Bangalore will be centre for Israeli visas in the South

BANGALORE: In six months, travel to Israel from here will be simpler - you can apply for a visa at the Israeli consul general office here. Its consul general Orna Sagiv spoke to TOI on Thursday about what Israel will offer for Bangalore .

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Why an office in Bangalore? Will it issue visas? We find co-operation between Israel and India increasing rapidly and we felt the need for a third centre, after Delhi and Mumbai, to realize the collaboration. Yes, the Bangalore consulate general will issue visas for South India. The office should be ready in 4-6 months. Why was Bangalore chosen? Bangalore is clearly India's information technology capital . Israel, which is very strong in IT and electronics, wants to leverage Bangalore's strength. Bangalore has the biggest IT companies in India , bigger than any company we have in Israel. Israeli companies plan to develop solutions for big companies like Infosys, TCS and Wipro. Bangalore and Karnataka have a strong engineering base which means better technical collaboration. Israel has a good start-up culture in IT and electronics - one start-up for every 2000 people. How has Israel managed its water resources? We don't have water sources, lakes and rivers and we get rain for just a couple months. South Israel is a desert. We run the largest desalinization plant in the world - we draw water from the sea, clean it up and use it for daily life including drinking. We developed such good technology that if you didn't know about our desalination programme, you couldn't guess you were drinking desalinised water. You can drink out of a tap in Israel. Israel recycles and reuses 85% of its water.