Freedom must also mean freedom from want, not freedom lost to an empty stomach. So I will make poverty reduction a key part of helping other nations reduce anarchy.

None of this will be easy. The kind of change we seek -- whether it is revitalising our economy here at home, or restoring our leadership abroad -- will be difficult. But I have confidence in the greatest resource that our nation has -- the American people. Because we can only affect this kind of meaningful change from the bottom up.

I have spent over two decades working for change from the bottom up. I fought for jobs as an organiser on the streets of Chicago. I stood up for people who were denied opportunity at work or justice at the voting booth as a civil rights lawyer. I expanded health care and gave a tax cut to working people as a state Senator. And when I got to Washington, I helped pass the most far-reaching ethics reform since Watergate.

In my life, I have always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration, because he embodies the kind of transformational change that can be made when ordinary people come together to do extraordinary things. That is why his portrait hangs in my Senate office: to remind me that real results will not just come from Washington -- they will come from the people. And that is why I am proud to have the longstanding support of so many Indian Americans in all aspects of my campaign, as well as the endorsements of leading elected Indian-American law-makers.

Image: Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, after winning the election in 13 states on Super Tuesday, February 5, at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. Photograph: Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: An American election in Little India!
At the Rediff Bookshop: Carl Bernstein's A Woman In Charge The Life Of Hillary Rodham Clinton

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