Rajiv Khanna to head INOC business council

May 11, 2010 02:22 IST

Rajiv Khanna, a New York-based attorney who heads the India-America Chamber of Commerce, was last month named chairman of the newly-launched business council of the Indian National Overseas Congress.

The INOC, which also appointed Khanna as a vice president of the organization, picked him because of his experience as an attorney specializing in legal aspects of bilateral trade and investment between India and the United States.

Prabhu Dayal, India's consul general in New York, the chief guest of the event, said the business council could be a vehicle to enhance prosperity in India and that it 'must succeed' in its mission. He urged the council to form committees and reach out to as many as possible.

Khanna said his focus would be to 'harness all the forces favoring trade and investment between

India and the United States' and remove any impediment hindering the growth of trade and investment between the countries. He said INOC's goal was to make the US and India each other's largest trade partners by the end of this decade, which would help India reach its highest level of gross domestic product growth and eliminate poverty, and also bring economic growth to the US.

He added that he planned to organize the business council into sub-councils, each of which will address an important sector of bilateral trade and investment--nuclear sector, diamonds, medical tourism, information technology, outsourcing, real estate and manufacturing.

Each section, he said, would be headed by a member of the business council's executive committee. The first step in this direction was taken last week, when Khanna announced a Diamond Council event that will take place this month to address the concerns and needs of the diamond and jewelry industries of India and the US.

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