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18 July 2012, 9.54am EST

Australia, India must look beyond lost decade

Many Indians still perceive Australia as a white, monocultural country, according to the authors of a major report that says relations between the two countries are on the mend but remain brittle. Despite a series of attacks on Indian students in 2009, Indians once again rank Australia as a top 10 country…

Pgjrh77f-1342519413 — Indian students scuffle with Delhi police in a 2010 protest against attacks on Indian students in Australia. EPA/Anindito Mukherjee

Many Indians still perceive Australia as a white, monocultural country, according to the authors of a major report that says relations between the two countries are on the mend but remain brittle.

Despite a series of attacks on Indian students in 2009, Indians once again rank Australia as a top 10 country. But much more needs to be done to foster a relationship that years of neglect have left to wither, says Beyond The Lost Decade, a report by the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne.

The report calls for a rating system to downgrade states if they do not offer adequate security and education to international students, and says Australian school teachers should receive training in Hindi in anticipation of the addition of the language to the curriculum.

Additionally, it calls on Canberra to double the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s public diplomacy budget to $10 million per year, and recommends – as a show of goodwill – extending the visas of Indian students caught up in changes to regulations following the crisis of 2009.

Enrolments by Indian students in Australian universities have fallen from a peak then of 120,000 to 37,453 in March this year.

One of the report authors, Ashok Malik, a prominent columnist for Indian newspapers and a Fellow of the Australia India Institute, said that “beyond the commonalities [of the two countries], frankly the relationship has lacked substance… it has been sub-optimal and has not achieved even a quarter of its potential.” For many Indians, exposure to Australian culture has come largely through contests on the cricket field, where the Australian team has long presented a monocultural face to the world, he said.

Amitabh Mattoo, appointed the first Director of the Australia India Institute last year, said that when he arrived in Melbourne he shared the impression that “Australia is not as multicultural as I found it. But it has been a most pleasant experience.

“Australia is not naturally multicultural. It’s about policy. It’s not organic. I think it’s great that in every aspect of public life there is a commitment to multiculturalism.”

Eventually, Professor Mattoo said, it would be “good to actually try and actually find out what happened in Melbourne [during the attacks on Indian students], and what was responsible for what was really an aberration, something which was a departure from the past and completely different from the way I see Melbourne today.

“If you drive from Melbourne University to Kew, you are traversing the geography of Asia, from little Saigon in Richmond, to Chinese in the CBD, to an Indian quarter. It’s fantastic.”

Report co-author Christopher Kremmer, a former foreign correspondent to India for the ABC and Fairfax newspapers, said: “In retrospect I think we could have called them the lost decades. The problem in the Australia-India relationship obviously has deep historical roots in the Cold War.

“It’d be fair to say that neither country was ready for a deeper relationship until 1991, when India started to open its economy, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the whole game changed. What’s interesting about the relationship is that in the 20 years since India did start to open its economy, there has been a sense of spinning our wheels, not because diplomats haven’t been working hard, not because there hasn’t been political goodwill, but just because our attention has been elsewhere and some of the issues that have been important to the relationship have been very difficult issues – the uranium issue, the nuclear tests have challenged us.

“Ultimately it did come to a head in 2009, which was the big test, when the student crisis unfolded. And what surprised me about the student crisis was that it didn’t lead to a worse breach. In fact, it became a kind of opportunity to bury decades of benign neglect – cricket, democracy, the Commonwealth, an assumption that we knew each other.”

The authors of the report were unanimous in their criticism of Australian businesses for lacking the staying power needed to establish themselves in India. ANZ previously owned the Indian bank network Grindlays, but sold this to Standard Chartered in 2000. In the 1990s Telstra was among the first telecom companies to win mobile service licences in India in collaboration with a local business conglomerate. A few years later it chose to sell out and leave – today there are about 800 million mobile phone subscribers across the country.

John McCarthy, national president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, said that “in all Asian countries, and particularly India, perseverance is the key … I see this as a fault generally with Australian business in Asia. It is a factor in the way we look at Asia that needs to be remedied.”

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27 Comments sorted by

Peter Ormonde

Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.

Farmer

OH my goodness ... "lacking the staying power to establish a business in India" .... That could only be written by someone who has never tried to do real business in India. Corrupt, lazy, inefficient and deeply dishonest would pretty much sum up my understanding of the men I dealt with over several years. At every EVERY level. Not so the women, or at least significantly less so.

India - a wonderful, vibrant, nasty, hard and unequal place.

