When it comes to politics, careers don’t matter.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Maya Vishwakarma, who left India for a job in California’s lucrative Silicon Valley, has returned to India to contest a seat in India’s Parliament under the banner of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Vishwakarma is hoping to win the seat representing Hoshangabad, a dusty small town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Her story, and that of fellow AAP candidate Deelip Mhaske in Maharashtra, are incredible tales of Indians who toiled in remote, rural regions of the country to come to the US, only to go back to India now that they see the chance for real change and reform.
The AAP burst onto the Indian political scene last year, with its leader Arvind Kejriwal and its belief in eradicating the corruption and underhanded deals that have plagued India’s political system for decades. The idealism and message of the AAP, which bases its principles largely on the teachings of social activist Anna Hazare, caught on like wildfire initially with both native Indians and NRIs around the world.
Shalini Gupta boasts a similar narrative. Gupta left her life in Chicago, where she was the Intelligence Integrated Services Network Director for BP, in order to return to India, where she now serves as a top adviser for the AAP. She also spearheaded a program entitled Adopt a Constituency, which got about 30 Indians from the US, UK, Australia, Singapore, and Germany to become actively involved in the Indian elections, according to The New York Times.
Vishwakarma, who returned to India in January, is hoping that by getting elected to India’s Lok Sabha house of Parliament, she’ll be able to provide crucial infrastructure to her hometown. In a story by Time Magazine, Vishakarma stated that Hoshangabad has become overrun with corruption, and lacks basic things like hospitals, roads, school, and even electricity. Illiteracy, a problem throughout India even in this day and age, is rampant there, too.
She certainly has an impressive resume. According to her LinkedIn page, Vishwakarma has a B.S. in biology from Rani Durgavati University in Jabalpur, an M.S. in biochemistry from the same school. She worked at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, in the Departments of Nuclear Medicine and Pediatrics, before coming to the US.
She spent time at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering before going to California, where she spent some time at Stanford. She them joined the Department of Hematology and Oncology at the UC San Francisco Medical Center, where she was when she decided to go back to India.
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