Indian envoy turns to YouTube, reaches out to Indonesians
India's new ambassador Gurjit Singh used YouTube in his first outreach to the people of Indonesia to say that the two countries would contribute to development of a new international order and had "set a bilateral trade target of $25 billion by 2015".
In his YouTube message that is little over six minutes long (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX8vHORzyHo), Gurjit Singh said India and Indonesia together will contribute to development of a new international order which is "inclusive and provide adequate space to the views of the developing countries".
"Economic cooperation between India and Indonesia has taken enormous strides with growing complementarities emerging. Indonesia is now India's largest trading partner in ASEAN and we have set a bilateral trade target of $25 billion by 2015, which we hope to meet well before that date," he said.
There are around 100,000 Indonesians of Indian origin in Indonesia. They are mainly engaged in trade dealing in textiles and sports goods. There are around 9,000 Indians living in Indonesia, including engineers, consultants, chartered accountants, bankers and other professionals.
The ambassador said: "We would like to expand our cultural linkages and public diplomacy events to emphasise the depth and diversity of our cultures. "This is the centenary year of the birth of Indian cinema, which has great resonance in Indonesia. The epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are immortalised in Indonesia and thus I can see in many areas where we can engage in the public domain."
He said capacity building is another area where India has proven expertise.
"The Indian success story has been primarily built on its human resources capability. As the world economy gets increasingly globalised, it is the strength of human resources which will lead the economy. We have a very active programme in Indonesia where we offer training programme and scholarships...and educational scholarships for under and post graduate courses. We offer a 125 scholarships for various kinds of study in India."
On his employing YouTube to reach out, Gurjit Singh told IANS: "Indonesia has a large youth population and they are heavily into social media. Our Facebook page is becoming more popular than our website and in my interaction with students I saw the potential. Did it as an experiment... seems to have worked"
