If there is one constant, it is that Barack Obama will cheer for the enemy. He will support those who hate and oppose America.

One of the hottest spots in the world is the India- Pakistan area. India and Pakistan, to put it charitably, are longtime rivals. Less charitably, they might be called sworn enemies. Probably, the presence of nuclear weapons on both sides has prevented an all-out war between the two nations for several decades now.

Elections are coming in India and how the Obama regime reacts to those elections will determine the future of American relations in that part of the world for years and maybe decades.

Narendra Modi is the head of the BJP Party in India. It is the right of center party and his party is expected to win the upcoming elections and he will become the next Prime Minister of India.

Mr. Modi is described as a controversial figure both inside India and outside of it.

In 2002, Muslims were accused of setting fire to a train that carried Hindu religious pilgrims. This set off weeks of interreligious war between Hindus and Muslims. Mr.  Modi was accused of either being a part of the violence or at least condoning it. A court cleared him of that charge.

Unfortunately, in 2005, the United States denied Mr. Modi a diplomatic visa to enter the United States and revoked his pervious non-diplomatic visa, because of allegations related to the 2002 violence.

What will the Obama regime do if Mr. Modi becomes Prime Minister?

The Obama regime is still trying to recover from its bungling of the arrest and strip search of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade. Ms. Khobragade did not have traditional diplomatic immunity, but a lesser grade of immunity.

Instead of simply expelling her, the regime managed to handle the matter in such a manner that Indians were outraged.

Eventually, the regime gave Ms. Khobragade diplomatic immunity and that allowed her to leave the country.

What will happen when Mr. Modi becomes Prime Minister and wants to visit America? The State Department will either have to grant a diplomatic visa or deny it.

Barack Obama has blatantly favored Islamic nations over even America’s closest allies since he became president. Pakistan is not America’s friend. It harbored Osama bin Laden for years. The Taliban in Afghanistan is essentially a creation of the ISI, the Pakistani Intelligence service. The Pakistanis have routinely cut off over land transportation routes to Afghanistan, making it difficult for us to supply our troops there. Pakistan allows safe refuge for terrorists who hit our troops in Afghanistan, then crawl back across the border.

And Pakistan has refused to allow American experts access to Dr. A.Q. Khan. Khan, who helped create Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, is suspected of sharing nuclear technology with North Korea, Iran and Libya.

Source: The Washington Times

The 2014 India Elections have begun and as the election din and frenzy reaches its finale, it is now time to take a look at the major trends that have defined the exercise of political choice in the world’s largest democracy.

In this election, the youth forms a major chunk of the voting population. 150 million young Indians between the ages of 18 to 23 years are eligible to vote for the first time. That is staggeringly close to the total number of all registered voters in the 2012 presidential elections in the United States (169 million) and the sum equivalent of voters in most of the European countries.
In the nine-phase voting process that kick started across the country on April 7 and is scheduled to end on May 12, popular trends indicate that first-time voters are showing no signs of the voter lethargy that Indians are infamous for. On the contrary, young Indians are showing up at the voting booth in unprecedented numbers and voting has become a sign of impatience and assertiveness.

So what has brought about such a drastic change in the voting pattern? It is the sizable segment of first-time voters, who are the target of some finely orchestrated wooing by political parties and leaders. Opinion polls and experts, however, are working overtime to predict the mind of this young sizable voter pool.
Perhaps the defining point of this generation is the fact that they have grown up in and gotten used to a buoyant economic scenario. In the ongoing elections, these urban first-time voters are expressing considerable anxiety about India’s recent economic slide and the rise in corruption. They are a bunch who are unsatisfied with the current governance and want a change pronto. A lot has changed since the last general election in 2009 when India was nearing double-digit economic growth rates. Since then, the economy has slowed dramatically and is now projected to grow at 5.4% in 2014.

Who would have predicted two years ago that Narendra Modi would be this close to the prime minister’s seat? The poll predictions suggest this could be the BJP’s strongest showing in decades, and conversely suggest that this could be the ruling Congress Party’s worst performance yet.
But the election is far from over, and opinion polls have been wrong in the past. In 2004, when BJP ran its miscalculated “India Shining” campaign, opinion polls favored the NDA to win heavily, but it was beaten by the Congress, which since then has been at the helm of the ruling UPA coalition for the last ten years.
Young voters are also extremely concerned about the dwindling job prospects and lack of opportunities. It is a generation that is arriving to a damp job scenario after witnessing the generation before enjoy a long spell of plentiful employment opportunities, double-digit salary rises and job-hopping.
Real issues aside, first-timers are making it obvious on social networks that they are enamored by political idols and are going gaga in support of them. The boyish-faced Rahul Gandhi of the ruling Congress Party, the tough-talking Narendra Modi and the anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party have their own segment of young fans and a hysterical fan following to boot. Still, it is hard to say who this game changer of a generation will favor in the polling booth.

