In the US, yet more evidence of growing Indian-American clout

In February, three developments in quick succession highlighted the growing political and economic clout of Indian-Americans in the United States, where their influence is out of proportion with their small share of the population.

The first was the surprise announcement, on February 15, by former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley that she would run for the US presidency in 2024. Just six days later, Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy conservative entrepreneur, announced he would join the 2024 presidential field. 

They are challenging former president Donald Trump in the primary votes next year for presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

Two days after Ramaswamy’s unexpected entry,  President Joe Biden named former Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga as his nominee for president of the Washington-based World Bank. If chosen, Banga will succeed David Malpass, who will step down at the end of June after coming under criticism for shrugging off the importance of tailoring loans for projects that could lessen the impact of climate change.

Born in the US of parents from Punjab, Haley is considered a long-shot for the presidency despite a winning personality and a high public profile after having served as the Trump administration’s ambassador at the United Nations. Ramaswamy is seen as an even longer shot. Born in the US of immigrant parents from Kerala, he is a 38-year-old entrepreneur with little public profile. 

Ajay Banga was born of Sikh parents, raised, and educated in India. He had a stellar career as a business executive working for US corporations in India, including Nestle, PepsiCo and Citigroup, before moving to the United States where he became CEO of Mastercard and a US citizen. His appointment to the top job of the World Bank is virtually assured.

Under a long-standing agreement among member countries, the US gets to choose the World Bank president while the leadership of the International Monetary Fund goes to a European. When President Joe Biden announced the nomination, he described Banga, a turban-wearing Sikh, as “uniquely qualified” for the job.

What the three Indian-Americans who made headlines this month have in common is that they belong to a community US media routinely labels the country’s “model minority.” Why?

Indian-Americans make up around 1.35 percent of the US population; they play dominant roles in a number of fields, from IT and medicine to leadership of many of the country’s biggest companies. The median annual income of Indian-American families, at around $124,000 is almost twice that of the American national median income.

They also lead in educational attainment: The share of Indian-Americans with a bachelor’s degree or higher is twice that of the national average. Nine percent of physicians in the United States are of Indian descent, a remarkable number given their small share of the population.

Indian-American medical expertise was particularly obvious through the Covid crisis, when US television networks featured a long string of public health experts of Indian descent to comment on how to cope with the pandemic. President Biden made the Bihar-born Ashish Jha of Brown University his “Covid czar.”

The list of Indian-American CEOs of multi-billion companies, which contributed to the “model minority” label, is long and impressive. To mention a few: Sundar Pichai, who heads Google and its parent company Alphabet; Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft; Raj Subramaniam of Fedex, Arvind Krishna of IBM and Laxman Narasimhan of Starbucks.

Their multi billion-dollar pay packages clearly contribute to the oft-quoted median income being twice that of the national median.

Professional, financial and academic success have not inoculated Indian-Americans from discrimination. A wide-ranging survey conducted by YouGov in 2020 found that nearly half of 1,200 respondents said they had been subject to some form of discrimination. Three in five said it was from white Americans because of the colour of their skin.

But there is another form of discrimination – Indian vs Indian –which was brought in sharp focus on February 22 when Seattle became the first city in the United States to ban discrimination based on caste, the age-old system that divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups.

Seattle’s City Council passed the caste discrimination ban in a 6-1 vote, responding to letters and  petitions signed by thousands in the weeks before the  decisive vote. The ordinance was introduced by the only Indian-American member of the council, Kshama Sawant, who was born in Pune to a Brahmin family..

Home to Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks, Seattle has become one of America’s two most important tech hubs. Like the other, Silicon Valley, Seattle has been a magnet for Indian-American techies and entrepreneurs.

It remains to be seen whether any city in Silicon Valley, where there also have been complaints about caste discrimination, will follow Seattle’s example.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)