United States Ambassador to the Republic of India Speaks at Skift India Forum 2024
Please welcome United States ambassador to the Republic of India Eric Garcetti in conversation with skift founder and CEO Rafi Ali now I see why you have the yellow on I do matches the chairs we are very particular about our chairs well Ambassador it’s an honor for for for for us for you to be here thank you great to be here great to be with all of you
Thank you for having me and the one thing we share is our love for La yes I used to live in LA and obviously you’re Angelina as well um let me start with this question so I’m going to let people settle down a little bit um it’s all
Right this is always the toughest like slot right everybody’s digesting we’ll try to keep you awake because all the blood’s rushing to your stomach right now so the good news is even though he’s the Ambassador as you can see he’s very casual I’ve watched enough videos of him
Being interviewed that we’ll have a good conversation back and forth what spice level can you handle I I think pretty high I’m half Mexican and it’s funny that um my father’s side of the family is Mexican so my grandfather used to give me jalapenos growing up to eat raw
I can’t really eat food without some spiciness in it and I can go pretty high I was in nagaland you know in the Northeast yes of course they have the highest yeah they have some of the hottest um Peppers there that you eat in some interesting assemblages so I was
Eating hornets and Chili Peppers together Hornets yeah they give you like a plate of hornets I think the Stingers are inert or gone and chilies and it’s one of the best dishes I’ve actually had since I’ve been here um so I go pretty spicy this morning I woke up in a
Different state I just came from the airport in Andra Pradesh which is known for its spicy food had a really great Andra fish curry last night so I’d say I can tolerate almost the top but I I come in my preference would be like a 67 maybe and it’s not just because your
Heritage is uh Mexican but also because your love for India you’ve been in you have a long history going back to India yep by the way the spice question was so that I can then calibrate my questions based on the spice level that you can
Have for questions 10 10 I can go 10 don’t 10 okay all right let’s what’s your spice level by the way what can you take my I can I eat chilies with each dinner my family is here somewhere they can attest uh to that where’s the family
My mom’s right there sitting right there Mom oh my gosh you should be so proud of your son I hope you are he’s really F he finally turned out something the history this is the first time she’s seen me in action ever in my 30 years career soing which is amazing
Um so your history with India yeah uh give people a sense of your history with India so I first came to uh India here to Delhi was first stop in 1985 I was 14 years old my sister is 2 years older and I came here cuz my
Parents they had met actually in the travel industry um oh they were in the travel my mom worked for PanAm Airlines as a flight attendant right after college and not flight attendant excuse me a um a booking agent and my dad was looking for a summer job because he grew
Up in a pretty poor family and had never left the country and he had just graduated from college so he was working as like an office boy for panm Airlines and 6 weeks before he was going to leave the country for the first time he asked
My mom out on a date and 2 days before they left they got married so and they’re still married and alive today so you had to wait till to find that out right cuz 50/50 in America they’re still married but um um they raised us with an
Ethic that if they ever had a nickel or a dime more they didn’t put into a nicer car or a nicer house they would send us on trips not vacations but trips they were early in this whole thinking about yeah like they wanted us to grow and be
A part of the world my sister has been an exchange student in Indonesia and New Zealand and Thailand I’ve lived in Burma and Atria in Japan and so they brought us here um and this place captured my my heart I loved it we went to Delhi Bombay
Janora barasi jaur udur um you know saw kind of the highlights but a lot of them and then when I was in college I had to pick a foreign language so I took Hindi just kind of on a whim which is pretty Rusty so I can say a few things but we
Were I was to I wanted to ask him a question in Hindi but so he said my Hindi ear is worse than my Hindi tongue so tongue so yeah um but then I came back when I was 19 because my college roommate who was just randomly assigned to me my first
Year my second year in college he said my father has just become the US ambassador to India wow do you want to go to India so my second trip was actually staying at the US Embassy here with an ambassador never dreaming that one day I’d actually be in that position
So so history goes way back uh studied Indian culture history religion um and I was going to live here my junior year abroad in bodaya you know where Buddha was enlightened and do a Buddha studies program but I ran for student council and got elected so I felt like I should
Fulfill my promise to the voters and I never came and I thought I’d never live here but India has this way of kind of grabbing you and pulling you back it does and as does Joe Biden in my case so Joe Biden and India somehow got me back
