Obama win could mean pressure on India to open up more

Wednesday, 07 November 2012 21:34.

It would be business after the electoral rhetoric, India's government, politicians and industry said Wednesday after US president Barrack Obama won a second term in office, hoping he will encourage more trade and investment and a strategic partnership between the two countries.

But pressure could also rise on India to expedite big-ticket economic reforms like opening up the insurance, defence and agriculture sectors after liberalisation of the retail trade and ramp up military cooperation, observers said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh congratulated Obama on his win and said: "We have not only advanced cooperation across the full spectrum of our bilateral relationship, but also deepened our engagement in the pursuit of global peace, stability and prosperity."

"No doubt that there is much more we can do together to further strengthen the India-US partnership and thereby advance peace and stability, expand mutual economic opportunities, harness the potential of science and technology, innovation and higher education and empower our people to address global challenges."

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram welcomed Obama's victory and hoped that Indo-US relations will get stronger, especially economic relations.
Industry lobbies FICCI and CII also applauded the Obama re-election.

"A historic second term for Obama augurs well for the now established India-US strategic and economic partnership," said R.V. Kanoria, FICCI president.
CII president Adi Godrej said Indian industry is hopeful that both countries will strengthen economic ties by "lowering barriers to trade and investment".

"The 2nd term of a US President is the more fascinating one. With politicking out of the way, it's time to build the real legacy," tweeted Anand Mahindra, managing director of Mahindra Group.

Biocon chairperson Kiran Mazumdar Shaw said India's pharmaceutical and software industries could benefit from Obama's healthcare reforms.
"He wants the healthcare system to become efficient, and that is where the IT industry stands to gain. And he wants it to be affordable, and that is how India's generic drug makers stand to gain," she said speaking at the World Economic Forum event in Gurgaon.

The $100 billion IT industry is hoping for the best. Both Kris Gopalakrishnan of Infosys and N. Chandrasekharan of TCS  hoped that the Obama administration would a "pragmatic" approach.

One of India's grouse during Obama's first term as president has been the challenges the IT companies faced was the rising visa fees and getting visas for their workers. The Indian government has described these as "highly discriminatory" .

Phaneesh Murthy of iGate Corp, however, said the Obama re-election was not the "best news for India or the IT outsourcing industry."
He said the election rhetoric could continue into 2013 and that would determine the "full implications".

Unemployment was a major issue in the election and Obama had criticised US firms "exporting" jobs, seeking to tax them more and use that money to help those companies that keep jobs at home.

Trade and investment analysts said there would be significant issues for India in the years ahead, such as its immigration concerns and US worries about investment barriers.

Washington sees India is vital for its national interests, both as a big export market for US goods and a strong strategic ally, given China's growing assertion in the Asia-Pacific.

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Four more years, thank you, says Obama

"Four more years," Barack Obama tweeted after winning a second term in the White House. "Four more years," he said minutes after he defeated his Republican rival Mitt Romney in a closely contested poll.

"We're all in this together. That's how we campaigned, and that's who we are. Thank you," said another tweet.
- IANS

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Why Indians love Obama ? :Sakshi Blog Exclusive ARTICLE

Barack Obama has been re-elected as the 45th president of the United States of America! No wonder that he managed to get support of the majority, not only within US but also overseas, as he is much loved and admired by the Indians too.  According to a poll conducted prior to the US presidential elections, it was found that majority of the city dwellers wanted him to be re-elected. About 7 in 10 urban crowd followed the US elections and supported Obama according to fact tank found survey in New York.
Why do Indians love Obama? Well, there could be so many answers for this. Many Indians see him as a promising political leader, a motivational person, and mainly someone who built trust of billions through his powerful speeches. And it's an established fact now that Obama is a big follower of Mahatma Gandhi. He says Gandhi is someone he learns from to be a leader and a person who motivates Obama.
This was seen while Obama was contesting for the presidential election last time, the slogan that drew people's attention was “be the change”,which was inspired by Gandhi’s famous quotes.
Also Obama, is known as a charismatic personality in the political world, whose words and thoughts inspire and motivate young minds. He is also one among few who surely did speak about the change and made a lot of changes.
Indians have always loved the US presidents as urban crowd are favourable towards US.
Another important aspect that makes people love Obama is that he managed to catch the world's most wanted terrorist—Osama bin Laden. Not literally, but it was during his tenure that the mission of the hunt operation was accomplished!
Indian-Americans extended their support to Obama in 2012 elections in consideration for his strong support to the Indians as he has appointed them in the highest offices. President Obama also has good relationship with the Indian American community as he has always reached out to the community and recognized their talent and contribution to America.
Also, many believe that Obama has fulfilled the promises which he has made during the presidential election campaign. Now that he has won, can we expect some good news for India?
It's gonna be wait and watch for now!a

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Post win, Obama's new challenge is fiscal cliff

Barack Obama won re-election on Tuesday night, but the US president faces a fresh challenge confronting the "fiscal cliff," a mix of tax increases and spending cuts due to extract some $600 billion from the economy barring a deal with Congress.

