NEW YORK: When scientist and Congressman Rush Holt, New Jersey Democrat, returned to the United States from a trip to Hyderabad, Pondicherry and Bangalore last month, after attending the Partnership Summit, the flagship international event of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he had added one additional attribute to his longstanding relationship with India. He had become a sasur (father-in-law) by virtue of his son becoming a damad (son-in-law) of India in course of the trip, undertaken as much for a family, as a public, occasion.

Holt told News India-Times on his return that his interest in India, its people and its civilization dated from his childhood; the relationship had been cemented last month with the wedding of his medical doctor son, Michael, with Andhra-born engineer Madhavi Ravela, at a traditional ceremony in Pondicherry, the former French enclave on India’s east coast.

Holt first visited India as a young research scientist in 1977, when Indian democracy was recovering from its temporary eclipse, brought about by the Emergency imposed in 1975 by then prime minister Indira Gandhi. His experiences on that trip convinced him that democracy had taken root in India strong enough to withstand any abuse of it.

Since that first trip, not only has democracy grown stronger, the Indian presence in the U.S. has also grown, with Indians making up a big and important segment of the population of Central New Jersey, which is Holt’s Congressional district.

Holt, a member of the Indian and Sri Lankan caucuses in the House, is a rare U.S. lawmaker. Unlike most American politicians, who hail from a business or a law background, he is a scientist, who was deputy director of the Princeton laboratory studying solar phenomenon.

Indian Americans are likely to find it easy to relate to Holt and his family of professionals. Like son Michael, Holt’s wife, Margaret, is a medical doctor. Politics, however, is in the Congressman’s genes. His father, Rush Drew Holt, who died in office, was the youngest senator in U.S. history. He was elected senator in 1935 from West Virginia at 29. His mother, Helen, was secretary of state for West Virginia.

In an interview on the phone with News India-Times, Holt praised the role the CII was playing as a bridge between government and industry. “There is no such comparable institution in the U.S. seeking to bring government and private industry together,” he said.

Established in 1895, the CII today represents 3,763 companies from the small, medium and large-scale sectors, with a total capital investment of $64 billion.

Holt was among the foreign invitees, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former senator Larry Pressler, attending the Bangalore Summit, the eighth such gathering organized by CII.

At the Bangalore meeting, Holt gave a call for private industry and government to act jointly to counter cyberterror. He believed that there was a promising market for the private information technology (IT) industry to develop in software to ensure cybersecurity.

Both in his remarks to News India-Times and his comments at the Friendship Summit, of which he provided this paper with the text, Holt paid rich tribute to Indian Americans. He said in Bangalore: “I am proud to say that Central New Jersey is the home to one of the largest communities of Indian Americans in the United States. They are successful business entrepreneurs, doctors, scientists, teachers and more, and they represent the best of what New Jersey has to offer.”

Coming to his central concern of cyberterror, Holt said: “Americans and Indians have both had their recent share of terror attacks, but the type of security I want to discuss is not the kind at airports or Parliament buildings, although its importance cannot be understated. It’s the invisible, 21st century variety. It’s the security of our computers and the information they control, some call it cyberspace security, and the serious challenges it poses to policymakers in the U.S. and around the world.”

He argued that the grosser and more visible terrorist attacks “have only underscored the need to adequately come to grips with these challenges. Never has the security of networks and computing been more important than they are right now.” He said that reviews of information systems in America had shown up grave defects. “For example, a recent internal scan conducted by a Commerce Department bureau found more than 5,000 security ‘holes’ in its networks and systems,” Holt said. “It also showed that of the over 1,000 computer workstations scanned, 30 percent suffered from vulnerabilities serious enough to endanger agency security.”

Holt said it could be the job of private industry to devise systems to plug these holes. “There is a market and an important role for these new security upgrades and software. I expect you in the private sector will take advantage of those new markets. They are all likely to provide new opportunities for industry to meet these growing needs to help ensure the security and privacy of networks and computing. Government and industry must work together to meet these challenges,” Holt concluded.