Indian Arrival Day celebrations focused on future opportunities, as business and government leaders highlighted initiatives aimed at strengthening economic ties between Trinidad and Tobago and India.
Speaking at the Cultural Heritage Ambassadors of Trinidad and Tobago’s Annual Indian Arrival Day Breakfast Fellowship, President of the Trinidad and Tobago-India Business Federation, Dr. Valmikki Arjoon, urged citizens to honour their ancestors’ resilience through risk-taking, entrepreneurship and national unity.
He called for economic diversification, stronger India-Trinidad ties and collective action to build a more prosperous future.
“An MOU on the pharmaceutical corporation has been signed, that could very well become manufacturing of pharmaceuticals on our soil. That’s a job. That’s foreign exchange. That is a brand new sector that doesn’t care what the oil price is doing. Trinidad is not the first Caribbean nation to have adopted India’s UPI, Digital Payments Platform. That digital infrastructure could position us as the gateway for financial technology in the entire Caribbean. OCI cards extended to the sixth generation.”
However, Indian High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Pradeep Singh Rajpurohit, said there has been some difficulty in accessing Overseas Citizenship of India Cards.
The card allows for better economic engagements between both nations for up to the sixth generation of the diaspora.
“I wish to convey that a large majority of the Indian diaspora here do not have the ancestry papers, and probably they have them, but they are not able to trace them in the national archives.”
He said a collaborative Memorandum of Understanding with the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago is being initiated to make the necessary data available.
Minister of Justice and Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General, Devesh Maharaj, indicated that he would explore the matter further, recognising its significance.
“We have access through this OCI card to say we have achieved and we are going to continue to achieve more and more. We are going to be where the air is rare, we are no longer going to be constrained by our geography, by our ethnicity, by what we are.”
As attendees networked over cultural music, dance and traditional food, the event served as a celebration of heritage while highlighting opportunities for future growth and collaboration between Trinidad and Tobago and India.