Here got you back well that’s incredible we’re going to talk a bunch about off your connection and your role um as as being probably the most IND ofile US ambassador we’ve ever had uh or at least India has ever had so uh let’s get into the spicy part of the questions
Um Visa issues yes big issue um the backlog has come down from th days to 300 days um still a lot how are you thinking as the ambassador to hopefully solve that I know the state department has said to us many times that they were going to solve
It by end of 2023 didn’t happen so this is actually a problem that’s a really great problem to have first of all it reflects how many Indians want to come to the United States um you know I’ve talked to past ambassadors and they say oh I think visas to most ambassadors are headaches
And to me since I come from municipal government I served as a mayor for 9 and a half years as a council member for more than a decade before that I love solving problems that have to do with systems and if when I was a council member or mayor our main product was
Like you know I used to joke filling potholes right making smooth streets for any Embassy it might be sexy to do diplomacy and defense deals and this that but really what our bread and butter is is visas that’s what we’re there for so I’ve really dived into this
And President Biden said to me can you work hard to bring down the Visa wait time I don’t know this for sure but I bet it’s the only time a United States president has told an ambassador please work on Visa issues because we all have Indian friends who all day long are
Lighting up our emails our phones our you know social media handles like I’ve got a cousin’s Barber’s friend’s wife who’s having an issue and this happened um I’m very proud of what we’ve done in less than a year here we increased by 60 plus per the number of visas that we
Adjudicated and gave out last year a brand new record and we reduced by 75% % the weight time it’s now more like about 250 which still for new visas and remember of course there’s 5 million Indians that already have visas that can travel and come back and those are
Usually good for a good decade so this is really only for new firsttime uh tourist visas tourist SL business visas but I attack it three ways one is what we can do in the short term and we brought those times down by really building out our facilities and getting
More out of the same number of people two is by expanding for the long term what our capacity is we’re second only to Mexico now Mexico which will always be number one as a border country and given our demographics but think about that India is now number two and in some
Certain categories number one India passed China and now is double China in terms of number of students that got student visas last year well I have all the stats 1/4 of all students International in us I don’t know if you know this is are is Indians I when I
Left here in 99 I went from India to Indiana not like each other nothing like each other my wife’s from Indiana I always joke she’s from a foreign country but so uh so in 99 when I went and you could find like four actual Indians there were some some like IND us porn
Indians I went back uh a few months ago in every street corner you can literally hear Hindi and I’m like what’s going on there’s a chaiwala in you know Indianapolis at the the gas station but it’s incredible that uh the student visa so talk about how important this student
Part is the student piece is amazing so students are number one from India now like I said and I don’t think that will ever change in any time in the near future um obviously it’s in certain areas stem engineering some medicine it’s usually graduate students so there’s actually more Chinese students
Still in the US because they’re more undergraduate quite often so really interested in what we can do to bring more undergraduate Indians here as well um but we also see that these are the ambassad that for the rest of their lives are the bridge between the US and
India and I’ve I described to the president before the Prime Minister here came to Washington for the state dinner last June right that if you had to describe the US India relationship and it was a bridge from India to the US it’s a beautiful steel reinforced four-lane highway bridge that is just
Gorgeous to look at from the US to India it’s like a rickety rope Bridge with every other plank missing in other words you know the amount of action coming from here to the United States whether that’s students whether that’s just knowledge about America is very high Americans don’t know India and Indians
Like India and Indians know America and Americans and I think there’s an Awakening happening now so this is going to be more of a two-way street of people coming here more American students studied in Costa Rica last year University students than in India think about that I mean that says a lot about
Costa Rica I think we’d all love to go to Costa Rica but is anybody from anybody from Costa Rica here by Kanas no no no okay we invited three of them but they couldn’t get their visas um it was for me you know building this
Bridge to be as strong from the US to India and Americans really do know Indians now one in four Americans have been treated by an Indian origin doctor inside the United States now and not just us it’s a lot of countries a lot of countries I mean obviously UK definitely
