Gujarat Earthquake Relief Fund

Press Coverage

Thank you

Indian Express
March 2, 2001

Clinton attends fundraiser for Gujarat quake victims, charms Indian-Americans once again.

AT AN ART auction by The Indo-American Arts Council, the community people came together to raise funds for the Gujarat earthquake victims, identifying with the unbelievable pain and sorrow and loss faced by them. In New York, there have been many fundraisers and recently the Indian-Americans participated at a $250-per plate fundraiser organized by the IAAC at the Dynasty Restaurant in Radisson Hotel.

"The unfortunate thing is I don't see as well as I did before, so I may have to speak without notes," Bill Clinton, the chief guest, said. Clinton said he would go to Gujarat soon and he had started a rehabilitation program of $50 million. He has been working closely with several Indian-American entrepreneurs and they are all coordinating money and efforts to assist Gujarat.

"During my travels, I became convinced that intelligence is equally distributed throughout the world, but opportunity is not. There are now proven devices like micro-credit and new opportunities through technology to give people a chance to skip a whole generation of development. To give their children futures on every continent, in every country, that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago."

When Clinton visited Rajasthan last year, he went to a community center that had a computer with an Internet connection. He saw a woman with a baby who asked for information on childcare. In Clinton's presence, a technician printed out information on taking care of a baby. "That woman went home with a set of instructions that are about as good as you can get in the finest paediatrician's office in New York City," he commented.

"If we could put one good connection to the internet with one good printer in every poor village of the world, we would overcome the textbook problem," he said. He said he visited schools in Africa where maps were so old that they did not list 80 new countries, those which had, politically, come into existence after the those maps were made.

"There are opportunities for those of us who have been more fortunate to help these villages not only recover to the state they were in before the earthquake, but to give their children a broader future."

Clinton also said that he was interested in earmarking funds for housing, healthcare, clean water, education and micro credits to entrepreneurs in those villages.

"Our goal is to provide enough expertise to prove that we can work together in a partnership to leave these villages, if anything better off than they were before the earthquake. No one can replace the human loss, the loss of life, and the personal things that people lose in a tragedy like this. But we would like to make something good come out of this."

The glittering event was well attended. It raised $64,000 from an art auction conducted by Hugo Weihe, vice-president of Indian and South-East Asian Art at the Christie's, New York.

Once the bidding was done, the Indians got on with meeting each other and discussing the earthquake. The artwork was donated by Indian-American artists and art owners of IAAC. Both Natvar Bhavsar's work and M.F. Husain's painting went for $9,000 each. The remarkable artist, Mohan Samant, who had to be coaxed to attend the event had donated a soft and vibrant painting. Throughout the evening, the artist-donors sat quietly, with child-like expressions as they watched their work auctioned off.

Aroon Shivdasani, the executive director of IAAC said that the 200 meals for the event were donated by the Radisson Hotel (formerly known as the Lexington Hotel and managed by Taj Hotel group) while the Christie's donated its auction services.

Clinton looked happy and as usual charmed everyone. He stayed for almost 45 minutes and was to fly to Washington DC later in the evening. He spoke pleasantly and in a relaxed fashion to many of the guests and naturally many got their photos taken.

"As you know I tried to rekindle a new era in the Indian-American relation and I was very moved by what I saw," Clinton said.

"He (Vajpayee) said that the fundamental challenge was what happens when the television cameras go away. What about the long-tern relief and what specifically can be done for, not only the larger cities, but also the 400 villages that were completely devastated. Was there someway that the Indian-Americans could contribute, particularly those who had roots in those villages, to make a commitment to long tern reconstruction."

The next day he met a group of prominent Indian-American CEOs to raise money for relief work in Gujarat. Those who attended the meeting include Victor Menezes, president of Citicorp, Vin Gupta chairman and CEO of infoUSA, Rajat Gupta, managing director of McKinsey & Co., Rohit Desai, president and chief investment officer of Desai Capital Management, Dr. Suvas Desai, former president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, Ramesh Kapui P.C.Chatterjee and Kailash Joshi. Shashi Tripathi, the consul-general of India in New York, was also present.

"I spent a lot of time doing (this kind of work) as a president," he said, "and I think the best use of my time as a former president would be to do those things I tried to do as president that most people in position like the one I held don't think that are all that important, but I think will change the whole future of the world. And we have a chance to do that in India."

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