Sarah Palin plans March trip to India
By Arun Kumar, IANSThursday, February 24, 2011
WASHINGTON - Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin will be making a trip to India in March to speak at the India Today 2011 conclave in New Delhi, according to media reports citing a Palin aide.
The 2008 vice presidential candidate Palin, who is weighing a possible 2012 run for the Republican presidential nomination, is set to speak March 19. She will be delivering a keynote address on ‘My Vision of America’.
Palin aide Rebecca Mansour confirmed the details by tweeting a link to India Today’s website, writing only “Gov. Palin will be travelling to India next month”.
It’s not known if Palin is getting paid for the appearance, but the $1,850 price tag to attend the two-day event makes it seem likely that she got her quote - reportedly $100,000 per appearance, Politico, a news website focusing on congressional and presidential affairs, said.
Palin aides have been weighing a foreign trip for months, but had only previously disclosed that they were planning a still unannounced trip to England and Israel sometime later this year. They are not saying yet whether there will be additional overseas stops built around the India trip.
The conference’s choice of Palin is an odd one, Politico said. She will be the only American politician attending the conference, which is stacked with Indian and Pakistani officials, business leaders, public figures and entertainers.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is kicking off the conference Friday morning with the keynote. Palin’s speech comes Saturday night and brings the conference to a close.
The 2011 roster will cover issues from ‘The Gender Dialogue: Can the burqa co-exist with the bikini?’ to a session on ‘Politics and Ethics: Is honesty impossible in Indian politics?’
Other speakers include feminist writer Germaine Greer, Indian actor Aamir Khan and Egyptian opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
