Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Sonal Shah on the Cabinet?

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Politico.com listed Shah as a contender for Secretary of Energy in the new administration:

Here’s a look at the five best jobs left to be doled out by Obama…. Secretary of Energy

The list: Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm; Dan Reicher, ex-Clinton renewable energy chief, now at Google; Sonal Shah, who heads Google.org’s global development efforts; Obama advisor Jason Grumet; John Bryson, retired chair at Edison International and hybrid car advocate; former Indiana Rep. Philip Sharp, Resources for the Future think tank.

It is not clear to me where this list comes from – whether these are a list of candidates that they know are under consideration or whether they are people that Politico thinks would be good for the job.

Sonal has a solid background in energy. She was a VP at Goldman Sachs, focusing on Green issues before she went over to Google.org:

Sonal worked on green initiatives, including advising clients and bankers on alternative energy opportunities and how to implement environmental, social and governance criteria for all investments. [wiki]

Sonal’s job was to make sure that green was … well, green, i.e. profitable. In this period, Goldman came up with a plan to reduce its emissions by 12% by 2007 and invest $1 billion in alternative energy. This dovetails nicely with Obama’s emphasis on alternative energy as one of his top priorities:

Obama has made the greening of America in all forms – reducing dependence on foreign oil, boosting solar and wind power, increasing auto fuel efficiency, and using green technology to drive the economic recovery – a central part of his pitch for the White House, and the person in this job could ride herd on those activities. [Politico]

The question is, could Sonal pass confirmation for such a high profile post? This is a post which would involve diplomacy with India, so her ties to the VHPA and other Sangh organizations would definitely become an issue.

UPDATE: As Homer Singhson points out, the NYT has Nobel Prizewinner Steven Chu as the front runner for the Energy Secretary position. Even so, this is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that a desi-American has even been mentioned for a cabinet position. Continue reading →

Sums up my feelings quite well

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I haven’t had time to blog, and what I’ve wanted most to blog about were the tragic events in Bombay that cast a pall over Thanksgiving. I have family there, as do many of you, and so I was glued to the internet, watching as events unfolded.

I’ve since stepped back and have been mulling things over. I’ve got a lot to say, but what I want to say first, before I get nuanced, is pretty much this [via Manish]:

This is the reason why Stewart is brilliant – that was both hillarious and very good political commentary. I know that’s neither the beginning nor the end of the topic, but it’s something I have to get out of my system before I can go further.

That said, again I’m not going to open comments on this post. I have a great deal of anger about what the terrorists did, and about how those responsible for training them may have brought us one step closer to a nasty war, but that doesn’t mean that I want this site to become a cesspool of ugly comments about Pakistanis.

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Breaking news: Terrorist attack ongoing in Bombay

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The revolution will not be televised, but I’m glued to CNN-IBN coverage live of this horrific attack. Here’s the short version from the BBC:

Gunmen have opened fire at a number of sites in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay), reportedly killing at least 10 people and injuring others. Police said the shootings appeared to be terrorist attacks. Gunmen opened fire at seven sites including a train station and a restaurant popular with tourists. Shootings were also reported near two hotels and at a hospital. At least two blasts, suspected to be grenade attacks, were reported. [BBC]

According to IBN, terrorists are still holed up and fighting the police, most likely in Oberoi Hotel, Taj and possibly in Colaba. The attack seems focussed on the popular areas of South Bombay, the posh supposedly secure areas, in order to spread panic and terror.

I’m going to close the comments, because they get ugly and we have little to add to the regular news coverage here at SM. If you feel an urge to discuss it and contribute what you have heard, I suggest you discuss the matter on the SAJA post.

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Sonal Shah’s statement

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Sonal’s brother posted the following statement from Sonal in the comments of Amardeep’s post In Defense of Sonal Shah (boldface mine):

As an Indian-American who has lived in this country since the age of four, serving on the Obama-Biden transition team is a unique privilege for me. A presidential transition is always a time of excitement and, in some cases, of rumors and unfounded gossip. I’d like to set to rest a few baseless and silly reports that have been circulating on the Internet.

First, my personal politics have nothing in common with the views espoused by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or any such organization. I’ve never been involved in Indian politics, and never intend to do so.

Second, I’ve always condemned any politics of division, of ethnic or religious hatred, of violence and intimidation as a political tool. Some factually inaccurate internet rumors have attempted to link me to Hindu Nationalist groups through a variety of tenuous connections: Relief work I’m proud to have helped coordinate following the Gujarati earthquake of 2001, or cultural and religious affiliations of some of my family members, or apolitical humanitarian work I’ve been privileged to do as a founder of the NGO Indicorps and as the Director of Global Development for Google.org.

