Obama promotes two Indian-American women

The US administration, which already has some 25 dozen Indian Americans in senior positions, has added two more – both women.

Deepa Gupta has been named as a member of National Council on the Arts, while Nisha Desai Biswal, currently assistant administrator for Asia at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), will  serve on the Congressional-executive commission on China as an additional assignment.

"I am grateful these accomplished men and women have agreed to join this Administration, and I'm confident they will serve ably in these important roles," US President Barak Obama said while announcing the nomination of Gupta and Biswal along with seven others. "I look forward to working with them in the coming months and years."

Gupta previously served as a senior associate at McKinsey and Co. She is a board member of the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois and an advisory board member of the Cure JM Foundation. She manages the foundation's grants in arts and culture in Chicago and the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

Gupta earned an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She has a qualification in public policy and biology from the University of Chicago.

Biswal earlier served as Majority Clerk for the state department and foreign operations subcommittee on the Committee on Appropriations in the House of Representatives - which has jurisdiction over the State Department – USAID, and other aspects of the international affairs budgeting. She has also served in several other administration roles.

While possibly reflecting showing the US acknowledgement of the contribution of its Indian community and India's growing potential as a market for US companies, the appointments in themselves hardly mean much apart from a small increase in responsibility. Nonetheless, editors obsessed with India's global status will pounce on this snippet rather than focus on the country's poor ranking on all social indices.