Un-Asok Vivek

Ramaswamy was the singular punching-bag for almost all fellow-Republican candidates in the first debate, where he retained his shrill and accusative tone directed at all others, except Trump. Perhaps it is a well thought out strategy of punting on Trump's endorsement, in the unlikely event that the former President bails out, owing to unsustainable legality, or could lead to Trump picking him as his running mate

- BHOPINDER SINGH  

Why should the electoral bid of US citizen Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy in the W country's presidential election of 2024 matter? Frankly it shouldn't; he is after all born and brought-up in the United States and describes himself as an 'unapologetic American nationalist'. He is a millionaire who has realised the 'American dream' and is now proposing America 2.0 (Take America First further than Trump).

The honest answer for the curiosity around him for us is just in his name i.e., Vivek, son of a Tamil Brahmin immigrant from Palakkad district in Kerala.

Currently ranked a longshot third in the Republican primaries, he is unlikely to make the cut as the final choice of the party, but his maverick persona says a lot about the status of American society, politics, as also about the perceptions of the Indian American community.

To start with, Vivek personifies the stereotypical 'Asok' (of Dilbert comic strip) at various levels, and yet breaks away from the same at so many other levels - suggestive of the evolutionary redefinition of that traditional imagery.

Like the popularly imagined IIT'ian 'Asok', who is functionally and academically brilliant and has abilities to solve complex issues in just a few keystrokes, Vivek is a real-life Harvard and Yale alumni who made it big with his biotech entrepreneurial endevours.