Apolitical crowd at Modi's political event

Modi came, enthralled the audience like a rock star but key questions still remain on how his policies will contain brain drain from India

There was not a single Indian government official on stage at the SAP Center on Sunday, when PM Modi addressed the Indian American community at an open event. Instead, there were various members of the US government, including several Congressmen, and the mayor of San Jose. The mayors of Fremont and Menlo Park also attended the event. If the first day of Modi’s weekend trip to Silicon Valley had been about technology, it was clear the second day will be about the politics.

The only ‘news’ amidst the rhetoric was that soon Air India is going to be offering direct flights from San Francisco to New Delhi three times a week. Modi made the announcement after he finished his hour-long speech. Why ‘after’ the speech? Steve Jobs used to do the same thing while launching new Apple products. He would apparently finish his presentation at press briefings, and then as an afterthought add, “One more thing.” It made good theatre and enthralled the audience. The audience was more than willing to be enthralled on Sunday. Some of them had travelled hundreds of miles to hear Modi speak. A few hundred had signed up as volunteers just so they could attend, when it was obvious passes would not be available — organisers of the community event did not sell tickets, but issued free passes; relying on a lottery system to decide which one of the roughly 48,000 people who had registered would make the cut.

If you did not know you were in San Jose, you could have been forgiven for thinking you were in Delhi. What was the motivation behind the people who showed up, some of them working from the night before? When asked, it seemed a surprising a number of the people were apolitical, and had not really thought about Indian politics or the government for that matter actively, before Modi.

Council member Ash Kalra of San Jose said he was there because he was excited that an Indian PM was in his city, and he wanted to explore collaboration opportunities. “I think there are a lot of opportunities where India and the US can use technologies and the latest innovation to get health care out to the masses,” said Congressman Ami Bera, the only Indian American currently serving in Congress.

Around $9 billion in defence contracts have been signed between India and the US over the past seven years or so. Could Modi’s visit translate into larger engagements, perhaps in the areas of military software? There were no immediate answers forthcoming.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets the audience as the organisers of reception clap at the SAP Center in San Jose, California. Photo: PTI

Catherine Carlton is the mayor of Menlo Park, California. Menlo Park is home to Sand Hill Road, the Wall Street of the West, where venture capitalists decide on the fate of companies with their multi-million dollar funds, and billion-dollar portfolios. The GDP of Menlo Park can easily equal and perhaps exceeds that of many small countries. Carlton is interested in smart city initiatives. Kochi has a sister city agreement with Menlo Park already, and there could be more such collaboration in the future, she says, perhaps around student exchange programmes, so that students from both the US and India can witness first-hand how the other country works, and one day build their start-ups.

As Modi leaves for New York to meet US President Barack Obama, there are a couple of questions that remain unanswered. First, can the willingness of expats to do something for the country they have left behind be actually translated into income for India? Second, for all Modi’s assertions that brain drain is not really that, is there anything the government is thinking of doing, so a truly disruptive company like Facebook or Google can come from the country in the next five, 10, or 50 years?

In the meanwhile, brilliant students continue to come from IITs to foreign shores, and take up foreign citizenships, where they have the opportunity and freedom to innovate and shine in an ecosystem that encourages innovation.

The writer is part of the international relations team at Hackers/Founders, and editor of TechTaffy.