Son of Indian immigrants sworn in as Louisiana governor

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (AFP) — Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, the son of Punjabi immigrants, was sworn in as the governor of Louisiana, becoming the first Indian-American ever elected a state governor and the first nonwhite governor of Louisiana.

A rising star nationally in Republican Party, at 36 Jindal also became the nation's youngest governor, succeeding the southern state's outgoing Democratic governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.

Since 2004 a Republican member of the House of Representatives, Jindal called for an end to the state's image of governmental corruption and ineptitude, and appealed for tens of thousands of residents displaced by two devastating hurricanes in 2005 to return to Louisiana.

"We must win a war on corruption and incompetence in government," he said as he was sworn in in the state capital. "It must be the first thing that we do."

Born in Baton Rouge in 1971 to recent immigrants from India's northern Punjab state, Jindal's career in the southern state once known for deep racial differences has been meteoric.

His father, an engineer and one of nine children of a poor rural family, came to the United States so that his mother could continue her graduate work in nuclear physics.

Jindal took easily to US culture. As a boy, he adopted his nickname "Bobby" from a character on "The Brady Bunch" television show. As a teenager, he converted to Roman Catholicism from Hinduism.

He completed Baton Rouge High School at just 16, and then attended Brown University, where he graduated with honors in biology and public policy.

From there he studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, graduating in 1994. The next year, he was appointed secretary of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals, which employs 12,000 people, at just 24.

In 1999 he became president of the University of Louisiana System, which educates some 80,000 student a year, before being named by President George W. Bush as a top policy advisor in the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

In his first major political setback, Jindal was narrowly defeated by Blanco when ran for governor in 2003.

But he was then elected to Congress in 2004 from a suburban New Orleans district, and won reelection in 2006, one year after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated New Orleans and put a harsh spotlight on state and local government incompetence -- opening the door for his second quest for the governor's office.

On Monday Jindal vowed to call the legislature into session next month to enact comprehensive ethics reform and promised a "fresh start" for a state that is both struggling to shed a legacy of political corruption and to rebuild from the 2005 hurricanes.

The two issues are closely related. Skeptics in Washington have expressed misgivings about sending billions of dollars in federal aid to the state because of its reputation for mismanagement.

He also vowed to continue improvements to the state's woeful education system.

"As I have said before, we can change, we must change, we will change," Jindal said, repeating his campaign motto.

He has some advantages on his side. Since his election, he and Blanco put aside party loyalties to secure billions of dollars in hurricane relief funds. Blanco opted not to seek a second four-year term as governor amid widespread criticism over her response to Hurricane Katrina.

That means that Jindal takes office with the state enjoying an enviable budget surplus of 3.3 billion dollars, a sum which includes federal hurricane aid.

Importantly, Jindal also is the first Louisiana governor in more than 30 years who does not inherit a state legislature controlled by allies of former governor Edwin Edwards, who is serving a prison sentence on corruption charges.

"If you were going to script a play about Louisiana's best chances for reform, you couldn't line up the planets in a more favorable way than this," said Clancy DuBos, a political analyst for WWL-TV in New Orleans.