The Newspapers gave headlines that “after July 3 Nitaqat hit will have no place to hide” – One does not need to hide – for Indians in particular the time is still ripe to return to their homeland and live a life of dignity and comfort. This was the message given to a section of Indians gathered at a function organized by the Socio Reforms Society, Jeddah on Sunday 9th June addressed by Mr. Sajid Beig, Dr. Md. Haseebullah and Aleem Khan Falaki.
Mr. Baig, an Educationist who is running Engineering colleges and teacher’s training colleges including Moghal Eng’g and Noor Eng’g and city in Andhra Pradesh stressed the importance of starting up educational institutions back in India which is the need of the hour – he stressed that apart from being an excellent social services – the setting up of good quality schools is also a profitable venture. He also invited the attention towards new ventures which could be become a hot cake soon in future like Geo-electricity, Food parks etc. He said that the NRIs need not worry about the settlement in India as the opportunities are there waiting for men of patience and hard work.
Dr. Mohammed Haseebullah, an ex-NRI who worked as commercial office in USA Embassy and served as the president of India Forum as well as Khake Tayba Trust, who is running a successful Management and educational consultancy plus an MBA college in Hyderabad, said the basic issue of the lack of awareness among the expatriates as to the various schemes of the government to help people to set up small and medium scale industries back in India. He urged Indians to take advantage of varies government schemes to become enterprisers in their own right. Other than educational institutions returning Indians can set up from “self-help group”, small industries cluster development projects to export/import projects. He urged the Indians gathered to keep in mind that a small scale industries can be started from an investment of Rs, 50,000 (SR 4000) to Rs 10 lacs and that there are more than 17 government and NGO organization who are there to assist by way of subsidy, interest free loans, low interest long term loans, land on very nominal rates at SEZs, special schemes for women and minorities floated by state and central governments. Dr. Haseebullah said, unfortunately, lack of awareness is the key issue. India is now become a land of opportunity at this point of time. Some of the key areas of investment and setting up of small scale industry is in Leather goods manufacturing, garments, chemicals, consumer goods, ancillary units for major manufactures an private label processing units.
He gave an example of food Technology Park – the government of India provides subsidy up to Rs. 50 lacs for this venture and the initial capital of the promoters need not be more than 20 lacs.
Dr. Haseebullah said “arm chair philosophy will not work – if you are serious to make something of your life then you need to take a decision to “burn your ships” before you return to India – a casual approach of sailing in two boats is not going to work”. He shed light on various schemes floated by the Government of India for the business development of Minorities thru National Minorities Development & Finance Corporation (NMDFC) which provides Term loan, Margin Money Loan scheme, Educational Loan Scheme, Scheme of Micro Credit, Scheme of Interest Free Loan to NGO, Mahila Samridhi Yojana.
Mr. Aleem Khan Falaki, Chairman Socio Reforms Society in his inimitable style concluded the meeting with sound advice to the audience to “act now” before it is too late. He emphasized the need for an “exit policy” for all the expatriates in the kingdom and warned against the trend of falling prey to grandiose “investment schemes” brought to the Kingdom by dubious business people from time to time. He said that for the expatriates it is never too late to get settled back in the motherland as whenever opportunities came to NRIs, they took too long to decide due to the fear of unseen. In waiting to see the results of success by some others, the opportunities were lost. In India, the life is for those who know the art of taking risks. He stressed not to invest without own presence in the business relying on the relatives. Most of the NRIs are helpless today only because they wanted somebody to earn profits for them which is against the human psychology. He supported the idea of establishing schools which is a guarantee to safeguard the young generation from getting assimilated in to the uncultured era of today which is, of course, yielding good number of degrees and jobs but missing the social and moral values.
Qari Mohammed Abbas Khan and Dr. Haroon Sayeed convened the meeting in which important members of various organizations of Indian community were present.
Report by Dr. Haroon Sayeed