This Spring there were hugs and handclasps galore as New York’s rich and powerful mingled in the beautifully lit up Cipriani Wall Street which is located, appropriately enough, in the Financial District where so many fortunes are made.

Over 500 movers and shakers had gathered to applaud another great performance in the art of giving. The occasion was American India Foundation’s 10th year Gala to felicitate not the biggest spenders – but the biggest givers of them all, the leading philanthropists.

What happens when you manage to gather critical thinkers like Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s Chairman and CEO, the many faceted Fareed Zakaria, Kapil Sibal, India’s Union Minister for Human Resource Development and Richard C. Levin, President of Yale University all in the same room?

You get some thought-provoking conversation about where India is going, and the challenges along the way.

What is India doing right – and what is it doing wrong? Can it beat China? And what about privatizing public works to fix the infrastructure? Will India have enough teachers? What about the health challenge?

So come be a fly on the wall and listen to where India is headed.

If brainpower, great looks, accomplishments and sheer good intentions could be harnessed for solar energy, then you’d have quite a surplus at the AIF Awards Spring Gala held in the grand ballroom of Manhattan’s Hilton Hotel.

A quick glance of the crowded cocktail circuit and you spotted famous faces including Adi and Parmeshwar Godrej, Salman Rushdie, Richard Gere, Karan Johar and Madhur Jaffrey mingling with the brightest and most powerful of New York’s Indian-American corporate czars and entrepreneurs. Just the bold face names would have been enough to cause a surge in the NASDAQ numbers!

2010.

Stare at the numerical long enough and you get the sense of the start of an almost futuristic, hefty new decade. At such a moment, it’s a good idea to evaluate the past and think about the future by sharing some thoughts from N.R. Narayana Murthy, the founder-chairman of Infosys Technologies Ltd.
His ideas could be a road map, a blueprint for a better tomorrow. In just two words, his mantra for a better world – Inclusive Growth.

How do you recreate Rajasthan in New York? With a lot of chutzpah and a lot of friends! Ten of us at Children’s Hope India, a New York-based non-profit are trying to recreate the magic of the desert state in the heart of Manhattan. It all began with Satish Gupta’s magical painting ‘Peacock’ from the Thar collection. It inspired us to invent Rajasthan in the Big Apple – and the artist not only donated us his art for our invitation cards but also some beautiful work for the silent auction.

President Clinton certainly has the charisma to get pin-drop silence in a room. He was at the Hilton Hotel for the American India Foundation Annual Spring Awards Gala and over 400 heavy hitters from the Indian community turned up.