Indian-American academic Prof Sheila Sen Jasanoff (Holberg Awardee, 2022) along with Prof Jay H. Jasanoff and social science students Alan Jasanoff and Hilton Simmet from Harvard University USA, joined Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Bharat Jodo Yatra on Friday morning.

The yatra resumed from the Sanoli-Panipat road in Haryana.

A public meeting will also be addressed by Rahul Gandhi in Panipat. Thousands of people welcomed the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ in the Panipat district of Haryana with fireworks.

Congress’s Bharat Jodo Yatra on Thursday completed its Uttar Pradesh leg and re-entered the state of Haryana.

Talking to ANI about the Yatra, Congress leader Selja Kumari said, “Under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, we will walk from the border to Panipat. We will have a massive rally, where Rahul Gandhi will address the public. There is a lot of enthusiasm in the people of Haryana, as they look up to Rahul Gandhi for their future. Taking inspiration from Rahul Gandhi, Congress will work hard in Haryana,” she added.

Launching a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress leader said, “BJP is anxious because what started as a ‘Yatra’ has now become a ‘Jan Aandolan’.

Selja Kumari alleged that the industries in Panipat were in bad shape. “We should have been top in export but we are not,” she said.

Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi has been leading the Bharat Jodo Yatra which started from Kanyakumari last year.

U. S. President Joe Biden has renominated at least half a dozen Indian Americans to key administration positions which could not be confirmed by the Senate in the last Congress.

The 118th Congress kicked off on January 3 with the swearing-in of Senators and the start of the process of election of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Among those renominated by Mr. Biden and sent to the Senate were Richard Verma (54), to be Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, and Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy (45), to be Representative of the U.S. on the Executive Board of the World Health Organisation.

Mr. Verma, who served as a former U.S. Ambassador to India from January 16, 2015, to January 20, 2017, is currently the Chief Legal Officer and Head of Global Public Policy at Mastercard.

Mr. Murthy was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March 2021 to serve as the 21st Surgeon General of the country. He previously served as the 19th Surgeon General under former President Barack Obama.

Mr. Biden also sent to the Senate the renomination of Anjali Chaturvedi to be General Counsel, Department of Veterans Affairs, Ravi Chaudhary to be an Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Geeta Rao Gupta to be Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues, and Radha Iyengar Plumb to be a Deputy Under Secretary of Defence.

All these key administration positions were nominated by Mr. Biden in the last Congress, but they were not confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. Biden, who has maintained a close relationship with the community since his Senator days, often jokes around about his Indian relationship. He made history in 2020 by selecting Indian-origin Kamala Harris as his running mate.

The list of Indian-Americans in the White House as compiled by Indiaspora reflects that there would be only a few meetings inside the White House or in Mr. Biden’s Oval Office that would not have an Indian-American presence.

Mala Gaonkar’s SurgoCap Partners started trading Tuesday with $1.8 billion under management, the largest debut of a woman-led hedge fund in the industry’s history.

SurgoCap will use data science to invest around the theme of how technology can enhance other sectors such as financials, industrials, health care and enterprise data, according to people familiar with the matter. The firm, with about 20 employees, will bet on and against stocks and can invest as much as a quarter of its assets in private companies, the people said.

A representative for New York-based SurgoCap declined to comment.

The launch follows the October debut of Divya Nettimi’s Avala Global, which started with more than $1 billion in committed cash. The two women attracted significant capital after establishing themselves at larger firms. Mala Gaonkar, 53, spent 23 years at Lone Pine Capital, and Divya Nettimi worked seven at Viking Global Investors.

At an investor conference in June, Mala Gaonkar said she was bullish on ServiceNow Inc., an enterprise-software company that helps automate workflow.

Mala Gaonkar was born in the US and raised mostly in Bengaluru, India, where many of her relatives were doctors. She earned an economics degree and MBA from Harvard before joining Lone Pine as a founding partner in 1998. Three years later, she was named portfolio manager overseeing wagers on tech, media, internet and telecom. She also co-headed the firm’s long-only funds.

In 2019, when Steve Mandel decided to step back from day-to-day management, he picked Mala Gaonkar as one of three portfolio managers who would oversee Lone Pine’s assets, which totaled $16.7 billion as of August. She left in early 2022 to start SurgoCap.

Mala Gaonkar’s focus on technology extends to philanthropy. In 2015, she co-founded the Surgo Foundation to focus on using artificial intelligence and behavioral science to solve global health problems. Five years later she co-founded the nonprofit Surgo Ventures to further that cause by developing strategic partnerships with other groups.

At SurgoCap, she’s saving $100 million of capacity for smaller endowments, foundations and nonprofits that help underserved communities or address climate change, the people said. Those investors will pay lower fees. So far she’s gathered $35 million.

Mala Gaonkar signed the Giving Pledge to commit the majority of her wealth to philanthropy.

The relationship between India and the United States can define the 21st century, Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna said Monday, as a leading American daily in a long-form article articulated that the post-Ukrainian war world would see India’s emergence.

“The US-India relationship can define the 21st century,” Ro Khanna said in a tweet Monday, referring to The New York Times article.

Khanna said the prominent American daily writes beautifully about India’s rising confidence and paradoxes. The article ends on a hopeful note that pluralism, etched by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, are an indelible part of its palimpsest, the Congressman said.

The daily quotes External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar as saying that a world order which is still very, very deeply Western, is being hurried out of existence by the impact of the war in Ukraine, to be replaced by a world of multi-alignment where countries will choose their own particular policies and preferences and interests.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, India has rejected American and European pressure at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion, turned Moscow into its largest oil supplier and dismissed the perceived hypocrisy of the West, the daily wrote. Far from apologetic, its tone has been unabashed and its self-interest broadly naked, the daily reported.

I would still like to see a more rules-based world, Jaishankar told The New York Times. But when people start pressing you in the name of a rules-based order to give up, to compromise on what are very deep interests, at that stage I’m afraid it’s important to contest that and, if necessary, to call it out, he said.