''I have always been invested in education, even before elected. I worked on the Linn-Mar Community School District Board, and on the Iowa Association of School Boards. I say it over and again that education is my passion, because I truly believe that the reason the United States is a superpower is because of our public education. Right now, we need to focus on our public education again and ensure that we help every American become a great engineer or a great artist or teacher or nurse or doctor. In our legislatures everybody talks about education, but we are not helping children the way we should be helping them. By help, I don't just mean putting in more money into education. We need to be more accountable for education. That is, we need to set the achievement bar high and to make sure that the students are doing well. My friends, who include teachers and administrators, all want that. But we have to give them the right tools to accomplish what they would like to set out to do.
...In addition to giving our children and schools the right educational tools, it's important to make our children aware of the global economy we are living in. And this is not only true in science and technology. After all, whatever they want to be in life, our sons and daughters need to know from day one that they are growing up in a global economy and they need to learn to do well in it. When I talk to students, I tell them that they are not only competing with somebody in Milwaukee, Wisconsin or Boston, Massachusetts, but are competing with a student in India or China or Japan. This has to be done.''
(Swati Dandekar in one interview.)

India did not figure at all on the map of American identity a few decades ago. To be an Indian from India was something so entirely outside the normal frame of most people's reference as to be, literally, unimaginable. When forced to consider India as a sovereign country, the most people could conjure were stock images of British Raj exotica: snake charmers, carapasoned elephants, tigers stretched out below the booted and jodhpured legs of a triumphant topihatted colonial administrator. Add to that a full-frontal shot of the Taj Mahal and physically repulsive images of starving people living in filth, and that was about as far as most Americans could, or would, go.
Things changed following the liberalization of immigration laws in the late 1960s, and the immigrants comprised primarily highly skilled professionals: doctors, engineers, scientists. These immigrants were generally successful and their kids won spelling bees, became Valedictorians, Salutatorians, and otherwise graduated cum laude and went on to Harvard, MIT, Stanford and the Wharton School. They all then got jobs as physicians or investment bankers. Then came the tech boom. Silicon Valley's need for more and more workers skilled in information technology led in the 1990s to as many as half the H1B visas for highly skilled workers being given to Indians coming to the United States. Indians were now recognized as investors, entrepreneurs and highly skilled engineers.
Since the doors opened to the Indian immigrants in the 1960s, Indian Americans have mostly avoided politics. The Indian community initially established itself economically and culturally. It then became aware of how political issues shape their lives. The next logical step was joining active politics.
Of late, Indian-American political clout is being felt as never before. One simple factor is the increase in the Indian-origin population. Another factor is a new willingness by Indian Americans to get involved in the American political process. From municipal councils, to governorships and congressional races, all the way up to key positions in the current, and certainly in future, administrations, Indian American's are increasingly visible in the American political process. Kumar Barve,a third generation American is the first person of Indian origin to be elected as a state legislator in the history of the US.
Representative Swati Dandekar is the first Indian born American citizen to win a state legislature seat in the United States. She represents the Iowa House District 36, which encompasses the city of Marion, Linn-Mar Precincts, Maine Township and a small portion of Cedar Rapids. She has an excellent track record of community work and leadership, and her colleagues rightly feel that she was elected because she was the best person for the job. Representative Dandekar is a strong advocate of improving educational opportunities in Iowa and believes that public education spending is an essential investment in the state's future. She believes the state should take an active role in stimulating the local economy and creating quality jobs. She also believes in providing property tax relief in order to encourage new businesses to the local area.
Her advice to younger generations and others in the community harkens back to something her 97-year-old great-grandfather told her just before she was to arrive in the United States. She had just received her visa and said to him ,"I hope they will accept me."… "His question to me was, 'Why should they accept you first? You are going there, you should accept them. Your job is to take the best of American culture.' He looked at me and said, 'Not many people get to choose the best of both worlds.' "