Watch Nidhi Razdan: The India connection in US Presidential race - video Dailymotion

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00:00So, the India connection in the US presidential race has got everyone excited. You have Kamala

00:09Harris, whose mother is, of course, Indian, and Usha Vance, the wife of JD Vance, the

00:14Republican vice presidential nominee. Now, there is a certain degree of pride in the

00:20Indian American community to see people of Indian origin doing so well politically. It's

00:25a group that's become more and more influential over the decades and has a greater political

00:29say and a greater political presence. But it's not just in the US. If you look at the

00:34UK as well, of course, you just had Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and a conservative party

00:38that is full of people of South Asian descent, Preeti Patel, Suela Braverman, you had Vivek

00:44Ramaswamy in the US as well, Nikki Haley, of course. The issue though here is that should

00:50we here in India be so excited about these candidates? I mean, sure, it's interesting,

00:56but at the end of the day, they don't really identify themselves firstly, as Indian. They

01:02are loyal to the country that they were either born in, brought up in or that they immigrated

01:06to. There's no real significant connection to India. And more than that, if you look

01:12at many of these desis, as I'll call them, what are their policies towards immigration,

01:18for example, if you look at Rishi Sunak, he was supporting that horrendous Rwanda policy

01:22where migrants were going to be shipped off to Rwanda. You have someone like Suela Braverman

01:28who's made some of the most toxic anti-immigrant speeches in the UK. Vivek Ramaswamy in the

01:33US who had used H1B visas for employees of his own company, at one point wanted to scrap

01:41H1B visas for Indian techies altogether. So if you look at most of these desi politicians

01:48in the West, it's very strange, but they've ended up becoming very sort of anti-immigrant

01:53and not really, you know, with no real connection back home to India. So while it may be interesting

02:00and at some level nice to see them doing well in the West and in Western politics, I don't

02:07think it's something we need to get overexcited about.