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People of Indian origin have been winning elections in the UK; here is a true-blue Brit who lived and worked in India before jumping on to the political bandwagon back home, and is now a Tory Member of the Commons.Joseph Johnson, newly-elected MP from London's south-eastern borough of Orpington, was the New Delhi-based South Asia Bureau Chief of Financial Times from 2005 to 2008, and wrote an online column called Engaging India.He won the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award instituted by The Express Group in the category of Best Foreign Correspondent Covering India in 2007-08 for his story which located the Indian Muslim in his complex environment — riots, terrorism, poverty and occasional stardom — in the wake of the Sachar Committee Report."I was trying to look at what sociologists called upper class inclusion and lower class exclusion and found it to be true," Johnson had said after winning the Award. For over two weeks in 2007, he had travelled across the country, visiting Muslim ghettos, from where he told the story of the faceless Indian Muslim, contrasted with that of the Muslim intelligentsia and the reigning Khans of Bollywood.Johnson's wife, Amelia Gentleman, who now works for the Guardian, had won the Ramnath Goenka Award for 2006-07. She was then with the International Herald Tribune.After his stint in Delhi, Johnson became Associate Editor of FT at its London headquarters, and was until recently the head of Lex, FT's daily business and financial column."The financial crisis and Labour's epic mismanagement of the economy have prompted him to seek to enter public life. After years as a columnist, he wants to make a direct difference himself, starting in Orpington," says Johnson's web site, www.jo-johnson.com."Many imagined that Orpington, the epicentre of a previous Liberal revival, might succumb to Cleggmania. The people of this constituency have in fact given a decisive endorsement of the Conservative programme...," the 39-year-old MP said after winning by 17,200 votes.Johnson is the brother of Boris Johnson, the Conservative Mayor of London.Alex Crawford, New Delhi bureau chief of Sky News, fondly remembered "Jo", as Johnson was known to his friends in Delhi, as "quiet, subtle, studious and intelligent". "He was very friendly and helpful when I came to India," she told The Indian Express."I had no inkling that he was interested in politics... he was a very quiet person, quite the opposite of his brother," Crawford said. "One would have to approach him to start a conversation."John Elliot, a former FT correspondent who lives in Delhi and blogs for the newspaper's web site, said Johnson was one of the best foreign correspondents to have been based in Delhi. Johnson, Elliott said, joined politics perhaps because "he felt that he could make more of a difference as an MP than as a journalist".Friends at Delhi's Foreign Correspondents' Club remembered Johnson as a player for the club cricket team, and an enthusiastic participant at the card games British journalists played.Johnson's web site says about his India connection, "Jo has always been passionate about India, a country of huge importance to the UK. Before university he taught English in a school in Ajmer, Rajasthan, and then specialised in Indian history during his undergraduate degree in Modern History."As the FT's South Asia Bureau Chief between 2005 and 2008, he wrote extensively about India's emergence on the world stage. Based in New Delhi, he had a ringside seat on the transformation of an ancient civilisation into a global economic powerhouse."
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