Around a decade and a half before Los Angeles elected her as its first Indian-origin mayor, Kerala-born Tamil Nithya Raman sat with residents of a south Chennai suburb to map the notorious traffic snarls that would routinely disrupt their lives. Nithya Raman, an Indian-origin urban planner, is leading the mayoral race for Los Angeles, indicating a potential shift in leadership. Born in Kerala and naturalised in the U.S., she.