO placements. DIPP had favoured treating pre-IPO placement to FIIs as portfolio investment.

However, the Reserve Bank and the finance ministry were of the view that pre-IPO investments by FIIs cannot be treated as portfolio investment and the FDI norms be adhered to. Nearly half of the over $4-billion foreign investments which came in real estate sector in 2006 was through private placements.

Source: Economictimes

Sahara Care House Offers to 'Share' NRI Responsibilities

Sahara India Pariwar, the Lucknow, U.P.-based conglomerate that owns the commercial airline Air Sahara, announced last week that it will launch its Sahara Care House service for NRIs living in the U.S. The service will allow Indian Americans to take care of relatives and manage property in India through "relationship ambassadors," who are on call 24 hours a day.

Sahara India Pariwar founder Subrata Roy was inspired to start the service two years ago, when he was visiting the U.S. "He was talking to NRIs at dinner parties across the country, and people kept telling him to do something for them," Sahara Care House CEO Romi Datta told India-West. "He then went back, wrote up a basic document, and we did focus group studies. What we found was that all NRIs-whether they spend five days or 20 years abroad-can benefit from our services."

Source: Indiawest

Land scam lands Indian American physician in jail

Police in Florida have arrested an Indian American doctor. Ketan Ashvin Patel, 37, is accused of a $100,000 land scam.

Patel, who was arrested on Tuesday, allegedly took money for a large land transaction in Washington few months ago and then diverted the money for his personal use.

The alleged victims of the doctor said they haven't recovered any of their money, media reported.

Source: Hindustantimes

Builder held for duping NRI of Rs 14 cr

NEW DELHI: A builder was arrested by the economic offences wing (EOW) for defrauding several NRIs of over Rs 14 crore। The accused, Naresh Chandra, had reportedly started a charitable trust called Human Care Medical Charitable Trust, and lured NRI doctors to invest money into the trust.

"He had got the trust registered with the Registrar of Societies and showed in the papers that the trust had acquired land in Dwarka to construct a charitable hospital," said Prabhakar, deputy commissioner of police (EOW)।

He convinced a handful of doctors settled abroad to invest in the trust and managed to collect a sum of Rs 14 crore constructing a hospital। But after giving the money, investors found that the building was coming up slowly and that the quality of construction was not up to the mark. After confronting the accused, one of the doctors filed the complaint.

Investigations found that the builder was using inferior quality material and showed inflated bills. He was transferring the balance amount into his own company, M/s Nidhi builders (I) Pvt Ltd. He was arrested on April 6 and is now in judicial custody.

NRI foundation

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said that the Gujarat government handed over 5।77 lakh square metres of land, near Gandhinagar, to Puri Foundation, run by Nottingham-based NRI Natt Puri, "at a concessional value of Rs 75.02 lakh against the market value of Rs 28.85 crore." The foundation is setting up an Advance Research and Development Centre for Information Technology and Biotechnology on the allotted land.

The CAG scrutiny has revealed that the land was allotted in June, 2001, "without obtaining the authorisation from the department concerned which is a prerequisite for allotment of land for setting up higher educational institutions। Concessional rate was also applied to land meant for construction of residential houses"। Despite the fact that Foundation was not registered as a society in Gujarat State, under the Registered Societies Act, 1960। CAG said the Foundation did not start construction of the centre, nor did it finish completing it within three years, as required। The CAG further said, though the Foundation committed breach of several conditions, the government did not do anything about it. In yet another case CAG says, the Ahmedabad collectorate allotted 0.60 lakh square metres of land on concessional rate to the Nirma Educational and Research Foundation for setting up of management complex for architecture and post-graduation in computer, resulting in a loss of Rs 2.85 crore. Besides, citing another such case, it says, "The Ahmedabad collectorate allotted 21,300 sq metres of land to Bharat Hotels at Rs 7.39 crore in November 2005.

South Indian NRI docs head home

An increasingly large number of non-resident Indian doctors is returning home to south India, giving a third leg to the reverse brain drain phenomenon that mostly involved software engineers and corporate scientists.

A trickle of NRI doctors returning home has been there all around the country for decades now (that is how Apollo Hospitals started), but what marks out the present phase is the accelerating pace and the peninsular focus. The latter is only to be expected since more doctors from the south left India in the first place.

"We get enquiries on a daily basis from NRI doctors wanting to come back," says K Hari Prasad, CEO of Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad.

On an average, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore, gets five to six resumes every week from NRI doctors in the US and UK. Corporate hospitals in Kerala are seeing a similar inflow of applications.

