An increasing number of Americans of Indian origin or Indian Americans, as they are better known, are taking centre stage and coming into the bright arc lights of Washington DC, right in the midst of world’s most powerful office – that of the President of the United States of America.
The most recent of these high profile appointments was announced mid-April by President Obama himself: Aneesh Chopra, at present the State of Virginia’s secretary of technology, “will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities – from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure,” the President said, announcing the appointment.
Chopra will work with fellow Indian American Vivek Kundra, the Government of the District of Columbia’s Chief Technology Officer, “who is responsible for setting technology policy across the government, and using technology to improve security, ensure transparency and lower costs,” the President said.
Both Chopra and Kundra are in their thirties and have been trail blazers in their academic life and professional careers. Kundra shot to fame after he revolutionised his Government’s IT efficiency and drove down costs. He is a champion of the recent trend in “cloud computing” that is increasingly becoming popular in both corporate and government circles.
Cloud computing, based on the increasingly popular concept of Software As A Service (SaaS), can save valuable dollars in software investment and expenditure because end users have no need to own software licenses to use it. The software applications are mostly Internet based and can be used on a usage basis at the fraction of the cost of owning the software. A good example of this is Google’s net-based applications like GoogleDocs.
Kundra has almost achieved iconic status as a champion of cloud computing or SaaS and is quite quickly garnering a worldwide following of chief information officers and IT consultants, advisers and commentators.
He must have made a tremendous impression on the Oval Office especially since his appointment was announced shortly after he was cleared of alleged wrongdoing involving funds at his former employer where two of his colleagues were implicated and had action taken against them following an inquiry.
Those of us who have watched the American news channel CNN perhaps would be familiar with Dr Sanjay Gupta, the channel’s global medical and health affairs correspondent best known for his appearance in his programme, "House Call with Dr. Sanjay Gupta". He has also been a Time Magazine columnist on health matters and has appeared on CBS Television.
President Obama has now offered Dr Gupta the nation’s top medical post – that of the Surgeon General. A senate confirmation stands between Dr Gupta and his formal appointment.
He is a neurosurgeon by training and still performs surgery at several hospitals in and around Atlanta, Georgia, where he teaches at the medical school. He shot to global media fame in 2003 when during a mission covering the war in Iraq for CNN, he performed five brain surgeries – one of them on a two-year-old boy.
The President also named Indian American lawyer Preeta Bansal as the General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at the White House. She has been a part of Obama’s inner circle for a while and was even tipped to be the possible Solicitor General shortly after he was sworn in (she was earlier a Solicitor General of the State of New York).
Bansal has also been a Commissioner of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and was part of high profile diplomatic missions to countries as far and wide as Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Vietnam, Turkey, Hong Kong, and South Asia.
A graduate of the prestigious Harvard Law School, she has worked at the US Supreme Court and continues to serve on the board of a number of high profile committees and government bodies.
Another legal eagle of Indian origin, Nick Rathod, has been appointed as Deputy Associate Director of the White House Office of Inter Governmental Affairs. Rathod was one of the founders of a group called South Asians for Obama that rallied support for the Democrat from South Asian communities in the run up to the elections.
Appointed as Deputy Counsel to President Obama is Harvard and Yale-educated Rashad Hussain, who has wide experience working in several roles on Capitol Hill.
The White House Office for Faith based and Neighbourhood Programs, an initiative of the previous George W Bush Administration, has been revamped by President Obama. And to this re-jigged organisation, he has added yet another Indian American in Eboo S. Patel.
Patel is now part of a 25-member President's Advisory Council comprising religious leaders and scholars from different backgrounds. The revamped set-up is tasked with becoming a resource for both secular and faith based nonprofits and community organisations.