 At stake are two separate issues - individual tax cuts due to expire at year's end and tens of billions of dollars in across-the-board federal spending cuts due to kick in the day after New Year's Day.

Failure to prevent a dive off the cliff could rattle US markets, and push the US economy into a recession, which could have global implications. How Obama fares with a familiar set of challenges - most notably a Republican-controlled House of Representatives - could color his second term.

Obama, who defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney based on television projections, will want to strike a deal with Washington lawmakers before December 31 or risk a recession in the first half of 2013, budget experts and Democratic aides say.

His backers say his win gives him a mandate for an elusive "grand bargain" he sought in his first four-year term. Such a pact would raise new revenue, make changes to popular programs like the Medicare health program for the elderly and pare the federal deficit.

"They have signaled that they want a big deal and I think Obama will be aggressive about getting it," said Steve Elmendorf, a former House Democratic senior adviser and now a lobbyist.

At odds 

Obama and most Democrats are at odds with Republicans in Congress over the stickiest issue - whether to let low tax rates for the wealthiest Americans expire on December 31.

The president and most Democrats want to raise taxes on income earned above $250,000; Republicans want to extend the current low rates for all income levels.

Financial markets and the business community crave long-term certainty - and that is what a major deal envisioned by Obama is intended to tackle.

A big X-factor is how congressional Republicans will respond to an Obama win. The hard line against raising revenue taken by many Republicans in the House may not abate after the election.

House Speaker John Boehner said this week that his Republicans would stand firm on their position opposing any tax increases, even for millionaires, though he was speaking before the election results.

Republicans kept control of the House, as expected, and Democrats were projected to maintain control of the Senate.

An Obama victory "takes a lot of air out of the room for Republicans," Jim Walsh, a former Republican representative, who retired in 2009, predicted before the election. The odds of a grander deal with increased revenue - though not in the form of higher tax rates - goes up with an Obama victory, he said.

Former Democratic representative Bart Gordon was unsure whether more conservative elements of the party, associated with the Tea Party movement, would go along so easily. "Those folks don't need much of a reason to fight," Gordon said.

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The best yet to come says Obama

