As Indians are supporting Hillary Clinton, would she be bad for Pakistan if elected?
Whom should Pakistanis support?
Influential Indians lend weight and wealth to Clinton
Financial Times
By Edward Luce in Washington
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19314468/
Updated: 9:12 p.m. CT June 19, 2007
On Sunday Indian-Americans for Hillary – a group that supports Mrs Clinton’s 2008 campaign – will host a fundraising event in New York that could net the former first lady between $500,000 and $1m. Among other wealthy Indians, Lakshmi Mittal, the London-based steel magnate, is expected to attend.
With all the presidential candidates scrambling to meet their second quarter fundraising targets by the end of this month, Mrs Clinton’s ties with the increasingly wealthy 2.3m-strong Indian-American community could prove very helpful.
Just as helpful was a memo written and leaked last week by junior campaign staff for Barack Obama, who is trailing Mrs Clinton in the Democratic race, which made fun of her ties to prominent Indian-American business leaders.
Entitled Hillary Clinton “D-Punjab” (Democratic senator for the Indian state of Punjab), the memo outlined Mrs Clinton’s allegedly hypo*critical links to groups that have transferred US jobs to India while at the same time the senator claims to stand up for ordinary Americans.
Mr Obama, who has garnered enthusiasm among Indian-American students, apologised for the memo, which he described as “caustic” and “stupid” and which he said he had not authorised. But the damage from what some Indians see as the memo’s borderline prejudiced undertones could prove hard to undo.
“In addition to being offended by the clear anti-Indian sentiment in the memo, we were particularly disturbed because the memo flies in the face of what we respect most about Senator Obama – his inclusive message and his ability to relate to people of all backgrounds,” said a statement by South Asians for Obama.
Alienating Indian-Americans is an increasingly expensive prospect in US politics. With a median income of $61,000 (£31,700, €45,500) compared with a national median of $41,000 according to the US census bureau, Indians are the richest ethnic group in America. More than 300,000 Indians work in Silicon Valley, where their average income is $200,000.
Many Silicon Valley Indians support Mrs Clinton, who has repeatedly defended the right of US companies to offshore business to India arguing that “you cannot legislate against reality”. Mrs Clinton, who is also co-chair of the “Friends of India” caucus on Capitol Hill, will be the keynote speaker in Silicon Valley next month at the annual conference of the alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology – the elite engineering schools that have produced many of India’s – and America’s – software leaders.
“There is a lot of support for Hillary because she has stuck by Indians on the two issues that most motivate us – defending offshoring and supporting the US-India nuclear deal,” said a leading Indian business executive in San Francisco.
Among the ties listed in the leaked memo, the links between the Clintons and Vinod Gupta, chief executive of the technology company InfoUSA, are prominent. Bill Clinton, who earned $10m last year in speaking fees, has received $2.1m in consulting fees from InfoUSA and both Clintons have used Mr Gupta’s private jets to attend political events.
The value of the flights is estimated at $900,000 over many years. Mrs Clinton has complied with regulations that require senators to reimburse the owner of corporate jets the equivalent cost of a first-class fare. The memo also says Mrs Clinton has received $60,000 in campaign contributions from employees of Cisco, the prominent US router-maker that has thousands of employees in India.
In an interview with an Indian online magazine, Mr Obama insisted that he supported an open economy, including offshoring.
“I hope and trust that all my friends in the Indian-American community understand that it [the memo] did not reflect my views, either on the complex issue of outsourcing or on my attitude towards the enormous contributions of the Indian-American community that they have made to this country,” Mr Obama told India Abroad.