First things first. This is not the Raj Shah you’re looking for:
There happen to be two Raj Shahs in the world of American politics. And while one of them has just been appointed by US President-elect Donald Trump as his Deputy Assistant and Research Director on the White House staff, the other Shah has been chosen as the youngest person and the first Indian-American to be President of the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Indian media and a lot of Twitter users seem to have found themselves confused in the face of these two namesake Shahs.
Hindustan Times picked up on the curious case of the Indian media seeing double.
The Raj Shah on the Trump team is an expert on strategic communications and political research, and the Republican National Committee website credits him with developing the organisation’s opposition research book on Clinton.
This is him:
The other Shah, however, is a Doctor of Medicine and former Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He has worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He was also nominated by President Barack Obama as Chief Scientist and Undersecretary of Agriculture for Research, Education and Economics.
Yup, he worked for the Obama administration.
Who is Trump’s Raj Shah?
The Republican Raj Shah helped Donald Trump’s campaign by highlighting contradictions in Hillary Clinton’s political positions and issues like her handling of her private email server.
Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said that Shah, along with others who were appointed along with him on Wednesday to the White House staff, “will be key leaders in helping to implement the president-elect’s agenda and bring real change to Washington.”
He will also hold the post of Deputy Communications Director. Shah is currently the Research Director and Deputy Communications Director at the Republican National Committee and also the Managing Director of America Rising, a company that provides research to candidates.
He specialises in what is known as opposition research, which is digging up negative information about candidates for use by their rivals or others.
He had earlier done a stint at the White House as a research assistant during George W Bush's presidency. He has also worked in John McCain's 2008 unsuccessful presidential campaign against President Barack Obama.
The History of the Rajs
While the Trump team Shah is in his early 30s, his namesake from the other side of the political spectrum is 43.
The 43-year-old Shah was born to Indian immigrant parents who settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the late 60s and he grew up in the Detroit area.
Donald Trump’s man is a second generation Indian American and his parents are from Mumbai, with their origins in Gujarat. His father went to the US to study in the 1970s, then moved back to India. After getting married, his parents moved back to the US in the late 70s.
They lived in Chicago and then moved to Connecticut, where he was born and raised.
(With inputs from IANS and PTI.)
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