President Pratibha Patil of India yesterday conferred the prestigious Pravasi
Samman Award on Guyanese American Ashok Kumar Ramsaran, formerly of Whim, Corentyne.
This year’s honorees includes Governor General Sir Satyanand of New Zealand who was the Chief Guest and who delivered the feature address to this year’s ninth annual Indian Diaspora Conference.
The Pravasi Samman Award is the highest Government of India award given to a foreign based person of Indian origin and it has been given annually over the last nine years. The award is given to outstanding overseas-based Indians
who distinguish themselves to enhance India’s image and prestige while helping their community.
Ramsaran joins a small group of honorees from Guyana to receive the award –
President Bharrat Jagdeo, industrialist Yesu Persaud, retired cricketer Rohan Kanhai, and former Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal. A few others from the Caribbean region also received the rare honour.
Ramsaran is a businessman in NY performing philanthropic and charitable work in the US, among Guyanese, and India. He has a long record of service
to the Guyanese and Caribbean community. As Vice president of the Global
Organization of People of Indian Origin, he has helped to build closer links between India and the Guyanese diaspora. And he has helped to promote to India’s causes and concerns in a tangible way in the US.
Ramsaran is a fourth generation of Indian great grandparents who came to Guyana as indentured laborers (1853 and 1860). His grandfather and father were “drivers” on the sugar plantations. Ramsaran worked as a teacher in Black Bush and in the New Amsterdam magistrate’s courts before emigrating in 1968 to NY to pursue tertiary education. He earned BSEE and MSEE degrees in NY. He was an electronics engineer and progressed rapidly to position of Vice President of Engineering in an international communications company before establishing Ramex, his own electronics manufacturing enterprise in New York. Ramex is named among the Top 100 Indian Owned Businesses in USA for 10 consecutive years. Ramsaran is married to Camille Ramgadoo of Bloomfield.
Ramsaran currently serves as Executive Vice President of GOPIO. He is spearheading the Kolkota Memorial and Museum project which will be inaugurated tomorrow. He is also chair of Tracing Our Roots Committee and has offered the Guyana government the technology to digitalize all paper documents relating to the roots of all Guyanese regardless of ancestry.
