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Journalism of Courage
A Good 155 years after his ancestors stepped on the shores of Guyana, Yesu Persaud is attempting a reverse immigration of sorts. In his second outing at the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas, Persaud is already getting ready to begin the ‘‘first Indo-Caribbean joint venture’’ to do business in India.
But Persaud has a problem. He is busy telling people at the conference the story of 3,95,250 Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) in Guyana, and expresses his unhappiness that his country rarely blips up on India’s foreign policy radar. But he is happy that his country’s President, Bharat Jagdeo, also of Indian origin is in town to address the annual event as its chief guest.
If last year’s sessions were all about the projecting the Indian brand and tapping the Indian human resource spread across various continents, this year it is the turn of the reverse-immigrants like Persaud.
‘‘Indians are a major economic power in the Caribbean today,’’ says Harold Ramdhani from Suriname. Sunny Kulathakal from Bahrain is busy talking about the ‘‘$150,000 million worth goods that Gulf countries import every year.’’ Even Indian PIO representatives from Europe like Sunil Prasad settled in Belgium talks of the ‘‘14,000 Indians’’, mostly diamond merchants who are ‘‘competing with the best in the world’’.
