The two weeks in the USA reinforced my belief that the USA is truly the land of opportunity for all, much as we would like to believe that India is getting there with all the fits and starts our economy has been going through
Travelling in the US at the end of summer and early fall is always pleasant because the vagaries of the weather are not a factor to consider in planning a trip. In fact, it was not the most pleasant of beginnings for a three-week trip when the British Airways flight at Mumbai airport suddenly experienced a power outage. After fifteen minutes we were told that the insect repellant had mistakenly been sprayed on the electronics and resulted in all the smoke detectors being activated. After serious efforts by “our finest engineers”, BA finally managed a four-hour delayed take-off from Mumbai resulting in a missed connection in London and finally reaching Dulles Airport in Washington DC seven hours later than scheduled.
The two weeks that followed reinforced my belief that the USA is truly the land of opportunity for all, much as we would like to believe that India is getting there with all the fits and starts our economy has been going through. Three encounters in three cities bring this out. The first was in DC itself where we had the opportunity to first meet the four Indian-American Congressmen or their staffers on Capitol Hill, interact with a young Indian man who has been part of the White House Press Secretary’s office and another Indian who is now the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Each one represents the opportunities that bright and ambitious Indians have chased and the successes many have enjoyed in the country. The Indiaspora conclave itself, over a gathering of young successful Indians who have succeeded beyond recognition in business, consulting, academia, politics, philanthropy and the social sector in the US is always a revelation to see the dreams that are being chased by already successful Indian Americans—to do more for their land of origin and for the land where they have built their careers and success!
Indiaspora has been built as a worthy institution by entrepreneur turned evangelist MR Rangaswami. MR has fused together the collective desire of high achiever Indian Americans into a unit which has the potential to make the Indians in Americas as potent a force as the Jewish body, though we may not at this point have the lobbying power or desire that community possesses in great abundance.
Indian intellect has prevailed and Indian capabilities must find many transformative solutions for our country
Following on from this great beginning, I spent a few days interacting with an outstanding company in Southern California, Systech Inc. as part of our mission at 5F World to build relationships with a handful of Indian and American young companies and invest or work with them to take them to the next level of success. Set up over a decade ago by first-generation entrepreneur Arun Gollapudi and two of his college mates from IIT Madras, here is a small firm that boasts of some of the topmost American corporate names in Manufacturing, Healthcare, Retail, Insurance and Financial Services and does truly leading-edge work in the application of Machine Learning and Big Data platforms to solve business problems. What characterises Systech is something that is missing in many Indian firms— the willingness to seek out the best talent, pay for it and ensure that they deliver the best returns!
Finally, my journey brought me to a weekend halt with my daughter, a physician scientist at the prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, whose passion for cancer research and care is only rivalled by her love for Indian culture, mythology and philosophy. In her words, “my love for cross-cultural exploration makes me seek out the experiences of others across time who have sought shared humanity across geographies. Megasthenes, a 3rd century BC Greek diplomat to the Maurya court in India, wrote that he was surprised to learn that the Indians already knew of the Iliad. Later scholars have pointed out that Megasthenes had probably heard about the Indian epic the Mahabharata, and that both the Iliad and the Mahabharata share stories, likely derived from a common Indo-European precursor, possibly from the Bronze Age Persian steppe. My PhD advisor and I would often end the working day debating the perspectives of the writers whose work we admired, but whose motivations we did not understand.” In her own style, Karuna is a voyager into the unknown— past and future and will never let a research opportunity pass to unearth the real truth!
It’s not just MR Rangaswami, Arun Gollapudi and Karuna Ganesh but a couple of million of our best Indians who are using their undeniable intellect and passion to help shape the American dream. They do it with the strength of their training and determination to do their best in their chosen field of endeavor. We have quite a few of their ilk in India too but possibly the problems our country faces are many orders of magnitude larger than the USA. But I remain an optimist—Indian intellect has prevailed and Indian capabilities must find many transformative solutions for our country and countrymen in the years to come!
Ganesh Natarajan