You know Cuisine now you can find Indian restaurants almost everywhere can you ex can can you dispel the notion for the non Indians here that when they talk about Indian food it’s not just butter chicken and like naan and what what else do you guys like wasn’t there just a
There’s an opet about this or there’s a New York Times article you know the this battle of w who invented butter chicken here which is Indian and from India but um where it was an indian-american saying if one more friend tells me that she loves Indian food is I love butter
Chicken and doll and all the garlic naan I can eat and that’s all they know um you know Indian food is as diverse as any place in the world but it’s also subtle differences I think to the non-indian palet so you come here and you know the doll will change from
Village to Village and you know I’m sure your mom has a recipe but they’ll describe well I like the specific kind of black lentils we roast them before we then put them in the doll and the ghee the butter comes from the specific cow that my cousin owns cuz it’s really
Perfect and this is you know the great recipe yeah um but the subtleties and even the dramatic differences north south east west are huge and so you know one of the ways I’ve tried to engage as a diplomat is through food yeah and what’s your role so to to sort of I mean
First of all it’s a way to connect with Indians so whenever I I’ve been to 22 of the 36 States and territories and before I go to one of those territories I’ll go to the state house here so each of the states have a bowan a house here like
Imagine in Washington DC there’s a Texas house and a California house and they serve food that’s from those states which is really good by the way and I’ll make a video and eat the food and people no no pun intended eat it up I mean it’s
I always say being a good Diplomat is putting a mirror up to the people where you’re living and showing them what they remind what reminding them what they love best about themselves whether it’s food whether it’s Sports Cricket you know engage with people where they live
How they eat the sports and art that they consume and to me it’s been one of the best things is eating my way through India but it it’s exhausting my stomach is I I haven’t gotten Deli belly or anything like that it’s exhausting cuz Indians are so hospitable if you don’t
Leave food on the plate they’ll just keep serving so you have to like as an American who was trained to always clean my plate if I do that I’m going to be eating like seven platefuls before I Stumble out from that meal to the next
Meal so in terms of I don’t know what the right phrase is dispelling or your role as the Ambassador and the embassy’s role in helping increase bringing it a little bit to the travel industry if you will uh helping tourism grow sort of both sides
Yeah H H how should we how how should the travel industry think about interacting with the embassy and the Machinery well first of all it’s a it’s a huge opportunity for both countries as we all know tourism is like the greatest export you know you are able to bring
People together we have the four Ps uh that are part of our mission peace prosperity planet and people and while I do think there’s probably a role that tourism has in promoting peace through understanding whether it’s protecting our planet whether it’s promoting Prosperity through Economic Development
And jobs um or whether it’s the People to People ties it really hits all of them I think very few Americans come to India a part of that is that India has an extremely robust beautiful developed tourism uh infrastructure in a few places but not most um you know I’ve
Blown away years past when I’ve gone in India there have been more non-indians traveling than now it’s rare when I’m on a plane where I’m the only not the only non-indian and that’s amazing to see you know India’s opening a a new airport a week a new airport a week let that
Settle in for a second it’s huge in us what what’s the equivalent that a new airport we’re opening a new airport every decade in the United States it’s Cutting Edge actually come to LAX actually maybe you it may less than that no no come to LAX where I put you know
10 years and it’s going to be the most beautiful airport very soon well LAX is much better and we’re going to get a people mover opening now now I’m sound like the mayor of La our first people mover every terminal redone some new ones but you know we’re we’re slower on
The infrastructure side here it’s breathtaking like you know the airlines uh Indigo which I just flew I mean is one of the fastest growing it’ll be the number one Airline probably in the world in a couple years in terms of Passenger volume um you know what’s happening with
V I know you had Air India up here uh aasta you know all these other ones that are kind of turning around from the reputation oh Indian carriers are the worst are suddenly Indian carriers are among the best and so I think there’s a lot of work to be done to promote India
As a tourism destination and then flip that I really want to bring more Indians to America um as the middle class comes up here as we saw like Los Angeles my old city uh Chinese tourists were really a huge part of our economy that’s dropped off for geopolitical reasons and
Economic reasons um and instead of crying about that I’m like here we have friends two democracies we think alike we feel alike we’re interested in each other I told the president before the state visit the good news is we’re the most popular country in the world in