Finally, I do not subscribe to the views of such Hindu nationalist groups, and never have. Ridiculous tactics of guilt by association have been decisively repudiated by the American people. I am delighted with what the victory on November 4 says about my country, and about our place in the world. I look forward to serving our President-elect in this time of transition.

That’s the sort of unequivocal statement of her political views that I had been hoping for. It’s also what the groups that were concerned about her appointment were asking for.

Sonal is a highly qualified and experienced public figure who has done a lot of good. There’s also no evidence that I’ve seen, from anybody, that Sonal holds sectarian or bigoted sentiments. To the contrary – people I know who know her personally have said only positive things about her and her family. I suspect this statement will put most people’s concerns to rest in terms of her participation on the transition team.

But … I think the statement reveals two areas of questionable judgment that I think might cause problems for her if she’s nominated to a position in the new administration, despite her qualifications and track record.

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What Obama’s victory means for me (and perhaps you)

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[Apologies this was delayed. It took me a while before I was ready to put pen to metaphorical paper on this subject]

As an American without hyphen I was gratified to see a consensus emerge around Obama as the better candidate, with even one of McCain’s own advisors crossing lines, and for Obama to emerge victorious. Given the state of the economy, I was pleased to see the candidate preferred by 4 out of 5 economists get the most votes.

But as a hyphenated American, after a campaign where I was repeatedly told I wasn’t a real American, I was thrilled to have the candidate more like me win. That’s a poor reason to choose a candidate, I know, but yes, I’m very tickled to think about the fact that the President of the United States will be a son of an immigrant, a man with a funny name.

I don’t vote based on personal appearance, but sure, I noticed that he’s roughly my height, weight and skin color (I’m better looking, but I wont hold that against him) and closer to my generation than that of my parents.

I don’t vote based on biography, but I appreciated that his father came to the USA to study, he grew up in an extended family, he know what it’s like to stay in touch with those you love over a noisy long distance telephone call. I didn’t think it would be possible that the President of the United States might have grown up and been hassled for being an American Born Confused something:

Even those [Illinois state] senators who seemed like natural allies treated Obama with nothing but enmity…dismissed him as cocky, elitist and… “a white man in blackface.” … Most frequently, they ridiculed Obama for his complex ethnicity. You figure out if you’re white or black yet, Barack, or still searching?… [WaPo]

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Grant Park

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[Apologies this was delayed. It took me a while to recover on Wednesday]

I was lucky enough to be at the official victory celebration of the Obama Campaign in Grant Park, Chicago Tuesday night. It was indeed an amazing experience.

The crowd was friendly and mellow. The air was one of expectation rather than suspense, since the outcome was over determined. I was passing through the various checkpoints when the networks called OH for Obama, bringing him to 194 electoral votes. Since the Pacific states would bring the total up to 271 FTW, everybody knew what would happen.

If the Cubs had won the World Series, the celebration would have been far more ecstatic and frenzied, with drunken people venting all the excitement that had been pent up during the games. This was very different, and far calmer than it appeared on TV.

People milled around, chatting, while watching CNN on the jumbotron. A cheer would go up every time a new state was called for Obama, and a few people cried when CNN finally called the election for him, but these were quiet tears of release leaking from the corners of peoples’ eyes, and not the ragged sobbing I had expected. I too was far calmer than I had expected, given all the energy I had put into the campaign in my life off-line.

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Why I vote

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One election day, when I was in elementary school, our teachers took us to the lobby to explain the voting process to us. We got to see the machine, which was an old fashioned machine with little levers for the candidates and a big red pull lever that opened and closed the curtain and committed your vote. One voter even offered to let us watch her vote, and our teacher sternly refused. “Voting is a private act, and these children should understand that!”

I was very jealous. At that time, nobody in our family could vote.

My parents still intended to move back to India and so they retained their Indian citizenship both out of patriotism and pragmatism, since they were considering buying a place before they actually resettled, and you could only own property then if you were a citizen. My sister and I, both born in the USA, were too young.

When I was around 11, my father became a citizen so that he could sponsor his parents to come and live with us. There was no fanfare about this, I don’t remember when he took the oath, the family didn’t go down and watch him. But voting, now that was special. I’m pretty sure I went down with him to the high school down the block, stood on line for an hour, and went into the voting booth with him. That first act of voting was wrapped up with family.

Then my grandfather became a citizen, so he could sponsor my aunt to come to America. I helped him study for the test, sitting with him on his bed and drilling the material as he apologized for the fact that he couldn’t learn it perfectly the first time. Grandpa had always had a mind like a steel trap and although we couldn’t have known it then, his struggles were actually the first symptoms of the Alzheimers that would become obvious in coming years.

