IAFPE held its Annual General Body Meeting at the Lexington Lodge of Elks on Sunday November 21, 2004. The introductory and welcoming remarks by Vanita Sastri was followed by a panel discussion. The panel consisted of Anna Sankaran, Mahesh Sharma, Samir Desai and Kishore Kuchiputla. Anna attended BU Law School and talked about the significant inroads the Indian Americans had made in various law firms and further advancing South Asians in the judiciary system. “We need to be represented in Government. There are hundreds of position in various Boards and we need to be on it,” said Anna. Mahesh talked about our involvement in education, profession and traditional/religious issues. According to Mahesh, “Our social impact on the society we live in is minimal. Whereas an average American does 600 h of voluntary work each year, most of the Indian American spend 50-60 h and that too mostly related to Indian activities.” What we need is information about volunteering opportunities, education about socio-legal issues and act as experts on issues/social reformers. Samir discussed the reasons for his involvement in the Kerry campaign and also stressed the importance of working with non-Indian community organizations and volunteering for them. Kishore focused on the benefits of the second Bush term on Indo-US security cooperation involving Joint terrorism task force, military relationships, nuclear weapons and Kashmir.

For the first time in nearly a decade, IAFPE held ‘real’ elections for its Executive Committee. The new Board consists of:

President:                Ravi Sakhuja
Vice-President:        Dwarika Agarwal
Secretary:                Madhuri Ravi
Asso. Secretary:      Palak Shah
Treasurer:                Satya Mitra

Members-at-large:    Sunil Singhal, Pradeep Sharma
Board of Trustees:    Shiv Kapuria, Victor Saldhana, Satish Dhingra

Congratulations to all of them and Sahdev Passey for serving as the Election Officer.

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