India in fact in a recent poll Indians like Americans more than Americans like Americans so well wow wow that’s not that’s an easy one so you know I think that every all the ingredients are there now we just have to execute and the role of the embassy is these convenings it’s the
Messaging that we can do new Roots I’ve been talking to a India and this year as you’ve heard announced Ro is also making sure that the flights in between absolutely it’s getting planes to them you know it’s making sure they have the visas to get
Their folks out to train on you know the boeings that will come here that’ll be a part of the expansion so there’s a lot of role and a lot of um a lot of focus that we put on the tourism industry okay and so um switching oh going back a little bit to
Americans coming to to uh to India uh one of the big issues you know L very well has been the perception of safety y not just perception the reality of safety as well and I know I’ve seen some of the interviews where some of your role is helping
Um sort of clarify this when tourists come or even just business people come etc etc the safety issues in India absolutely so how do you think about that so the state depart Department always puts out travel advisories whether it’s for a country or parts of country when there’s unrest um and vice
Versa I mean this is two ways right we read articles about tragic things that are happening to Indians who are living in the United States these are Big countries we now have so many people these are always the exceptions not the rule but if you’re the victim of or
Family member of somebody that something tragic has happened to we take that very very seriously so we have a two two-way role to help Indians who are coming to the us know what to expect and how to stay safe and vice versa but by and large I mean just statistically it is
They’re both countries very safe to travel to very safe to visit but there’s basic things you have to be aware of women Travelers especially I’ll have to be aware of that too and talk to Indian women about kind of safety public transportation and other things and we
Have those issues in the United States too so we come from a place of humility about that but I think um you don’t want the message to be don’t come to either country because of safety that is you know rarely the case but just because you’re on vacation don’t be stupid you
Know take precautions make sure you know where you are be with people um and depending on what regions you want to go it’s always the more adventuresome traveler who can get you know might not be a criminal issue it might be we had Travelers who had um a hike in a remote
Part of the Himalayas and there was an avalanche and they were they lost their shoes and were stuck and couldn’t hike out um but we have a very robust American citizen Services it’s one of the main things we do in the embassy to assist Americans should they get in any
Trouble while they’re here and so there’s always an American Diplomat here to help you so I don’t have a great segue but since he used the word public transport can we play the video this is not a great segue but at least we want to play this video Deli Metro Mir Metro Well I really wanted to get this played because of the music so that the energy levels go up as well so it was such a great music so um so you do a lot of out and about like you said you you you you uh you visited 22 States you uh do this
You did a cricket match I don’t know how good you are at Cricket versus baseball I you know I can I’m a better uh batter than I am bowler right now but it’s my message to Americans is don’t be scared of cricket and you can actually explain Cricket because Americans always say I
Don’t understand it I had the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State here and we were waiting to meet with the Prime Minister and one of them said that I took four glasses and in a minute explained Cricket if you didn’t know baseball you’d need probably an hour to
Explain it with all the rules and it’s great and the long days long test match matches which still I don’t probably have Pati the T20 which is like a three-hour match is one of the most exciting things and the second most streams of cricket in the world are in
The United States of America of any one of them I’m sure you are thank you and and so I’d like to invite all of our Indian friends also to come to the United States this year because we’re going to be one of the host countries of
The T20 World Cup um and we just launched Major League cricket in uh the United States um last year uh in my hometown sh KH the great you know movie star owns the Los Angeles has been mentioned six times through the morning by the way ex got exactly yes um so yeah
I do get out and about um and on Cricket the most exciting thing I think I did so let me let me let me up this person is responsible single-handedly well he won’t say this uh for bringing Cricket to the Olympics so please go ahead sure that that Applause you hear is Indians
Counting the medals already in 2028 two medals men’s women’s so I never would have imagined that all of these things would come together I didn’t know that I’d be ambassador to India let alone when India was hosting the international Olympic Committee here a few months ago
For the first time in over 40 years for their annual meeting let alone when it was during the Cricket World Cup let alone on the day of the India Pakistan match the world’s biggest let alone two days after we resolved the very intense negotiations between the Olympics and
