Interesting to watch the MAGA civil war going on in America! Just remember, either way India wins! Suppose the lottery is to go and with no cap on H1B, there can be no stopping meritorious Indians. Many are now turning to Australia, Canada, Germany and the UK. From Sundar Pichchai to Satya Nadella and Indra Nooyi, Indians benefited from the pre-lottery system. The cap on H1B proved to be a dampener but on hindsight its been good for Indian nation as it acts like a stopper to incessant braindrain from India that is harming our country. Meanwhile Indian ethnic population constitutes about 1% of total American but contributes to 6% of the American GDP. A very literate and forward community, its not a surprise that Indian origin people are doing well not only in the US but also in UK, Australia wherever. Even in Middle East, the NRIs (Non Resident Indians) win hands down topping all other nationalities put together. Indian diaspora in general is one successful and upbeat community doing India proud. If you ask me the reason, I can cite only a couple from my own observation: Discipline chiefly, traditional family life with preserved values, and keeping out of controversies not wanting to get embroiled in trouble, choosing academics/economic development/arts and crafts/family life to fast life/vices. Nothing really special and very much the ordinary. But I do also see on other side how some nationalities ‘live it up’ once they can lay their hands on money.
The talk is about H1B. How about sending the Indian doctors home?? India can do well with that move really. You know what it takes to produce a single efficient doctor in a third world nation like India? Do you know the cost we shell out to produce an IIT graduate/IIM graduate. Ask Indra Nooyi and Sundar Pichai. These are exactly the kind of people who bled our nation raw and then chose to give back nothing to motherland. And here these guys now debate on H1B. Who do you think will be the loser if you cap H1B? Who do you think will stand to gain if you turn our kids back from America? That guy Sriram Krishnan from SRM, Chennai – what do you think made him what he is today.
These Americans have nothing to say about the mother country that loses Her sons and daughters to utterly materialistic societies with no concern for humanity or social welfare. Its painful at times to think of what India is losing big time.
On the other hand, it can also make a mother happy to see her children prosperous and living a life of dignity and success.
How many thousands of old and aged parents back in India living a lonely life. They save every penny sleeping on thin mattresses, eating humble meals, forgoing holidays, cutting back on comforts and luxuries, living in cramped homes so that their children can have a better education and better future. Have you seen Pichai’s house that was sold by his father recently? Just 2-3 km from my home. Do you know what it takes to send an Indian kid to the US for MS/Phd. More than the tuition fees paid through bank loans on pledging your home, it takes a heavy heart on the part of the parents to see off their kids in the airport flying thousands and thousands of miles away across oceans. Mothers bleed from their hearts. Fathers don’t know what to do with their sparse savings and investments on retirement and the small house they worked for a lifetime to build. Visits to America become rarer with age. Home is EMPTY. At first the children visit home/India annually. Then slowly the visits stop. How many old people die alone in India with their children living in luxury villas in the Bay Area or wherever. Father dies, mother dies – and then go into freezer box until the son arrives from America for cremation. This is what India is giving America. This is the sacrifice of Indian parents behind every H1B that is issued by the US. If America can turn down some Indian kids, they will be doing a big favour to their poor Indian parents.
STEM also includes the medical aspirants. Curiously America never talks about sending back Indian doctors or cutting their quotas. Medicos from India receive red carpet welcome wherever they go. Easily our Indian doctors outclass others as we observe in foreign countries. The medicos are the hardest to create, cultivate/train. They are the priciest.
In spite of giving so much to America, India is still preparing to take on the world with the second line of defence. So long as our own children don’t turn against us with their policies and politics, its fine.
