Aruna Miller became the first Indian-American politician to win the race of Lieutenant Governor in the state of Maryland and assumed office on January 18, 2023. She took the oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita, making her the first lieutenant governor to do so. Find out about her career, early life education, and more.

Aruna Miller made history on Wednesday when the 58-year-old became the first South Asian woman elected lieutenant governor in the United States, the first Asian American lieutenant governor, and the first immigrant to hold statewide office in Maryland.

The democrat became the 10th Lieutenant Governor of the state which is the state’s highest official following the Governor and assumes the role when the Governor is out of state or incapacitated.

Aruna mentioned her family in her inauguration speech and said,

“I spent most of my life trying to fit in the space that didn’t have me and mine, as an immigrant growing up in a new country, or as a female engineer in a male-dominated field, as an Indian American legislator in a legislature that looked nothing like me. It took me a long time to realize that it was never about needing to fit into a space created by others. It was always about having the courage to be my authentic self in every space,”

“Maryland, I am humbled and honored to be your Lieutenant Governor. We are only just getting started!” Miller tweeted.

Aruna Miller: Know her
Born on November 6, 1964, in Hyderabad, India Aruna Miller is an American politician who has served as the tenth lieutenant governor of Maryland since 2023.
In 2018 she ran for Congress to represent Maryland’s 6th congressional district, and lost the Democratic primary to David Trone by 9.3%, with 30.7% of the vote compared to Trone’s 40.0%.
In 2021, Wes Moore chose Miller as his running mate in the Democratic primary of the 2022 Maryland gubernatorial election and won the Democratic nomination on July 19, 2022.
They defeated Republican nominee Dan Cox and his running mate Gordana Schifanelli on November 8, 2022.
She is the second female lieutenant governor after Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

Janani Ramachandran, a 30-year-old Indian-American attorney, has emerged as the youngest and the first queer woman of colour to take oath as the Oakland City Council member in the U.S. state of California.

Ms. Ramachandran took the ceremonial oath wearing a saree as the Oakland City Council member for District 4 in an inauguration ceremony held on January 10.

“WE WON! Honoured to be the next City Councilmember for Oakland District 4!! I will officially be the youngest Council member in Oakland’s history, the 1st #LGBTQ woman of color & 1st South Asian to serve on Oakland City Council,” the public interest attorney tweeted.

She took to Twitter to express her gratitude and said, “Immensely grateful for all those who believed in me and helped build our movement. Honoured to have my loved ones by my side as I took the ceremonial oath!” Ms. Ramachandran describes herself as “a daughter of immigrants from a small village in South India.

She currently serves on the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs and has previously served as a Commissioner at the City of Oakland Public Ethics Commission, according to her website.

The Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley pass-out has worked in several legal non-profits.

As a first-time candidate in her 2021 run for State Assembly, she shocked political experts by advancing to the special election runoff, coming out on top amongst a field of previously elected officials, her website said.

India will face a tsunami of chronic diseases such as cancer due to globalization, a growing economy, an ageing population and changing lifestyle, warns a leading oncologist, making it imperative for the nation to embrace technology-driven medical techniques to prevent health catastrophes in an effective manner.

Cancer vaccines for prevention and treatment, expansion of Artificial Intelligence & data digital technology, and cancer diagnosis from liquid biopsies are among the six trends that will reshape cancer care in this century, says Dr Jame Abraham, Chairman of the Department of Haematology and Medical Oncology, Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA.

The other three trends are the use of genomic profiling, the evolution of gene editing technologies and the next generation of immunotherapies and CAR T cell therapies, Abraham points out in an article in Manorama Year Book 2023.

“Digital technology, information technology and telehealth will narrow the gap between patients and specialists. This will also potentially enhance the availability of experts’ care in remote parts of our country, including rural settings where the majority of our population lives.”

“Due to globalisation, growing economy, ageing population and changing lifestyle, India will face a tsunami of chronic diseases such as cancer,” the oncologist warns.