A good 15 per cent of the doctors at the Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences are former NRIs. Wockhardt hospitals have 28 specialists who have returned to India from abroad. Around 15 former NRI specialists are working with Image Hospitals in Hyderabad and they keep receiving enquiries from doctors seeking jobs in the group.

Says A John Punnoose, CEO, Madras Medical Mission, "Around 80 per cent of the doctors at our hospital in Chennai are former NRIs. I receive around two or three applications from NRI doctors every week, which shows that the trend is on the rise."

"Though it is just over a year since Lifeline Hospitals started operations on Chennai's IT corridor,we already have 13 former NRI doctors, making up a good 24 per cent of the total strength," says M Baskaran, chief executive officer, Lifeline Clinics & Multi-Specialty Hospitals.

Why is this happening? There is both a pull and a push factor. Things are changing rapidly for the better in high-value private health care in India and for the worse for doctors in general in the US and NRI doctors in particular in the UK.

As the economy booms, corporate hospitals are mushrooming all over the country. These are bringing in the latest equipment and their practices and standards are increasingly conforming to globally accepted levels, driven partly by the desire to attract medical tourism.

First, the push factor. V K Kamath, CEO, Apollo Hospitals (Bangalore), says the status of doctors in the US is not what it used to be. Doctors, once among the most respected of professionals, are no longer in that category.

The relative salary of doctors in the US today is not very high as compared to the seventies and eighties when, on an average, they earned much more than those in most other professions.

As for the UK, it is the glass ceiling that has prompted many to return to India.

"There is only a certain level to which a non-White can reach in the UK. The glass ceiling starts to act from then on," said Shabeer Ahmed, a laparoscopy surgeon who had been in Britain since the early 1990s and is now with Wockhardt Hospital. "Here I can use my knowledge in laparoscopy to build something big."

Now the pull factor. According to Dr M I Sahadulla, chairman and managing director of Thiruvananthapuram-based Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences, a premier corporate hospital promoted by NRIs based in the Gulf, "In the past, doctors opted to work in UK and US hospitals as they offered better incomes, top-class medical training and greater job satisfaction. With the Indian healthcare scene now ensuring these aspects, NRI doctors are keen to return. The most important phrase for them is job satisfaction, which they know they will get by working in present-day India's healthcare sector."

Source:Business Standard

NRI uses RTI to get tax refund

This is one problem that most tax-payers in the country may have faced at some point in their lives. The income tax department directly deducts your tax at source, but when it comes to refunds, it sends you on a wild goose chase.

An assessee has now shown a way around the problem through the use of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Tushar Dalvi used RTI and managed to get his refund, which was pending for five years, in a week's time.

Dalvi, an NRI, who settled in Santa Cruz a few years ago, has a non-resident ordinary account from which the bank was deducting tax at source (TDS) on the interest accumulated on his deposits. Although he had filed returns and applied for a refund with the central international taxation department from 2002 onwards, he had not got a single reply from the I-T department.

"I was stone-walled for quite sometime and then I tried to use the services of a chartered accountant (CA). But he said he would charge me Rs 50,000 as service charge,"said 60-year-old Dalvi, an IIT alumnus from Powai. The CA told him that some part of the money would be for 'other expenses' to get the job done quickly.

Dalvi decided to file an RTI query with the I-T dept's central public information officer (CPIO) in December last year, asking about the status on his pending refund. "The officer in charge forwarded my request to the CPIO for international taxation and I got both my refunds in a week."

Township For NRIs

Noida-based Shourya Towers Private Ltd, a unit of the Nitishree Group, is coming up with Shourya NRI City, spread over 150 acres in Amritsar with an initial investment of Rs 500 crore. The project is targeted at Non-Resident Indians, and is likely to be completed in two years from the date of commencement.

The township, comprising of both residential and commercial complexes, is just 8 km from the Golden Temple. The project has been conceptualized by world-renowned architects, SAA, Singapore.

The residential area will have modern infrastructure with apartments, kothies and villas. There will be other facilities like a premium club, a ladies’ club, a splash pool, an indoor games arena, a banquet hall, schools, petrol pumps, barbeque, banks and ATMs, a super-specialty hospital, and provision for a helipad. The township will also have platinum villas in varied sizes.

There will be green belts that would possess features like mediterranean façade, manicured gardens etc. Plots would be available in different sizes like 175, 250, 400 and 500 square yards and would cost about Rs 4,475 per square yard.

The township would also have provision for a magnificent mall with a difference comprising of a large-sized atrium. An ethnic touch will be created to increase the footfall in the mall and the shoppers can also enjoy laser shows from Suntech and Singapore Island.

