Rishi Bhai, Kamala Akka and Leo Dada remind me of the power of skilled migration. Rishi Sunak is a poster child of double diaspora Indian Ocean Imperial Circulations, on the lines of Thomas Metcalf’s book. Migration histories are empirical and real.
As the UK gets Ready for Rishi, it takes a couple of generations of diaspora life with the right Oxon PPE and Stanford MBA education to reach the levels where the outlier odds favor him. The challenge for the PM post was ambitious as a brown rich non-Christian man with little political capital.
As a person with a PE background, he ran as an activist investor waiting for the right M&A window. His family story of the double diaspora in Dr Maya Parmar ‘s words from the colonial East Africa to the UK is a testimony to Indian grit riding on the coat tails of Indian Ocean Tarikh.
We had Indian origin leaders in the former girmitya empire grid from Fiji to Trinidad to Guyana. Senior Minister Tharman and Defense Minister Sajjan are recent examples of diaspora successes.
Change Thinker 