Thursday, January 30th, 2013
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
JINDAL AND INDIA A MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR LOUISIANA!
Louisiana’s two-term governor and aspiring presidential candidate, Bobby Jindal, just returned from a 10-day junket to the Far East. Stops were made in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan for the expressed purpose of seeking out foreign investment in the Bayou State. But if industrial development in the state by foreign companies was his goal, Jindal missed the mark by some 1300 miles.
Jindal is one of two Indian American governors in the U.S. But so far, he has passed on the opportunity to travel to India and move Louisiana onto the front burner of a special relationship with the world’s largest democracy. The other Indian American Governor, Nicki Haley of South Carolina, has made several trips to India. Her first visit was just a few months after taking office.
Jindal had a face to face meeting with the Prime Minister of India back in 2009, when he attended a dinner in the Prime Minister’s honor at the White house. And if Jindal is the smart Rhodes scholar he has been touted to be, one would have thought that he would have seized the chance to build a special relationship based on his ancestry. In recent years, India has been reaching out, worldwide, for both export and import opportunities. If Jindal had played his cards right, Louisiana would now be the bountiful beneficiary of a new and huge trading partner.
Jindal had more in common with the Prime Minister than just their mutual Indian heritage. The leader of the world’s largest democracy, like Jindal, took a degree from Oxford University, and worked as a policy wonk in several government appointed positions. The chemistry is there to build a strong relationship between these two leaders and their respective country and state. Continue Reading…………..