Party is over, NRIs flying back

"The 'winter homes' for NRIs have been an important factor in driving up the real estate prices, since real estate developers create luxury condominiums and villas with all 'foreign' facilities and style and then sell them at premium prices. Even the locals who can afford it want to upgrade their lifestyles and pay the steep prices. New housing estates have American names like Vermont, Palm Springs, Santa Monica, Key West and Norwood, among others. They come with lush green landscape, health club, clubhouse, nursery, shopping arcade, temple and round-the-clock water, power and security. One developer has gone so far as to announce a new project near Mumbai called - what else? - New York City! "

It's time to head back home for NRIs who came to India to enjoy the festive season. Now that Pongal, Uttarayan -, Lohri and Makar Sankranti are all over, NRIs are reconfirming their seats to get back. With Navratri in mid-October, NRIs start planning their India trips for Diwali and the New Year and return at the latest by mid- or end-January.

For those living in Canada, eastern and central US, Britain and Europe, this is the time of freezing winter while India has sunny weather - warm in southern India, cool in central India and cold in northern India. But even the chilly north has eight hours of sunshine almost every day while in Britain and Europe one may not see the sun for weeks during this period.

"So Punjabi NRIs prefer to spend their winters in India, sunning it out and enjoying the good life."

Source: rxpgnews.com/

To Protect Gulf NRI Workers...

A new push is under way to protect the interests of Indian workers in the Gulf, it was declared yesterday.

Concrete steps will follow the global conference of overseas
Indians, held in New Delhi earlier this month, said Indian Ambassador
Balkrishna Shetty.

"It was a great experience to attend the three-day event, especially the session on the Gulf on the first day," he said.

Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi and Minister of State
for External Affairs E Ahmed spoke at the session, which was attended
by Indian community and business leaders in the Gulf.

Mr Shetty, who also spoke at the session, pointed out the efforts
made by the Indian Embassy in attending to the problems of expatriate
Indian workers.

"All the leaders have a clear understanding of the specific nature
of the problems faced by Indians in the Gulf, including the acute staff
shortage at Indian missions here," he noted.

"We were happy to learn that the government is taking serious steps to address the problems."

Mr Ravi talked about the proposed amendments to the Indian
Emigration Act, which will go a long way in making recruitment of
Indian workers in the Gulf more smooth, orderly and humane, said Mr
Shetty.

"Unlike previous years, the Indian government attached special
significance to this session, as it deals with issues concerning the
4.5 million strong expatriate Indians living in the Gulf," he noted.

Indians living around the world showed keen interest in taking part in their country's development process, said Mr Shetty.

"They also welcomed a declaration from Prime Minister Dr Manmohan
Singh on the establishment of a University for Persons of Indian
Origin," he added.

The three-day event was organised by the Ministry of Overseas Indian
Affairs in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry. This
year's theme was Rooting for the Roots: Meeting India's Development
Challenges.

The forum is the annual flagship event of the ministry and it aims
to connect more than 25m overseas Indians and bring the expertise and
knowledge of Indian community abroad to India .

Dr Singh opened the conference and President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam addressed the closing session.

SOURCE-www.gulf-daily-news.com

Blair Questioned by the Scotland Yard on Peerage to NRI Businessmen

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was questioned by the Scotland Yard as part of an ongoing inquiry into charges that peerages had been offered on sale to four leading businessmen, include two of Indian origin.

This is the first time in the history of British parliamentary politics that the police have knocked on the doors of a serving prime minister at 10, Downing Street. The two-hour police encounter was highly embarrassing for Blair, who had promised to make politics 'whiter than white' when he came to power in 1997.

The four businessmen who were allegedly offered peerages in exchange for funds to the Labour party are Chai Patel, a chief executive of the up-market Priory Clinics, Ghulam Noon, Britain's leading food sector entrepreneur, stockbroker Barry Townsley and property developer David Garrard.

A spokesman for Blair said the prime minister had denied to the police that peerages had been offered for sale. Blair was not cautioned but interviewed as a witness without the presence of a lawyer.

The spokesman said - "The prime minister spoke to police today in Downing Street. This was not under caution, nor was he accompanied by a lawyer." The interview was described as robust and a civil servant was present to take notes.

The spokesman added that Blair explained to the police why the four businessmen had been nominated for peerages, and insisted that giving money to a political party should not prevent someone from receiving an honour.

The prime minister explained why he nominated each of the individuals and he did so as party leader in respect of the peerages reserved for party supporters as other party leaders do.


Sourc-http://www.rxpgnews.com

Special Cell for Non-Resident Indians by Punjab Police

Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) cheated back home or involved in a dispute over property or even marriage, are just a phone call or an e-mail away from relief. All they have to do is to contact the NRI cell of the Punjab Police.

