Kamala Harris and the Rise of Indian Americans

Book excerpt: The election of Kamala Devi Harris, born of an immigrant Indian mother, cancer specialist Shyamala Gopalan, originally from Chennai, has put the global spotlight like never before on the small but high-achieving Indian-American diaspora. The community happens to be the most educated with the highest median income in the US, and has excelled in almost every area it has touched--from politics to administration, entrepreneurship to technology, medicine to hospitality, science to academia, business to entertainment, philanthropy to social activism. This evocative collection--of the kind perhaps not attempted before--captures the rise of Indian-Americans across domains, by exceptional achievers themselves, like Shashi Tharoor, the ones who have been and continue to be a part of the "rise", like MR Rangaswami and Deepak Raj, top Indian diplomats like TP Sreenivasan and Arun K Singh, scholars like Pradeep K Khosla and Maina Chawla Singh, and others who were part of, associated with, or keenly followed their stories. A collector's item, this eye-opening saga of a diaspora, which is possibly amongst the most successful and enterprising globally, would not only prove to be highly readable and insightful for a wide readership, but also immensely substantive for scholars and people in governance.