To most of us who have our children in the US, US also feels like home. Especially me, I am a resident of three countries India, Qatar and America (visiting), that borders blur for me nowadays. When you live half your life outside your country, it becomes increasingly less and less important to alienate between nations, people, culture, languages and faith. Its this point I am reaching in life.
a picture is worth a thousand words. Indian CEOs in US: single proof of altruistic relations between the US & India irrespective of successive governments and heads of the state in both the countries…
This piece was originally written hours before Joe Biden decisively won the US elections. Hopefully he proves to be good for India. His personal life tragedies, I trust, could make him by far the most compassionate US president in a long time who knows. Those of us who have walked a bed of thorns think differently. I look forward to better India US relations because America is family for me now! I will love America as much as I love India… started loving America like India the day my son set foot in America. Let the world recover smoothly from coronavirus and let us wait for the dawn of happy times yet again. Indians have vested interests in America. The States is like a second home to most Indian families who have a son/daughter/sibling living there. Indian community has enriched America in myriad ways. We have given America astronauts to top surgeons to software professionals to nursing staff and even hoteliers. Sundar Pichchai and Satya Nadella are not born everyday. To the US with love, INDIA.
However I don’t share such generous views on VP Kamala Harris even if she shares Tambram genes equally as Jamaican. She never identified herself as half Indian all these days. Why sudden Indian/Tamil affinity now. Villagers in Mayavaram are crazy holding prayers for her victory. Anything for the daughter of the soil.
What a debate the Trump Biden neck-to-neck contest has triggered in our midst.
India is very much concerned because our economy is directly tied to the US. Latest flashpoint has been the H1B visa renewal revised to every year from every three years badly affecting the IT sector and the fresh graduate Indians in the US. Mostly therefore we look at US elections from micro levels because Indian professionals rule the roost in America in key sectors such as IT, Medicine etc. We are more concerned about our kids going for masters to the US, H1B quota for the IT industry and US$ exchange rate over who is good for maintaining the balance of power in the world. Biden may be a better choice but how many of our liberals and leftists pause to think what a damage the Democrats have done to us Indians over decades. Republicans have fared far better (excluding perhaps Nixon). At macro level, for the Indian nation, Republican presidents have always been somewhat favourable politically.
For the leftists I have these questions: So immigrants are fine in Europe, America and India ( with Rohingyas). But why not in Middle East. Name a single islamic country/Arab nation that has taken in Palestinians or Syrians. How dare you. Come to the gulf. You can see thousands of Palestinians without a passport. What an intellectual dishonesty you guys have! You dare to question Trump, Modi, Macron everyone but you have not an iota of conscience because you never raise the flag as far as the islamic nations are concerned. You talk of islamophobia when you know none else in the world issues a ‘fatwa’ calling for death to fellow humans. Nowhere else in the world are pre-teen non-muslim girls abducted, raped and force converted to Islam as it is happening in Pakistan. Yes, every single non-muslim working/living in middle east cannot even proclaim his/her religion in public or criticize ‘the faithful’ lest he/she may rot in jail for rest of his/her life or worse, be stoned to death. And you talk of human rights in secular nations like India and the US. I am challenging you: try eating a pizza or even a pack of peanut in public in Pakistan during Ramzan in broad daylight , leave alone in Arab countries. I will talk to you if you are not already mutton kheema.
Black lives do matter but minorities cannot ever take law onto their hands whatever the pretext. Playing minority victim card is such a regular scene even in India. Just like our liberals/leftists have no word on conversion mafia/hawala fundings, they maintain a stoic silence on crimes committed by the minorities as well. How good is that Vatican keeps pumping millions of dollars into India for conversion guys? Or are you sleepwalkers with selective amnesia. Is it within human rights for foreign/desi missionaries/evangelists to venture into our tribal lands and convert indigenous natives?
Most of us who have been residents in the middle east are aware of the Trump mischief when he visited Saudi that triggered a commotion in the region and threatened world peace a couple of years ago. Trump was no way saint. Yet, that someone had the nerve to call a spade spade was admirable. Have you ever noticed a single leftist/liberal write or talk on triple talak or UCC (uniform civil code) or suppression of human rights in middle east. The leftist sense of justice: Shout out to Rohingyas but go silent on Yazidis. Raise a storm over Ram Mandir but go quiet on reclaiming church lease estate on expiry of 99 years. Even Hongkong could have gone back to China but not a single church may return to government fold. Law interprets itself differently in India. Or for secular democratic nations in general. Same law holds different again for communists and islamists. No audit for madarasa and church fundings but keep the temple administration with ruling government. If this does not smack of hyprocrisy, what does. My take on world affairs altered after i grew cynical on happenings in India.
