Pravasi Bharatiya Divas & Samy Velu
Posted by chaanakyan on January 8, 2008
Let’s look at what is Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, which Samy Velu is attending before going into more details.
The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is the annual flagship event of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs. The event aims to connect more than 25 million overseas Indians spread over 130 and integrating them into India’s development process. Theme of the Sixth edition of PBD is ‘Engaging the Diaspora: the way forward’ with the objective to encourage Overseas Indians to be part of the socio-economic development of India.
When there are bigger problems in the country, why did SV and his 70 delegates went there. Just to prove HINNDRAF was wrong? Is government in pressure to prove that to India? All this is the waste of people’s money. The Indian media and the ministers are better informed of the situations in Malaysia by other influential Malaysian Indians and the Indian expatriates in Malaysia.
It has become a government official’s habit to go out of the country when there is trouble. When Johor goes under water, our prime minister goes for boating. When Indians are having many questions to be answered by works minister, he went with his delegates to India for fishing.
Let’s go to the economics of this.
It was reported in our media that samy velu is taking a 70 People delegates for this event. But as per the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas delegate’s registration register, Malaysian delegates stands at 138 (as on 2.1.2008).
Let’s see the approximate costing. Conference fees isRM60k, Air ticket is average of RM120k putting it at the cheapest. Accommodation, food & propaganda material (“Malaysian Indians Then & Now”, booklet which SV is distributing at the conference) will add up to another 130k++
It’s totaling to 300k to 350k for 70 People.
So, you can imagine the amount of money Malaysia spending.
What is all this for? Do we really need such a big delegation to go there spending so much of money for this event. Malaysia is having highest number of delegates.
USA 125, Malaysia 138, Mauritius 120, India 130, Gulf 60, Canada 29, South Africa/ Rest Africa 70, Singapore 15, Europe 68
Read here for more details of this event and the participants: http://www.pbdindia.org/pressrelease/press_releases.htm#hi_lights
chaanakyan
