Mahajan To Begin Week-Long Us Visit On May 20

Information technology minister Pramod Mahajan begins his week-long visit to the United States on May 20 to promote India as an IT investment destination and enlarge bilateral cooperation between the two countries. According to sources, he would also meet with top officials of Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Intel, IBM, Silicon Graphics, AT&T and Cisco, besides some e-commerce companies.

The meetings with the IT majors would explore possibilities of these companies working with the government for various projects.

Besides, the government will use the opportunity to build the brand image for India as the Gateway to the IT Revolution and will focus on linking India's proficiency in IT with the global IT industry.

 

A key feature of the visit will be to initiate partnerships, collaborations and joint ventures in areas of mutual interests between the two countries.

The brand-building exercise during the visit will focus on India as a preferred location for direct and venture investments in infotech, and as an IT skills partner. The visit will also attempt to give a new dimension to the `vision statement' signed during President Clinton's visit to India this year, which acknowledged both the countries being leaders in the information age.

Mahajan will be accompanied by a high-level delegation, including Nasscom president Dewang Mehta, NIIT chief Vijay Thadani, Ramalinga Raju of Satyam, and Wipro's Vivek Paul. "He is scheduled to meet key US industry leaders and business heads during his stay," ministry officials said.

Mahajan is also expected to deliver lectures at MIT, Standford University, Harward Business School and Kellog School of Business, where he expected to talk about the opportunities that the country has for IT businesses.

Also on the agenda is a meeting with a select group of non-resident Indians (NRIs) comprising the NRI advisory council for the infotech ministry.

The NRI committee was constituted by the ministry of information technology to suggest measures which would bring India up to date with developments in the international IT arena. This would be its first meeting and would be chaired by Mahajan.

Also on the agenda is a meeting with the immigration and naturalisation service chief, Department of Commerce, Bureau of Export Administration, Federal Communications Commission and Small Business Administration chief.