Rahul Siddharthan believes ‘Obama’s election does say something about the status of blacks in America’ unlike the ‘election’ of certain leaders from minority communities to top positions in India:

Now, I admire all the above things about India, but — even leaving aside the howler about the “last President” — I find the argument extremely sloppy. First, none of the above figures were directly elected by the people of the entire country — we do not have such a system. We do have direct election of parliamentarians, but only to the lower house (I strongly feel that we should adopt a US senate-style direct-election system for the Rajya Sabha too); only Sonia Gandhi and Somnath Chatterjee, of the names listed above, won Lok Sabha elections. Our head of government, in particular, did not stand for election to the Lok Sabha and was not advertised before the election as the probable prime minister. Our head of state, the President, is not directly elected. So this comparison is pretty meaningless.

Can’t help agreeing fully with Rahul on this. Now that he understands baseball and network ratings so well, I think P.Sainath should try to find a position with a longer tenure at Berkeley, .