Arun Jaitley, the Leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha has previously held the portfolios as the Union cabinet Minister for Commerce and Industry, and Law and Justice in the National Democratic Alliance government (1998-2004.) Born in New Delhi into a family of lawyers, social activists, and philanthropists he came into prominence as a leader of the movement against corruption, launched in 1973 by Raj Narain and Jayaprakash Narayan. A year later Jaitley contested and won the election to the post of the president of the Delhi University student union, a prestigious win on sub national level. In an era where Congress Party had a stranglehold over university campuses Jaitley’s election  as an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) candidate marked a watershed in India’s student politics.  He subsequently joined the BJP, having been earlier a member of ABVP, the president of the Youth Wing of the BJP and the secretary of its Delhi unit. During the 1998-1999 General Election, Mr Jaitley became the Spokesperson of BJP wherein he successfully positioned the BJP as the main protagonist against the ruling party.

Mr Jaitley, made his first visit to the United States when he visited Washington from June 2011. He was accompanied by Lok Sabha Member of Parliament Janardhan Swamy and former Rajya Sabha member Chandan Mitra. Mr Jaitley met with several members of the US Congress, think tanks, and key members of the administration during this trip. He started his visit with an address at the Heritage Foundation on “Indian Foreign Policy — Priorities in a Shifting Global Landscape.” He interacted with prominent lawmakers on Capitol Hill and stressed the growing strength of the U.S.-India relationship and its strategic nature, and the convergence on various issues between the two countries especially relating to terrorism and growth of trade. The co-chairs of the India Caucus in the U.S. Congress  Congressmen Joe Crowley and Congressman Ed Royce held a reception on behalf of the caucus for Jaitley in the Rayburn Congressional Building. Representative Crowley welcomed Jaitley, and said, “Mr. Jaitley’s visit represents a great opportunity for the U.S. to continue building a strong relationship with India. In an increasingly globalized economy, it is important for the U.S. to continue to foster friendship with India, which is emerging as a leading growth economy despite the difficult economic landscape.”

In his capacity as the leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha, Mr. Jaitley has been credited for his excellent oratory which is matched equally by his intense research into the topic and his ability to succinctly convey the message without being shrill.

However, being in the party since 1980 he never contested any direct election until 2014.He is the BJP’s candidate for Amritsar for Indian general election, 2014. USINPAC wishes Mr Jaitley all the success in the Indian general election and his future endeavors.

India-born poet Vijay Seshadri has won the prestigious 2014 Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category for his collection of poems “3 Sections.”

The 98th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music were announced yesterday by Columbia University here.

Seshadri’s ’3 Sections’ is a “compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless,” the announcement said.

The prize for the poetry category was given for a “distinguished volume of original verse” by an American author.

A Columbia University alum, Seshadri would receive USD 10,000 reward.

According to Seshadri’s biography on the Pulitzer website, he currently teaches poetry and nonfiction writing at liberal arts college Sarah Lawrence in New York. Born in Bangalore in 1954, Seshadri came to America at the age of five and grew up in Columbus, Ohio.

His collections of poems include James Laughlin Award winner The Long Meadow and Wild Kingdom (1996). His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in prestigious publications including the American Scholar, the Nation, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Yale Review, the Times Book Review, the Philadelphia Enquirer and in many anthologies, including Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets and The Best American Poetry 1997 and 2003.

Seshadri has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been awarded the Paris Review’s Bernard F Conners Long Poem Prize and the MacDowell Colony’s Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement.

Seshadri is the fifth person of Indian origin to bag the prestigious award, the first being Gobind Behari Lal in 1937. Lal, a science editor, was awarded the Pulitzer in the Reporting category for his coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University when he was working for Universal Service. He died of cancer in 1992.

Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri got Pulitzer for fiction in 2000 for her collection of stories “Interpreters of Maladies”.

Journalist-writer of Indian origin Geeta Anand was the next to get the award. Anand was the investigative reporter and feature writer for the Wall Street Journal and won the award in 2003 for “clear, concise and comprehensive stories that illuminated the roots, significance and impact of corporate scandals in America”.

Indian-American physician Siddhartha Mukherjee’s acclaimed book on cancer, ‘The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,’ won the 2011 Pulitzer prize in the general non-fiction category.

Source: Business Standard