Bobby Jindal, right, with a supporter at the victory celebrations on Nov. 2. (Photo: Mohammed Jaffer/SnapsIndia)

Breaking the color barrier in the deep South to make it to the U.S. House from a conservative district with a vast lead, it couldn’t get any better for Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, 33, who is now Representative-Elect from Louisiana’s 1st District and probably the youngest Congressman in the country.

When he was appointed by President George W. Bush as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services back in 2001, Bobby had already made a name for himself.

He had already worked some of his wonders on the University of Louisiana System, where his policies are credited with raising graduation and retention rates, and increasing private donations and the number of endowed chairs.

He had already come to Washington to be the executive director on the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare Commission, where he recommended ways to strengthen the then $210 billion healthcare program that served 40 million older and disabled Americans.

And before that, tapped as secretary for Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, he is credited with rescuing the state’s Medicaid program from bankruptcy by turning a $400 million deficit into three years of surpluses totaling $220 million and pushed the state to 3rd rank nationally in terms of highest health care screenings for children, immunizations, and expanded services for elderly and disabled Americans.

His accomplishments are legion. Born and brought up in Louisiana, Jindal, whose parents hail from the Punjab’s Malerkotla village, headed Brown University’s ‘Top100’ alumni; he won the ‘National Jefferson Award’ from the American Institute for Public Service for those younger than 35 years, an early warning of things to come; and he was named one of the ‘Top 10 Extraordinary Young Americans for the Next Millennium’ by Scholastic Update, again a prediction he made alive; not to forget the Rhodes scholarship he secured to go and study at Oxford University in Britain.

Married to Supriya Jolly, the couple are parents to Selia Elizabeth, 2, and Shaan Robert, just a few months old.

Jindal converted to Roman Catholicism as a teenager, after being raised Hindu. His faith has been an important part of his personal and political growth. By all accounts, Jindal’s faith and his temperament in general, have endowed him with nerves of steel –– earlier this year, in the midst of his campaign, he was faced with a health crisis of his newly-born child Shaan. But he turned it into a positive reinforcement and showed his human side appealing to his electorate to pray with him and to give him strength. He continued his grueling campaign schedule even as he worried like a father.

Meanwhile, he communicated his strong faith-based platform so effectively that it secured him the loyalty and vote of parishes across the board in his district, something he made integral to his stumping even during his earlier race for Governor of Louisiana last year.

Like most Republican candidates and victors, Jindal has a strong anti-abortion platform, and he and his wife who is also of Indian background, Catholic and Louisiana-born, had what is called a covenant marriage, a Louisiana innovation that mandates premarital counseling and sets stricter terms for divorce.

When Jindal was four or five years old, he came home from preschool and announced that his name was no longer Piyush, but Bobby, and the nickname has stuck.

Young Jindal's introduction to government came when former Louisiana Governor Republican Mike Foster, impressed by an analysis that Jindal had written while working for a management consulting firm, tapped him to administer the state’s healthcare system. The rest as they say, is history.