As per the Globocan estimates, the cancer burden worldwide is expected to be 28.4 million cases in 2040, a 47 per cent rise from 2020, due to demographic changes.

This may escalate by increasing risk factors associated with globalization and a growing economy. An estimated 19.3 million new cancer cases and almost 10.0 million cancer deaths were reported across the world in 2020.

Female breast cancer has surpassed lung cancer as the most commonly diagnosed cancer while lung cancer remained the leading cause of cancer death, with an estimated 1.8 million deaths (18 per cent), followed by colorectal (9.4 per cent), liver (8.3 per cent), stomach (7.7 per cent), and female breast (6.9 per cent) cancers, reveals the report.

India’s biggest challenge will be how to make it affordable and accessible for millions of its people when these technologies continue to revolutionize cancer care, notes Dr Abraham.

Dr Abraham holds that cancer vaccines are an exciting research area having the potential to immunize people against various cancers. Researchers have developed amazingly successful mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. The fact is that mRNA-based cancer treatment vaccines have been tested in small trials for more than a decade, with some promising early results.

“Currently at Cleveland Clinic, our team is doing a clinical trial testing cancer vaccine in high-risk breast cancer,” he says. Highlighting the role of cutting-edge technologies, he says computers using Artificial Intelligence (AI) can recognize variations in patterns from normal to abnormal in the biopsy, much more accurately than the human eye. These technologies will demand radiologists and pathologists to be more efficient and accurate. Genetic profiling or testing at an early age to detect the abnormal gene can find breast and colon cancers in their earliest stage.

“In a futuristic society, genomic testing will be widely used, like monitoring blood pressure or cholesterol, to identify high risks and find targeted treatments to kill cancer cells specifically. Doing testing in the population or high-risk individuals will allow doctors to intervene before cancer happens,” he says.

Noting that scans, mammograms, colonoscopies or a pap smear are currently used for cancer diagnosis, the doctor says by the time the tumour is detected, it can be too late. “Hence, the treatment needs to be very aggressive. The emerging liquid biopsy technologies will help detect cancer from a drop of blood before it can be detected by a scan or it manifests as a lump or ulceration.”
Genome or gene editing is an area of research seeking to modify the genes of living organisms and use them to treat genetic or acquired diseases. Gene therapy holds promise for treating cancer, cystic fibrosis, heart disease, diabetes, haemophilia, sickle cell disease, and AIDS.

Another trend in cancer treatment is immunotherapies, which, in combination with chemotherapy, have resulted in the complete disappearance of tumors in several cases. It is now a standard treatment currently in many parts of the world. Scientists are also using CAR T cell therapy, in which T cells are isolated from a patient’s blood and modified in the laboratory to specifically attack cancer cells. Dr Abraham has a word of caution, too.

“When we develop novel technologies to prevent and treat cancer, we can’t take our focus on cancer prevention. The most common causes of cancers are still tobacco, alcohol, diet and infections. Policies for tobacco and alcohol control have to be a national priority,” he says.

India and the United States are developing a mechanism for the Indian fishermen to be able to export shrimps for American consumers, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said Wednesday.

“We had discussions for restarting the wild-caught shrimp exports from India to the US,” Goyal told reporters at a news conference here at the conclusion of India-US Trade Policy Forum meeting that he co-chaired with US Trade Representative Katherine Tai.

This was an area that was banned by the US because of concerns around turtles, in the areas where wild-caught shrimp was being fished in India, he said.

“A turtle excluder device has been designed with the technical support of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), from the US, and that design has been accepted now, between the two countries as a collaborative effort between India and the United States,” he said.

The device is now being taken up for trials. The trials of that machine, he said, will ensure that the turtle excluder device will minimize the impact of fishing on the sea turtle population. “We hope that these trials in India will complete in the coming few months so that wild-caught shrimp can once again be exported from India to the US.”

“It was a product of good acceptance in the US market, good taste, and has good potential for trade between the two countries,” Goyal said.