Lodging a complaint is a simple process. Recently, the Cell started a NRI Radio helpline to handle grievances of Canada-based NRis.

“We have a live programme with Radio in Canada. Also, we are trying to get in touch with few other radio and TV channels,” Deputy inspector General of Police, NRI cell, Sanjeev Kalra, said.

“i have a feeling that NRIs are not aware that there is such an NRI cell which looks into their problems on a priority basis. So, through all these things, we are trying to project to NRIs all over a feeling that, yes, they have somebody to look to whenever they have a problem here,” Kalra added.

An NRI settled in Toronto, Canada, Palwinder Singh, approached the NRI Cell of the Punjab Police when his family got no help from the local police.

in Palwinder’s absence, his family was attacked several times by miscreants in the village, but the local police didn’t even register their complaint. This left no option for Palwinder, and he returned home.

He then approached the NRI Cell of the Punjab Police and got his case registered. The miscreants were eventually put behind bars.

“i registered my case through the NRI Cell and got the justice which i never thought i would. The miscreants were too powerful that my family had never dreamt of getting justice. it all happened through the NRi Cell that we are now living freely,” Palwinder said.

Located in Chandigarh, the Cell works round the clock to register NRI grievances.

NRis relatives too can approach the Cell. Narvinder’s brother, who is settled in Canada, visited Punjab, and is facing a criminal case. Narvinder approached the NRI Cell to get his brother exonerated.

Since its formation in February 2004, the Cell has handled 932 complaints, out of which 771 have been disposed off satisfactorily, 161 cases are still being looked into.

The nature of complaints reveals that a majority of the NRIs face problems relating to property or money. Marital problems, theft and false allegations follow suit.

NRI victims can send their complaints through an e-mail pbpolicenri@yahoo.co.uk.

Punjabis are ethnically, linguistically and culturally related to the other Indo-Aryan peoples of South Asia.

There are an estimated 120 million Punjabis around the world. The Punjabi people have emigrated in large numbers to many parts of the world.

The United Kingdom has a significant number of Punjabis from both India and Pakistan as does Canada and the United States. The Middle East has a large immigrant community of Punjabis, in places such as the UAE and Kuwait.

Indians in the USA are one of the largest among the groups of Indian diaspora, numbering about 1.7 million, and probably the most well off - their median income is 1.5 times that of the host country. They are well represented in all walks of life, but particularly so in academia, information technology and medicine. There were over 4,000 PIO professors and 33,000 Indian-born students in American universities in 1997-98. The American Association of the Physicians of Indian Origin boasts a membership of 35,000. in 2000, Fortune magazine estimated the wealth generated by Indian Silicon Valley entrepreneurs at around 250 billion dollars.

in the year 2002, of the entire total 1,063,732 immigrants to USA from all the countries, as many as 66,864 were from India. According to the US census, the overall growth rate for Indians from 1990 to 2000 was 105.87 per cent. The average growth rate for the whole of USA was only 7.6 per cent.

Source-http://punjabnewz.com/1230/punjab-police-has-special-cell-for-non-resident-indians.html

Non-Resident Indians Feelings - A Perception based Global Survey on NRIs

Non-Resident Indians Feelings About India :A Perception-based Global survey

Manama, Bahrain, December1, 2006: The Non-resident Indians (NRIs) are considered as ambassadors for Brand India in foreign lands. They try to remove a lot of misconceptions that foreigners may have about India. It is seen that most of the time they try to highlight the positives instead of the negatives about India. Furthermore, they play multifarious role by contributing to the peace and prosperity of India and Indians around the world not just restricted to sending remittances. According to one estimate, their contributions in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of India have been about 18-20%.

The NRIs population is estimated over twenty two million, living in different regions of the world. Over 44% of them are concentrated in Asia, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand and approximately 26% are in North and South America. This is a significant population that is talented, resourceful, and quite sensitive towards the developmental issues. Majority of them are technically qualified people who immigrated to other countries for various reasons and have been playing a key role in transforming their socio-economic environment of these regions. They are one of the main investors in India. The presence of several hundreds NRIs making waves abroad and through their influence also help Indian organizations to get outsourcing projects, collaborations, joint ventures and flow of capital into the Indian businesses. NRIs are now showing long term commitments to integrate with the local businesses in India

Recently, there have been a lot of discussions on NRIs to the effect that once they leave India in search of green pastures e.g. to North America and Europe, they start berating India. Influenced by such contentious discussions, Dr. P.L. Joshi, who hails from Uttaranchal, India and currently a Professor at the University of Bahrain, has conducted perhaps the first global survey of its kind on NRIs attitudes examining “what makes them feel proud of India? Using a convenient random survey technique, 1441 questionnaires were sent by emails to NRIs living in 29 countries. Ten statements, which may make the NRIs to express their proud feelings towards India, and five statements, which may hesitate not to say so, were included in the questionnaire after a two-stage Delphi method was used to develop the questionnaire. A total of 162 replies were received; however, only 90 questionnaires were usable.