President Barack Obama swept to a emphatic re-election win over Mitt Romney Tuesday, forging new history by transcending a dragging economy and the stifling unemployment which haunted his first term.
The 44th US president and the first African American to claim the Oval Office, was returned to power after a joyless election which appears to have deepened, rather than healed, his nation's political divides.
"In this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back," Obama said at a triumphant victory party in Chicago.
"We know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come," Obama said, striving for inspirational heights rarely touched in a campaign where the prophet of hope of 2008 became a conventional, brawling politician.
As Obama's victory was confirmed with wins in rustbelt Ohio and his spiritual political home in Iowa, large crowds suddenly materialized at the White House, chanting "four more years" and "O-bama, O-bama."
Obama repaid the compliment from Romney in his speech, saying the Romney family "had chosen to give back to America through public service and that is the legacy that we honor and applaud tonight."
And in an intriguing aside, the president said he looked forward to sitting down with his former foe to find if they could find common ground to work together.
Once the euphoria fades, the president will face a tough task enacting his second term agenda, after Republicans, who thwarted him repeatedly in his first term, retained control of the House of Representatives.
Democrats kept the Senate but fell short of the 60-vote super majority needed to pass major legislation over Republican blocking tactics.
With a clutch of swing states including Florida still to be declared, Obama already had 303 electoral votes, well over the 270 needed to win the White House.
Obama paved the way to victory with a staunch defense of Democratic bastions in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, at which Romney had taken a last minute run when he saw more conventional paths to victory blocked.
He also locked in swing states, Virginia, which he became the first Democrat to win since 1964 four years ago, Nevada, Ohio, New Hampshire, Colorado and Iowa, crushing Romney's slim hopes of a viable path to victory.
Romney could only wrestle Indiana and North Carolina from Obama's 2008 account.
Obama and Romney were neck-and-neck in Florida, but the final results from the Sunshine State were not expected until Wednesday.
The win in Iowa will be especially sweet for Obama, as the heartland state nurtured his unlikely White House dreams way back in 2007 and a tear rolled down his cheek as he held his last ever campaign rally there late Monday.
His victory in Ohio represents a delayed repayment for his gutsy call in 2009 to mandate a federal bailout of the auto industry, on which one in eight jobs in the state depend and which Romney opposed.
Obama, no longer a prophet of hope and change, won re-election with a fiercely negative campaign, as he branded Romney, a former multi-millionaire corporate turnaround wizard as indifferent to the woes of the middle class.
Prior to Obama's victory, no president in 70 years had won re-election with the unemployment rate above 7.4 per cent. Although the economy has created more than five million jobs since the Great Recession, the rate is now 7.9 per cent.
Exit polls showed that though only 39 per cent of people believed that the economy was improving, around half of Americans blamed former Republican president George W. Bush for the tenuous situation, and not Obama.
Obama's victory was a complete vindication for a campaign team that had predicted a close, but winnable election, despite the painful after effects of the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s Great Depression.
The president ran for re-election on a platform of offering a "fair shot" to the middle class, of fulfilling his pledge to end the war in Iraq, killing Osama bin Laden, and of building a clean energy economy.
Remarkably, his coalition of Hispanic, African American and young voters, defied expectations and turned out in similar numbers to those of his euphoric change-fueled campaign in 2008, shocking Romney's team.
Latino voters in particular helped Obama to victory in the desert state of Nevada, and in the Rocky Mountains state of Colorado, US television networks projected.
Republicans had insisted right up to election day that Obama's army, disaffected by busted expectations for his first term, would stay home, and had predicted instead a late Republican wave that would elevate Romney.
Now, Obama will get the chance to protect his historic reforms of health care and Wall Street and may have the chance to shape the Supreme Court for a generation, with several vacancies on the bench expected to arise.

Obama will also likely look abroad as he builds his legacy, but will face an immediate challenge early in 2013 and a possible decision whether to use military force to thwart Iran's nuclear program.
More immediately, at home, Obama will face a swift showdown with Republicans on Capitol Hill, on the so-called 'fiscal cliff' involving the expiry of Bush-era tax cuts and a need to raise the US debt ceiling.
Ruinous budget cuts designed to trim the ballooning deficit, which could tip the economy into recession, are also about to come due, unless Obama can reach a deal with Republicans, who have opposed him tooth and nail for four years.
The president may have been helped at the 11th hour when superstorm Sandy roared ashore, killing more than 100 Americans, but giving Obama the chance to publicly pull the levers of government.

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List of US presidents from 1789 TO uPTO nOW

Obama won a second term after defeating his Republican challenger Mitt Romney. But who were his descendants? Here's the list...

1.George Washington, 1789-1797
2.John Adams, 1797-1801
3.Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1809
4.James Madison, 1809-1817
5.James Monroe, 1817-1825
6.John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829
7.Andrew Jackson, 1829-1837
8.Martin Van Buren, 1837-1841
9.William Henry Harrison, 1841
10.John Tyler, 1841-1845
11.James Knox Polk, 1845-1849
12.Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850
13.Millard Fillmore, 1850-1853
14.Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857
15.James Buchanan, 1857-1861
16.Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865
17.Andrew Johnson, 1865-1869
18.Ulysses S. Grant, 1869-1877
19.Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 1877-1881
20.James Abram Garfield, 1881
21.Chester Alan Arthur, 1881-1885
22.Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889
23.Benjamin Harrison, 1889-1893
24.Grover Cleveland, 1893-1897
25.William McKinley, 1897-1901
26.Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1909
27.William Howard Taft, 1909-1913
28.Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921
29.Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1921-1923
30.Calvin Coolidge, 1923-1929
31.Herbert Clark Hoover, 1929-1933
32.Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-1945
33.Harry S. Truman, 1945-1953
34.Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953-1961
35.John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1961-1963
36.Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963-1969
37.Richard Milhous Nixon, 1969-1974
38.Gerald Rudolph Ford, 1974-1977
39.James Earl Carter, Jr., 1977-1981
40.Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1981-1989
41.George Herbert Walker Bush, 1989-1993
42.William Jefferson Clinton, 1993-2001
43.George Walker Bush, 2001-2009
44.Barack Hussein Obama, 2009-

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'Obama victory is not best news for outsourcing'

The re-election of US President Barack Obama is not the best news for IT outsourcing industry, according to CEO of iGATE, Phaneesh Murthy.  Not the best news for India or the IT outsourcing industry. However, we need to understand how much of the election rhetoric continues into 2013 and that will determine the full implications to us, Murthy said.