I went into the polls with him, even though I was a teenager and already looked like I was in my 20s. When we got inside, Grandpa let me vote for him. I said, don’t you want to vote? He had such strong political opinions, I didn’t understand. He said, no, I trust you. I turned the knobs, asking him if he agreed, and then pulled the lever. This was the first vote I ever cast, at age 16. In retrospect, that vote was tinged with sadness.

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Reaching out to Sikh voters

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Sikhs are a fairly small group of voters in America, so I’m always intrigued when a candidate reaches out to us.

I expected the Obama campaign to issue Diwali greetings and figured he’d direct it to Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. But I was quite surprised when the Obama campaign also sent a letter to the American Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee to wish everybody a happy Tercentenary Celebration of the Guruship of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. It is a big holiday for Sikhs, but not one I expected any national politician to notice. (There were no official greetings from the McCain camp for either holiday)

As I’ve written before, these sorts of emails to the community are fairly cheap in terms of effort, and are a nice way to build good will, even if they tell you little about a candidate.

More important than holiday greetings was the difference in response by campaigns to the Sikh Coalition‘s first ever Voter Guide for Sikh Americans. The Sikh Coalition is non-profit and non-partisan. Their guide invited responses from all presidential candidates (not just the major ones) including the Green Party, Socialist Party, Libertarian Party and even such ultra-fringe parties as the Prohibition Party and the Boston Tea Party.

They received extensive replies from Obama (Democratic Party) and Gloria Riva (Party of Socialism and Liberation) and shorter replies from Ralph Nader (Independent Party) and Gene Amondson (Prohibition Party). The GOP did not reply.

The fact that the GOP failed to respond to the survey was very telling. They could easily have filled out the first question, about interaction with Sikh voters and constituents, since McCain was actually involved in the official response to Balbir Singh Sodhi’s murder in Mesa, AZ in 2001. And the GOP has enough staff that they could have tasked somebody to fill the entire questionnaire out. No, the message associated with their lack of response was quite clear. A campaign won’t bother responding to a questionnaire if they’ve already written that bunch of voters off. (That factoid is actually from Audacity of Hope)

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Reaching out to brown voters

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In the last few days before the election, I wanted to revisit each campaign’s efforts to reach out the desi voters.

Indians for McCain has new material on their website, including a “Candidate Comparison On Indian-Americans” (sic) which forms an interesting contrast to South Asians for Obama‘s “Barack Obama: Working for South Asian Americans” and Obama vs. McCain Comparison Sheet handouts. The differences between the two websites recapitulate both differences between the campaigns but also differences within our community.

The difference in group names reveals their important differences in their attitudes. Indians for McCain is focussed both on Indo-Americans and on India’s relationship to America. Their candidate comparison covers only American foreign policy towards India, contrasting the candidates efforts on these three topics:

  • On doing business with India
  • On the US-India Civil Nuclear Deal
  • On the U.S. pushing the G8 to include India

This is material designed to appeal to voters who are first generation immigrants, for whom issues of America’s treatment of India are paramount.

[There is also a group called SouthAsians for McCain but they have less material on their website and they are really an Indian-American group. Their banner includes the Indian flag and map, and they have an extensive section on McCain’s views on Indo-American relations which is exerpted from the Indian Express article on this topic]

SAFO’s approach instead stresses Asian American issues broadly. Their candidate comparison sheet is actually the campaign’s generic comparison sheet on all AAPI issues, covering topics such as college costs, immigration, minority health services, and compensation for Japanese American internment during WWII.

This handout is available in Hindi and Urdu, which is an odd choice since I doubt recent non-English speaking immigrants will see themselves as enough part of the Asian American community to care about the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007.

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Xenophobia Judo (updated)

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Last week the Sacramento County GOP, which is the local party for the state capital of the most populous state in the union, had image below on their the official website!

If you had any doubt that the GOP was promoting the message “Obama = Arab = Muslim = Terrorist!” this should put your doubts to rest. (To their credit, the state level party quickly had the material removed but that doesn’t undercut the broader campaign.)

One minor personal consequence of this tactic is that I am unable to go canvassing door-to-door in battleground states for either campaign. Can you imagine the reception I would encounter knocking on doors for the Obama campaign in West Virginia? Or how about ringing doorbells for McCain in Missouri?

Sure, I might be able to overcome the xenophobia and fear of certain voters, but that would make the exercise more about me than the candidate, with each minute spent explaining who I am taken away from time avalable to make the case for a particular campaign. No, that would be immensely selfish on my part.

Unfortunately, this leaves me with only one option if I want to participate in face-to-face persuasion of voters. I could pretend to be working for the opposition.

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