Hollywood actor Kal Penn joins US President Obama’s administration as EW.com first reported. This news was confirmed earlier today by the White House. Kal Penn will be part of the White House Office of Public Liason office and will involve reaching out to the India-American aka desi and Pacific Islander communities in the US.

Post Mira Nair’s The Namesake Kal Penn has  been doing some pretty interesting things including  a stint teaching at a univeristy and working for Obama’s campaign during last year’s elections.  More interestingly, he has been doing graduate work in International Studies at Stanford University. So, in a sense his appointment to the White House should not come as a surprise.

Here is my interview with Kal Penn and Mira Nair at the premier of Mira Nair’s The Namesake, where he talks about growing up in New Jersey and  his name Kal Penn. His name is Kalpen Suresh Modi. I vividly recollect that Kal Penn was dressed in a off-white kurta pyjama and spoke in a very quiet tone. And a few weeks later I saw him at a PR event in a mid-town Manhattan hotel, where he was more like his character from Harold and Kumar, which was open, outgoing and fun.

This political appointment of Kal Penn is a shrewd move by the Obama administration and can be interpreted as an explicit acknowledgement of the power  film personalities have on  the desi population. If leveraged properly Kal Penn could beome an  effective bridge between the adminstration and the desi population. To put it another way: This is an updated community building effort tailored to meet the demands of the desi community. It seems that the Obama administration has a clear handle on the new and updated concept of community building. Previously, it was (and it is) the medical community that acted as bridge builders between the Administration, Congress and the desi population. This is because many Congress members and others have physicians of Indian origin as their medical care givers. About 10 years ago I witnessed this first hand at a desi community meeting at the Capitol.  There was  a constant stream of  Senators and Congressman, who came to this meeting and invariably each of them mentioned their physician’s name.  I recollect the conservative Senator Strom Thurmond explicitly mention his desi caridiologist.

Now, if only the Indian Government took a leaf out of Obama’s administration and levereged the power of Bollywood and Indian films in their domestic and foreign policy efforts. There is an untapped and under leverged potential from the film industry that the Indian government has ignored for decades. Perhaps, one of the few times when films played a key role in Indian pysche (in the post-Independent period)  was during the 1960s during the border wars with China and Pakistan. Chetan Anand’s films come to mind. I think it is time for Indian politicians and government to think hard and deep on this issue and perhaps take a leaf out of Tamil Nadu politics. How has Tamil Nadu managed to tap and leverage films as a medium to spread their political message? What are the good things that can be learnt from Tamil Nadu would be a good way to start this process. What do you think?