India is on the fast track and its further advancement is attracting favourable attention from all the quarters. Your active involvement with zeal and commitment, your professional expertise and broad vision can give a major boost to our endeavours, he said.

Inaugurating the conference on ‘Indian Diaspora : Migration and Development with the focus on the state of Punjab’ at the CRRID, Sector 19, Rodrigues said the century belongs to India and it has emerged as one of the major global players with a vast pool of knowledge workers.

He said we have the potential, technology relevant to our needs, manufacturing capacity and marketing infrastructure and 300 million workforce people as a potential source for meeting the global needs. The world is looking towards India for meeting the needs of skilled and unskilled workforce. He complimented the NRIs who despite hostile environments in other countries made their mark and and achieved excellence in different fields of activity.

He emphasised that the NRIs must come forward with partnerships for rejuvenating the system and restructuring our strategies suiting international requirements.

Expressing his concern over steep rise in illegal immigration, he said there is a need of institutionalising the system for the flow of the workforce to other countries through legal modes. He stressed that an effective system must be evolved to generate awareness among our people to follow right course to go abroad, following proper procedures and guidelines.

Rodrigues said there is a major scope of participation by the NRIs in the developmental process and economic growth of the region, by making investments in different fields of the economy.

He lauded the efforts of the Punjab Government for taking initiatives in attracting investments and protecting interests and rights of the NRIs. Appreciating the effort of the CRRID for holding the conference, he said events of such nature are of great help in sharing experiences, perceptions and ideas, for promoting mutual understanding.

Rashpal Malhotra, Director, CRRID and Paramjit Singh Sahai, IFS (Retd), while speaking on the occasion said the objective of this conference is to provide an opportunity to the Indian diaspora to give them an overview of socio-economic development and enabling them to establish new partnerships with their homeland.