An unusual visitor to New York during the Republican Convention was Ambassador Ronendra 'Ronen' Sen, but that, embassy staff say, is mere coincidence.
Sen had been planning to meet with Indian Consul Generals across the United States, his first formal meeting with them as a group after taking over from Lalit Mansingh as ambassador in July.
New York Consul General Pramathesh Rath has been playing host to his counterparts from San Francisco (H H S Vishwanathan), Chicago (Arun Kumar) and Houston (Skand R Tayal); the four have been meeting with Sen through Sunday and most of Monday.
In between, Sen, who attended the Indian American Republican Council's pre-convention dinner in New York on Sunday, decided to meet with community leaders in an informal, pulse-taking exercise.
A dinner was hastily organised at Jewel of India Restaurant on Monday 7pm. In attendance were IARC chairman Dr Raghavendra Vijaynagar (alternate delegate from Florida), IARC vice chairmen Dr Sudhir Parikh and Dr Sampath Shivangi (who is also an elected delegate from Mississippi), Dr Akshay Desai (alternate delegate-at-large, Florida), former president of the New York chapter of the Federation of Indian American organisations Jagdish Patel and chairman of the National American Federation of Indian Associations Ramesh Patel, among others.
Discussions covered a wide range of issues. Central to the evening, however, were the twin themes of Indo-US relations in light of the recently elected Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and some angst on the part of IARC officials over what they see as a certain lack of understanding and cooperation from the embassy in the past.
Sen assured the community leaders that though the government in India had changed, the direction of foreign policy remained the same and there would be no dilution of moves to further consolidate relations between the two nations.
In this context, he said there was little or no substance to the belief that under pressure from the Left parties, the Congress-led government would veer away from the US tilt manifest in the tenure of the previous Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
NFIA officials such as Vijaynagar and Parikh also pointed out to the ambassador that while they, and other community activists, had been working on their own initiative to address a perceived lack of understanding, in mainstream America, of India and its concerns, their efforts had been largely ignored by the embassy.
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Sen assured the assembled community leaders that he would work to change that, and that the embassy under him would be more responsive to the needs of the community, and to the voices of its leaders.
"It was a good discussion," Parikh, who organized the dinner meeting, later told rediff.com. "We had a few issues we wanted to know about, we were unhappy about a thing or two, but Ambassador Sen set our concerns at rest, and assured us that our efforts were valuable, and should continue."
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