 The concern over the deficit and jobs will continue (in the US) and in my mind, will force the sluggishness to remain in the economy, he said.
 Obama today won a second term in office overcoming a stiff initial challenge from his Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
 Obama in this presidential elections campaign had criticised outsourcing of jobs to countries like India saying that US needs to create jobs locally.
 The US and Europe account for over 80 per cent of revenues of the Indian IT industry.

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It's Obama again !

Wednesday, 07 November 2012 09:50.

Barack Obama wins the US Presidential election 2012! Soon after the results were out, the thrilled US president tweeted,"This happened because of you. Thank you."
US President Barack Obama swept to re-election on Tuesday, creating history again by defying the undertow of a slow economic recovery and high unemployment to beat Republican foe Mitt Romney.
Obama became only the second Democrat to win a second four-year White House term since World War II, when television networks projected he would win the bellwether state of Ohio where he had staged a pitched battle with Romney.
"This happened because of you. Thank you," Obama tweeted to his 22 million followers on Twitter as a flurry of states, including Iowa, which nurtured his unlikely White House dreams suddenly tipped into his column.
With a clutch of swing states, including Florida and Virginia still to be declared, Obama already had 275 electoral votes, more than the 270 needed for the White House and looked set for a comfortable victory.
There was a sudden explosion of jubilation at Obama's Chicago victory party as the first African American president, who was elected on a wave of hope and euphoria four years ago, booked another four years in the White House.
Romney's aides had predicted that a late Romney wave would sweep Obama from office after a single term haunted by a sluggish recovery from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s Great Depression and high unemployment.
But a huge cheer rang out at Obama headquarters when television networks projectedObama would retain Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, and the party grew wilder as they called Wisconsin and Michigan.
The mood at Romney headquarters in Boston however had grown subdued throughout the evening as partisans stared at their smart phones.

Disappointed: Republicans were seen leaving what had been billed as a celebration of Romney's expected triumph in central Washington.
Defeats in New Hampshire, where Romney has a summer home and Wisconsin, the home of Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan were especially sickening for Republicans.
Early signs were that the election, while a building triumph for Obama would do little to ease the deep polarization afflicting US politics, as Republicans racked up huge margins in safe states, though struggled in battlegrounds.
Exit polls appeared to vindicate the vision of the race offered by Obama's campaign, when top aides predicted that Obama's armies of African American, Latinos and young voters would come out in droves.
Polls also showed that though only 39 percent of people believed that the economy was improving, around half of Americans blamed President George W. Bush for the tenuous situation, and not Obama.
The president, who made history by becoming America's first black president after a euphoric victory, carved a new precedent on Tuesday by defying the portents of a hurting economy to win a second term.
He awaited his fate in his hometown of Chicago, while Romney, a multi-millionaire former investment manager and Massachusetts governor was laying low in a hotel in Boston awaiting results.
As expected, television networks projected that Republicans would win the House of Representatives.
Democrats clung onto the Senate, and retained a seat in Missouri, where Senator Claire McCaskill fended off a challenge by Representative Todd Akin, whose remarks about rape and abortion sparked national outrage.
Both presidential candidates had earlier marked time while voters dictated their fates.
Romney appeared caught up in the emotion of seeing his name on the ballot for President of the United States and also saw an omen in a huge crowd that showed up at a multi-story parking lot to see his plane land at Pittsburgh airport.
"Intellectually I felt that we're going to win this and I've felt that for some time," Romney told reporters on his plane.
"But emotionally, just getting off the plane and seeing those people standing there... I not only think we're going to win intellectually but I feel it as well."
While Romney penned his victory speech, Obama took part in his election day tradition of playing a game of pick-up basketball with friends, including Chicago Bulls legend Scottie Pippen, after visiting a campaign office near his Chicago home.
The president, who like a third of Americans voted before election day, congratulated Romney on "a spirited campaign" despite their frequently hot tempered exchanges.
"I know that his supporters are just as engaged and just as enthusiastic and working just as hard today. We feel confident we've got the votes to win, that it's going to depend ultimately on whether those votes turn out," he said.
"I think anybody who's running for office would be lying if they say that there's not some butterflies before the polls come in because anything can happen," the president added later in a radio interview.
CBS News, quoting early exit polls, said 39 percent of people approached after they had voted said the economy, the key issue, was improving, while 31 percent said it was worse and 28 saw it as staying the same.

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