Obama's second innings? As a junior engineer in govt service in India

When Barack Obama’s second and final presidential term ends, the man will just be in his mid-fifties. Naturally he must be mulling about what to do with his time. Obama has already won the Nobel Peace Prize so bringing about world peace is not a second career option. Other ex-presidents have written memoirs. Or set up foundations. Or monitored elections around the world. Obama, ever a path-breaker, is clearly trying to be a little different, think outside the usual Presidential box. The latest news is he may aspire to become a junior engineer in government service. In India. One Lalu Ram Meena, a resident of Rambas village in Dausa, has apparently received an admission card from the Staff Selection Commission which recruits for junior posts in government service. “In my card, my name and address were correct, but the photo was of US President Barack Obama,” Lalu Ram told   IANS. As the Vicco ad goes, “welcome to real Indian village.” The NSA, if it was unaware of this development, clearly needs to get better at snooping on correspondence. The news is clearly excellent news, a game-changer for various stakeholders around the world if Obama acts on his admission card. [caption id=“attachment_862133” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Barack Obama as a junior engineer in India? Getty Images[/caption] The birthers: For the vociferous anti-Obama-ites who have been crying themselves hoarse that Obama is not really an American, this could be the clinching proof of their conspiracy theories. This is actual documentation with a photo and address of Obama’s foreignness, duly signed by a competent authority. According to the certificate he was born in 1987. That’s even more proof that the man fudged his way to the US presidency by sneaking around the age barrier. Too bad, it’s not a long-form birth certificate, nor is it proof that he is a foreign-born closet Muslim. But a junior engineer wanna-be from Rajasthan should be gotcha enough to keep Obama’s implacable foes abuzz. And to think this comes just days after sixteen US business groups complained to him about India’s “discriminatory” and “unacceptable” policies towards foreign businesses. Vivek Wadhwa: For years Vivek Wadhwa, professor and entrepreneur turned academic, has been tirelessly warning America about the reverse brain drain. He’s done surveys about Losing the World’s Best and Brightest, written a book called The Immigrant Exodus, testified before the US Congress about how the best and brightest were leaving America to set up shop in China and India. “We’re boosting the economies of India, China, Brazil, Chile, Australia, you name it, we’re giving the foreign aid we never imagined we would give. We would never willingly give them tens of billions of dollars of economic aid, we’re doing it without realizing it,” Wadhwa told Quartz. Wadhwa’s warning have fallen on largely deaf years in the US Congress. Now the man can claim he stands vindicated. It can’t get better and brighter than the prospect of the President of the United States himself leaving for other shores. Superpower India Club: The India is the next superpower club must be over the moon. This is indisputable proof that the future lies in India. As a friend quipped this is “India shining, baby.” So what if the rupee appears to be tanking now? Even the POTUS sees the writing on the wall. Wadhwa told the US Congress that when he interviewed foreign students about their future, only six percent of Indians and 10 percent of Chinese wanted to stay back in America. The biggest reason why they wanted to leave was the “fear that the US economy will lag behind average global growth rates.” And what better proof can we get about India’s rising clout than the fact that the most powerful man in the world must start out his second innings at the bottom of the ladder as a junior engineer? At least when Shashi Tharoor left the UN and returned to India, he got a ministerial berth. Obama must clear Paper 1 on General Intelligence and Reasoning, General Awareness and General Engineering. No credit to be given for a Nobel Peace Prize. However here are some things Obama should remember if he wants to be successful at reinventing himself in the new India. He should bring along that Hanuman talisman he often shows off. He’ll need it to clear the many obstacles in his path. Just because he can supposedly make a mean dal-keema he’s not going to have it easy. Since Obama isn’t a “name’ in India, like say Gandhi or Bachchan, he is unlikely to be able to make it big in politics or Bollywood. His best bet for success would be to cultivate the personal assistant of some minister. Even a junior minister can come in handy. Former railways minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has the time to give him some useful pointers in this regard. Obama should at all cost steer clear of UP’s minority welfare minister Azam Khan who has some scores to settle with America about the “humiliation” he suffered at Boston’s Logan airport. He would probably do well to also avoid one Narendra Modi. Modi likely remembers his US visa snub very well. Obama should also not take any calls from a Vindoo Dara Singh even if the man promises to introduce him to everyone who matters in India. However if Obama, after all these years in the blinding limelight, wants to just disappear into anonymity, he could not have chosen a better option than the labyrinth of the junior ranks of Indian governmental service. It’s a far better option for lying low than Hong Kong. And if he plays his cards right, he can draw a salary while doing minimal work, get every religious holiday known to man, and perhaps one day even get an office with a chair that comes with a neatly-folded towel on it. Even the Oval Office does not boast that.