Nationalism is not born without a reason. You feed it and then you cry foul.
Dear leftists/liberals today you can wag your tail proudly because Hindu dharma has bestowed such a freewill upon you. Democracy is very much incumbent on demography of a nation. Don’t let population jehad reduce you to minority. Then let us see whether you will even have any scope to exist. How many of you have it in you to admit to this bitter truth, a possibility within this century. Has happened in Egypt. Happening in Turkey presently. How long before it happens in India.
The same leftists who call the Dalit treatment a historical injustice, have no word for forced conversions or jiziya or razing of Hindu temples by Moghuls or the islamic anarchy that bled the Hindus for centuries. When you have no sympathy for the Hindu ancestors who suffered persecution under Arab/Moghul/Turkish/Persian marauders and sadistic invaders, you have no right to talk about the caste discriminations in the Hindu society prevalent for centuries. Both cancel out each other. Both were the prevailing dharma of those times. Even slave trade was the norm and dharma of a bygone era. Don’t hold the current generation responsible for the crimes and injustices and atrocities committed by their forefathers – because you never want to hold Indian muslims responsible for anything from past. Let the past remain in past NOT SELECTIVELY but.
If you want to be chummy chummy with muzzies, you are welcome, but don’t ever wag a finger at us Hindus. We have had enough. And now, we are finally on the offensive, having been on the defensive for too long.
In this context, I have always viewed Trump as a plus for India. His actions on immigration could have cost us a bit even if we are legal immigrants in the US (as white collar workers), but he had every right to regularize immigration in his own country. Average Americans welcomed his reforms, at least to my knowledge and thinking. If trump faulted, it was probably in the management of covid 19 pandemic.
I wouldn’t want to judge a man by his words. Rather by his actions. Trump succeeded in securing maximum benefits for the US economy pushing for lowering of trade tariffs in India, China etc. He did what was good for his country whether be it about Climate change or whatever. In spite of signing up for Climate change, what is India doing for a better environment. What are the efforts for greening the planet by the signed nations.
Trump’s scathing remarks on China are true 100%. His fears about China well founded. His warnings on terrorism were not out of place or time. Democrats such as Obama are known for emboldening terror elements. Just see who is rejoicing with Biden win. Our Paki neighbours. Trump stopped the US from financing terror nations and minced no words issuing a statement to that effect. US economy registered a robust growth in last 4 years.
I am very skeptical about Democrat for POTUS because our history is not rosy as I said. These democrats go soft on terror. Our international policies would be at loggerheads. As for the IT sector in India bringing us valuable foreign exchange, it may however be time to cheer with Biden winning the presidential race and it might be good news for our masters aspirants and research scholars and other immigrants, but we need to wait and watch how these guys are going to take our relationship further.
Mostly Joe Biden will be a mixed bag for India.
Those of you who associate Republican presidents with war scenarios forget that the following Democrat presidents never exercised the option of calling back troops but instead supplied additional troops to war fronts.
Health care reforms are fine but we also have south American economies like Venezuela ruined by socialism. Nothing is free in this world. You have to earn every single penny. Unchecked freebies will take any economy to Venezuelan-like crisis.
May be he was haughty and boorish and hated openly, yet Trump was good for India because he was a thorough businessman. You can deal with this kind. It is the dillydallying ones we have to stay wary of. The suave and sophisticated scoundrels reap all the praise because they have it in them to hoodwink the so-called elitist intelligentsia who fall for these nonsense charms head over heels. As for the general janata such as me, it takes a lot more of convincing to consider someone for what they are truly worthy of.
Too early to predict anything further. Keeping my fingers crossed.
vijiravindran's 