The LA 28 games about the five sports we would add but Casey werman who chairs our games and good friend who I recruited to do that job and I wanted to put Cricket in years ago because we this is the biggest most watched sport that’s not in the Olympics and we resolved it
And I got to at that meeting announce that 2028 for men and women we will have Cricket in the Olympics um actually for the second time I think in like 1896 or something there was a game being played next to the Olympics and they said okay we’re counting that as the Olympics and
England breat France and it never happened again but America’s Cricket creds are real the first International match ever played was in the United States I heard 1840s against Canada do you think this league will succeed in us I think it’ll take about a decade but if here’s your investment tip invest in
Major League cricket now the payoff will be big in the future it’s kind of like major league soccer everybody said wasn’t going to succeed and now those teams are so big the IPL the Indian Premier League teams here the franchises are the second most valuable teams in
The world for any sport after NFL more than Premier League soccer or football more than NBA teams I mean it’s crazy how much value is in there and that move alone by the way made the Olympic rights here in India go from like you know 50,000 a year to like tens of millions
Of not more so that will actually help us build some Cricket infrastructure in Los Angeles a new stadium a pitch you know as well so it’s a win-win for everybody how important is the diaspora in term the the the Indian diaspora in us I’m sort of one of them but you know
All the all the big CEOs now of all the tech companies are all uh all Indian origin uh there so uh how does that help your job how does it help sort of the bridge between the two countries I mean it’s our secret weapon it’s in it’s
Incredible I when I think about it in political terms this Administration we have a daughter of an immigrant from India as the second most powerful person in US government in kamla Harris we’ve got folks who have you know when I go through who serves in the Biden Administration we probably have more
Indian-americans from sergeon General to the head of our uh drug policy to the head of presidential Personnel to I mean you go straight through and then at National Science Foundation and when they visit here some of them were born in India and are immigrants they’re not just indian-american it is there’s a
Fluency that um really allows us to take this relationship to the highest level by far that has ever been when Prime Minister Modi visited last year a state visit is very symbolic but also has some substance you know two or three things that you agree on to do we were tracking 173 different
Deliverables everything from higher education and cultural exchange to defense partnership um to trade deals it’s astounding how much you know the US India relationship is probably the most consequential in the world today and that’s what the President says and I know no president has ever said that so
The Indian American so that’s government as you said business the old cliche was you couldn’t make it as a CEO if you’re indian-american now you can’t make it as a CEO if you’re not indian-american I mean it’s it’s explains from your perspective like from from an American
You as an American now sitting in India what explains the success on the on the top levels Microsoft is that all this everybody well well one thing is just kind of a truism and the other one is more a values driven answer the first piece is of course those who you take a
Country as big as this and if you take the most motivated highest skilled sometimes most well-off folks of any country and take them into place like America of course they’re going to be incredibly successful I think people of Indian origin are about 1.4% of the population it’s 6% of the tax base of
America so think about like that multiplier probably the most successful but the the values based one it’s not just that we got the cream of the crop coming from India it’s also I think that the Indian dream is what we used to refer to as the American dream that
Sometimes we’re even down on in America we should learn from India how to revive our own confidence about that doesn’t matter where you come from what language your parents spoke how much money they had how they worshiped god um you know what their background was like study
Hard get a scholarship go to a great place get a good job become an entrepreneur and that really is the India of today even for those who never will come to the United States it’s the most competitive startup ecosystem in the world it’s the most dynamic optimistic population and youngest
Population that’s true I mean Indians 15 years and younger are equal to the US population so it’s a place of immense promise and it really I think the success we see in the US is mirrored in that same attitude here as India comes into its own that you know this Indian
Dream might just be achievable for everyone thank you Ambassador that was amazing appreciate you thank you d
Eric Garcetti, United States Ambassador to the Republic of India, speaks with Skift CEO Rafat Ali at Skift India Summit in New Delhi, India on March 20, 2024.
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