NEW YORK (TIP): GOPIO Int’l President Ashook Ramsaran is uncomfortable after the interactive session GOPIO organized with Vayalar Ravi, Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs. He feels issues are not being given due attention by Government of India. He commented,” MOIA and GOPIO are a working partnership from the inception of MOIA whose establishment GOPIO had proposed to be representative of the aspirations of 25+ millions of people of Indian origin living outside of India.

While GOPIO is the outreach to all corners of the Indian Diaspora, we look to MOIA to be the advocacy ministry in the Gov’t of India to address Indian Diaspora issues of interest and concern with ministries within the Gov’t of India as well as foreign governments – to seek remedy and redress to resolve current, critical issues affecting people in the Indian Diaspora.

“Three (3) years ago, GOPIO initiated a series of community feedback sessions and made those findings know to MOIA. We continue to channel the input, suggestions, recommendations and concerns among our global membership and others in the global Indian community to MOIA. It is our expectation that MOIA should address the issues and concerns of the Indian Diaspora, its constituency now exceeding 28 million NRIs and PIOs.

This partnership effort makes MOIA more effective while GOPIO continues its outreach and advocacy of the interests of NRIs and PIOs globally. “We recognize that MOIA is “the Diaspora ministry” and we look towards MOIA to channel the issues of concern among NRIs and PIOs to the respective ministries in the Gov’t of India in an efficient manner to resolve those issues. Since many of the issues pertain to visas, OCI cards, etc, we recommend a liaison officer at MOIA to respective ministries so that these issues are given due attention towards faster resolution.”