India in the news

In the past week, India has been front page news in the US. In one article in Washington Post, which raised the ire of the Indian establishment, the author questioned the ability of Manmohan Singh to lead the country.  

"India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh helped set his country on the path to modernity, prosperity and power, but critics say the shy, soft-spoken 79-year-old is in danger of going down in history as a failure... the image of the scrupulously honorable, humble and intellectual technocrat has slowly given way to a completely different one: a dithering, ineffectual bureaucrat presiding over a deeply corrupt government."
Singh will go down in history as India’s first Sikh prime minister and the country’s third-longest-serving premier, but also as someone who did not know when to retire, Guha said.

A second article examines the development of the Indian diaspora over the years- how the arrivals of Indians starting in 1960 went through a few phases of growth. In the early days, most were engineers and doctors who stuck to service jobs for security. Starting in the eighties as they became wealthy, they started to branch out into new enterprises but it was the nineties where the offsprings of the first generation of engineers captured the computer industry and really became entrepreneurs. They are now in their next phase fully integrating into the community and reaching out for political office from their terms in the administration. 

"After a decade of quietly building behind-the-scenes influence," says the article, " Indian Americans in the Washington area — as well as in California, Pennsylvania and other states — are entering public and political life in record numbers. This year, six Indian Americans are making credible runs for Congress, two are serving as state governors and dozens more are either holding or seeking seats in state legislatures."

Many older Indian Americans in the Washington area said in interviews that even after achieving economic success, they continue to shy away from partisan politics. In the Washington area, the most important social hub for Hindu immigrants is a large, ornately decorated temple in Lanham. Older temple leaders and other Indian Americans here described spending years immersed in work, family and worship, quite apart from American society.

“When I came to this country I had nothing in my pocket. For years, it was always the same mentality — only work and family. We created an island in a new country,” said Prakash Hosadurga, 50, who owns a construction company in Bowie. “We were successful, but we were slow to move into the mainstream. We never raised our voices, and we never learned to have fun. It’s the younger generation that is changing.”

Today, the Indian American population has soared to more than 3 million, and Indian names and faces are becoming a familiar part of American life. An ambitious new generation is moving up fast in a variety of high-profile fields, from Preet Bharara, the U.S. district attorney in Manhattan, to Kal Penn, a television and movie actor who became Obama’s outreach coordinator and spoke at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday. 

In the early days, many first-generation immigrants shied away from politics as unsavory and irrelevant to getting ahead. For the younger generation, it is different. They look at President Obama, and he reminds them of themselves  — educated, motivated, tolerant and also dark-skinned, with Asian roots. And for them now the skys is the limit.