A Likert scale ranging from strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1) was used to measure the responses. There was some response bias particularly from North America where the maximum number of questionnaires was sent. More than 50% of the respondents were executives and managers together with a few business people. Over 31.1% of responses were received from Middle East alone in which over 40% of NRIs population live. Again, over 50% of them have post-graduate qualifications and over 45% were in the age group of 36 to 54 years who responded to the questionnaires. The survey provides a number of insights and the respondents also offered several comments. The main findings were:

On an overall basis, NRIs strongly feel that -

(1) ‘the history and rich cultural values of India”,

(2) ‘India’s third-largest pool of scientists and engineers in the world (technical human resources)”, and

(3) ‘technology, software and other developments”

These are the three main achievements/characteristics of India, which make them feel proud of contemporary India. These three variables received more than 80% responses from the respondents in this global survey. The findings reflect that the NRIs still take pride in Indian customs, traditions and cultural values for the simple reason that perhaps it is the only country in the world with multicultural diversity, immense demographics and ethnic communities living in peace. Of course, there were statistical differences in their perceptions when data was analyzed by NRIs living in developed versus under-developed countries, Middle East region versus rest of the world . The respondents living in developing countries gave higher score on the ten variables compared to NRIs living in developed world.

The respondents were not very much impressed with the claims that India has become self –sufficient in agricultural food grains. It received seventh ranking in the ranking order and only 36.7 percent of respondents agreed that India has achieved self-reliance in food grains. The perceptions of respondents living in developed countries and developing countries were similar on this point.

Furthermore, it seems that respondents’ attitudes towards India from the Middle East and Asia were more positive than NRIs living in the Western countries. The reason may be that NRIs in Middle East are unique as they are not naturalized there and ultimately will return to India (Non-Returnable Indians). For nine statements, the average score from respondents from Europe were below 80 percent. The NRIs from Europe also ranked “India’s third largest pool of scientists and engineers in the world (technical human resources)” as the main characteristics/achievement of India.

Source-http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0612/S00064.htm

NRIs to Press US Cong on Indo-US N-deal

NRIs in United States stands united to urge India and US, the two world's largest democracies for a unique partnership in Nuclear-Deal that US Congress seems to apprehensive or so.

A broad coalition of groups representing the Indian American community, including some prominent members, would press lawmakers here to ratify legislation on the civilian nuclear energy agreement between the US and India.

Leading community members, including entrepreneurs, hoteliers, physicians, and venture capitalists from across the country would gather on Wednesday and attend a series of events designed to urge Congress to ratify the nuclear agreement.

The event is being organised by the US-India Friendship Council. The events include interaction with the US Chamber of Commerce before community leaders go to Capitol Hill to meet individually with members of Congress in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Swadesh Chaterjee, a North Carolina businessman and political activist siad - "Today, the Indian-American community stands united with one voice to urge our country's leadership to forge a unique partnership for the 21st century between the world's oldest and largest democracies".

"On multiple levels (strategic, security, environmental, and economic,) this agreement is good for the US, India, and the rest of the world, he said in a release.

"This agreement brings India, a responsible nuclear power, into the umbrella of the international non-proliferation community," said Bharat Bharai, a Indian-American physician and long-time resident of Indiana.

"India has a spotless reputation on proliferation and deserves to be treated on that track record", he said.

"Moreover, beyond this benefit to international security, serving India's growing energy needs through nuclear power instead of coal will also significantly reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions, so there are multiple reasons for Congress to pass this agreement." - Said Ranavir Trehan, a community leader in Northern Virginia.

Via-http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1512741.cms

India's compelling success story

India is expected to add more wealth in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50 years!" That statement came out of an HSBC presentation made at a Dubai meeting some months ago to persuade more equity investment into India.

India remains a compelling investment story. So it was no surprise really when the country's main benchmark share index hit a new record last week.

India is already the world's 12th biggest economy and the fourth largest in terms of purchasing power parity. Its GDP grew 8.9 per cent in the first quarter of this fiscal year which ends in March 2007, and has averaged 8.4 per cent in the last three years.

The GDP is poised to grow at least at that pace over the next year or two and possibly accelerate as infrastructure improves around the country.

Source: http://www.gulfnews.com/business/money/10079672.html