File Photo: Ambassador Venkatesan Ashok, Consul General of India - San Francisco.
With India's top political and business leaders making a beeline to California, holding a diaspora meeting in Los Angeles and launching of direct Air India flight between San Francisco and Delhi next week, America's West Coast has assumed a new meaning in the development of India.
"The West Coast has assumed a new meaning for India in terms of what India can share from the West Coast, but also what the West Coast can get from India," Indian Consul General at the San Francisco Consulate Venkatesan Ashok told PTI.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a tour of the Silicon Valley in September as part of his effort to learn from the ecosystem that has made it the innovation and IT hub of the world. He was preceded and followed by several of his Cabinet colleagues including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
For the first time in several decades, top Indian business and industrial delegations came to California - San Francisco and Los Angeles - five times.
India hosted the inaugural session of the new Regional Pravasi Bharatiya Divas here this month, in recognition of the large presence of the Indian diaspora in California.
And to cap it all Air India would launch a non-stop flight between San Francisco and New Delhi next week.
Ashok acknowledged there has been an unprecedented level of high-level visits between California and India this year, which, he said, reflects the significance that the Indian government attaches to the west coast.
Not only this, in less than two months after Modi's visit to the Silicon Valley - the first by an Indian Prime Minister in decades - top executives have visited India, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft's Satya Nadella.