Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswami and Kamala Harris, who all have Indian roots and entered the race to become the President of the US (POTUS) in recent years, have inspired me to go into politics. I am an ambitious person and set lofty goals throughout my entire academic, professional and personal life and, in most cases, achieved those goals. However, one goal I knew to be out of my reach was the Presidency of this country, simply because I was born outside of the USA.

Then Obama came along and gave me hope. There was a vigorous “birther movement” alleging that he was born in Kenya and disqualified to be a POTUS. Obama refuted that by producing a birth certificate from Hawaii. The birthers said that it was fake. One needs the active support of high-ranking government officials, including the governor of a state, to pull such a daring act of falsification, and I doubt that Obama went through that. However, now I see a viable path to my presidency.

After I came to the USA, I studied physics at the Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge for three semesters. Raj, mother of Bobby Jindal (the former governor of Louisiana), was my classmate at LSU. I believe that I can convince Bobby, with Raj’s help, to provide me with a fake birth certificate from some obscure hospital in Baton Rouge. In return, I can offer Bobby to become my running mate.

Yes, I have decided to run for presidency in 2028. I believe that I can be an excellent president. My physics education allows me to look at any complex situation and analyse it to get to the root causes of issues surrounding any situation. My management experience at major multinational companies has trained me to address and solve those problems.

I realise that the US faces the following major problems: i) how to create jobs and ensure a sustaining economic recovery; ii) how to completely eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and the associated impact on climate change; iii) how to improve the educational standard in schools; iv) how to deal with the illegal immigration problem; v) how to improve our foreign policy; vi) how to provide healthcare to everyone; and last, but not the least vii) abortion and LGBTQ issues.

I have already formulated my action plans to address each one of these issues, as follows:

1) Economy: All recent presidents poured billions of dollars into defence industries, large banks and financial institutes, automotive companies, etc. with taxpayers’ money. It did not do much for common people but only increased our national debt. I would like to help small companies because I believe that small businesses are really the lifeblood of the economy; unlike greedy big corporations, small businesses are not into outsourcing their operations, giving huge amounts of bonuses to top executives, and increasing profit by laying off thousands of employees. I would like to propose massive financial help to small businesses like 7-11, Dunkin Donuts, Motel 6 and gas station operations.

2) Energy: Our energy solution could be realised only by eliminating all vehicles that operate with gasoline—cars, trucks, vans, buses, and so on. I propose that we bring back travelling on horses, elephants, camels, etc. as a safe and “green” mode of transportation. Yes, my action would mean massive job losses in countries like Japan, Korea and Germany that have flooded our streets with their cars, but it would not be our problem. The resulting slowdown in the pace of life might be good for reducing the stress in our daily lives.

3) Education: I will require every student to enter the spelling bee contest because learning how to spell correctly is the first building block of good education. After that, I will encourage all students to go directly into computer-related fields so that they can enter a career in information technology (IT). Since everything in our lives is computerised these days, what is the point of learning anything else, like philosophy, and becoming another unemployed graduate? I will make sure that the best IT professionals from India are available to train these students.

4) Illegal immigration: To solve this problem, I will bring farm workers and other labourers from India as legal immigrants who would work in all kinds of jobs involving manual labour for much less money than what we pay those illegal Mexican and other Latin American workers. As a result, the illegal workers would soon be out of work and go back to Mexico on their own, and there would be no financial incentive for future illegal immigrants to come here. As a bonus, these Indian workers might be able to fix your minor computer glitches on the side.

5) Foreign policy: I will appoint a stunning-looking Bollywood actress as my Secretary of State who can mesmerise and awe both our allies and enemies alike into not only listening to us but also going along with us. Someone like Katrina Kaif, who was born in Hong Kong and lived in multiple foreign countries, would be perfect.

6) Health care: This solution is a no-brainer. Simply send at least one of your children to medical school and let him/her take care of the health needs of the whole family. Nay-sayers might say that it costs lots of money and one must be smart to get a medical degree. The ads on TV channels show many medical schools throughout the Caribbean islands and countries like Poland where anyone can be a doctor at a fraction of the cost of attending a US medical school!

7) Abortion and LGBTQ: As usual, my solutions are basic and simple. Instead of debates on abortion, I will eliminate the root cause of unwanted pregnancies. I will segregate the boys’ high schools from girls’ high schools, make it very difficult for young people to find a private place for intimacy; I will illuminate “lovers’ lanes” with floodlights, require motels to refuse rooms to unmarried teenage couples, and mix birth control pills with energy drinks and sodas popular with young people. As far as same-sex marriage and LGBTQ lifestyle are concerned, I will not be against them but offer financial incentives to people who marry spouses of opposite sex and produce children (whether they enjoy the sexual activity or not). This would also improve the declining birth rate in this country!

So now you know my plan. I have shared my plans with you because I know that the primary readership of this newspaper is of Indian origin who will help a true Indian achieve his dream.

My next challenge is to come up with a campaign slogan and raise money. I do not want to set an aggressive goal and end up disappointing my supporters if I fail to achieve the goal. My theme would be something like “Of course, we will try” instead of “Yes, we can.” Also, my name “Basab” has a foreign flavour. I might adopt a catchy nickname like “Bazz” and a slogan like “Buzz is Bazz” (ala., “I like Ike”).

I hope that I can count on your active support to become the first POTUS of Indian descent who was born in Louisiana (wink, wink). As far as fund-raising is concerned, I have already started to solicit campaign contributions in anticipation of my running. Please send your generous donation to:

Basab Dasgupta, c/o The Statesman House, New Delhi.

Thank you.

The writer, a physicist who worked in industry and academia, is a Bengali settled in America