India and Albania, two countries in Asia and Europe that witnessed resilient growth in tourism sector in the post-Covid world, are planning to forge new bilateral and multilateral ties, starting with opening each other’s embassies and a common cultural organisation to commemorate humanitarian legacy of Nobel laureate Mother Teresa and a host of other trade ventures.
Mother Teresa, born an Albanian, spent her life in India and established The Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to the poor, in Kolkata in 1950. She died in 1997, but her organisation continues to remain active even today. Albania has a national holiday dedicated to her and celebrates it as the Day of Saint and even the international airport of Albania is named after her. However, there has been no joint effort by India and Albania to form any organisation to promote her work.
“We are in communication with the government in West Bengal to explore this idea. We have spoken to the mayor of Kolkata since the city is culturally vibrant and also home to Mother’s charity organisation. Even last year when I was in Albania, it was discussed that a proposal about this should be communicated to the Indian ministry of culture and ministry of external affairs,” Dikshu Kukreja, honorary consul general of Albania in New Delhi, told HT.
He, however, said that no further development has taken place on this front. There are 100 Albanians in India, most of them in Kolkata, and they are active in various cultural activities, he said.
Both the government of West Bengal and the ministry of external affairs didn’t comment on this development till the filing of this report.
Albania had a mission in India which was discontinued in 2014, and its consular services now run ad-hoc. In recent years, as China increased its footprint in most of coastal southern European countries, India too ramped up efforts to have presence in the region.
Albanian foreign minister Igli Hasani visited India last year and announced the of opening of embassies of both the countries. However, a year has passed and these plans are yet to fructify.
“We have sent our credentials and there seems a delay from ministry of external affairs only,” said Dr Olta Manjani, Albania’s deputy minister of economy, culture, and innovation, who is in India to promote her country’s cultural-trade ties with India.
She also added that India and Albania are in discussion to start direct flights between the two countries. Right now, there are no direct flights between the two countries.
With approximately 500km of coastline, Albania is recognised as the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Europe due to its strategic location bordering Greece, Italy, Montenegro and North Macedonia. It is positioned to benefit connectivity projects bridging India and Europe. When asked whether Albania would join the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), an ambitious sea-land linking project that would originate in India, Manjani said her country would be willing to join the IMEC.
Meanwhile, Kukreja said that in order to popularise Indian culture, food, architecture and traditions, prominent people from different fields like erstwhile royals are being roped in to attend the India Festival there. “Recently, we took the titular Nawab of Rampur with us. He was quite popular, and we plan to take more interesting people there to present India in Albania,” he said.