The emergence - eruption - of the Indian middle class…
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OH my goodness ... "lacking the staying power to establish a business in India" .... That could only be written by someone who has never tried to do real business in India. Corrupt, lazy, inefficient and deeply dishonest would pretty much sum up my understanding of the men I dealt with over several years. At every EVERY level. Not so the women, or at least significantly less so.

India - a wonderful, vibrant, nasty, hard and unequal place.

The emergence - eruption - of the Indian middle class - our target audience for incoming students - occurs against a background in intensifying inequality and economic disaster for the poor and those excluded from this "economic miracle", those whose slums are bulldozed to make way for the apartments of the better off. The rich only become richer by exploiting the poor and impoverishing them further. And they do this willingly and enthusiastically. The poor have no future in India, as one colleague put it.

If we really wanted to do some good for India we would be establishing something like the Colombo Scheme and be offering scholarships to the poor and the excluded. We would be training engineers and agitators.

But there isn't a quid in that for us - which of course is what this stuff is all about really innit? All those lovely fees propped up by the lure of Permanent Residency ... in this awful white monocultural wasteland. That's why they want to come. Like England but warmer. No low class riff-raff.

11 months ago report
Chris Carmody

logged in via Facebook

After being two India twice I could comment that it is a black monoculture - how profound. I am amazed how accommodating Australian are and the diversity of cultures we accommodate compared to many of the Asian countries I have visited. And I did not like the way the women are treated in India. But in my comments I am mindful that India is 16 states and my two visits have only been to one state.

11 months ago report
Peter Gerard

Retired medical practitioner

I agree with most of the above comments. The attacks on Indian students, in 2009, has resulted in an orchestrated overreaction, that I feel is intended to produce a response from our politicians that results in the softening of entry criteria for courses in this country. These courses are an entree to full citizenship and there is no doubt that this is a prime motivator. The system was being abused by students and the training institutions and the government was quite right in tightening eligibility.

11 months ago report
Sukhmani Khorana

Lecturer in Digital and International Media at University of Wollongong

As someone who first arrived in this country as an international student (notably with no interest in, or hope of gaining permanent residency), and at a time when overseas students weren't treated like cash cows to the extent they were in subsequent years, I feel compelled to shed light on a few matters:
1. International student security and welfare, both on and off campus, are huge concerns regardless of whether they eventually apply to work or live here. There is a growing number of cases of female…
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As someone who first arrived in this country as an international student (notably with no interest in, or hope of gaining permanent residency), and at a time when overseas students weren't treated like cash cows to the extent they were in subsequent years, I feel compelled to shed light on a few matters:
1. International student security and welfare, both on and off campus, are huge concerns regardless of whether they eventually apply to work or live here. There is a growing number of cases of female students from a number of Asian countries who are roped into prostitution to make ends meet, or are sexually and financially exploited by their restaurant-owning employers. In other words, the assumption that the students who come here are wealthy is a simplistic generalisation. In the case of India, the wealthiest often go to unis in the US or the UK. For a vast number of those coming to Australia, even if their middle class families can muster bank loans to pay for tuition, the students are mostly expected to fend for their own living expenses.
2. The new PR rules that came into effect in 2010 not only affected entry into courses for incoming future students, but were also retrospective. Many overseas students graduating that year could apply for an 18-month Graduate Skilled Visa, but the vast majority of Australian employers only employ those with permanent residency or citizenship. In other words, even if all the international students want is a bit of Australian work experience after completing their studies here, the system is set up in a way that it discourages that without acquiring PR first.
3. While international students arriving in Australia could be better prepared for the cultural transition, and receive more accurate information from the agents in their home countries, the unis and the host community in general also could do a lot more in terms of being prepared and receptive. International offices at most Australian universities do the best they can, but a lot of academics are not trained to deal with the changing demographics of the classroom. Real estate agents, small business owners, law enforcement agencies, media organisations - they could all do with a bit of training for their own financial benefit if cultural understanding is not enough of an incentive.

11 months ago report
John Holmes

Agronomist - semi retired consultant

Having visited India several times, I have been struck by the incredibly wide gap between the privileged few and the rest. Culture shock occurs to most of those who are not closeted away in 5 star hotels and walk the streets with local guides.

Listening to a mother who watched her 18 month old boy stolen from in front of her, yes she lives on the street and is lame, reply to the question "Did you go to the Police?" she said "No, I did not have sufficient for a bribe, I would get beaten…
Read more

Having visited India several times, I have been struck by the incredibly wide gap between the privileged few and the rest. Culture shock occurs to most of those who are not closeted away in 5 star hotels and walk the streets with local guides.

Listening to a mother who watched her 18 month old boy stolen from in front of her, yes she lives on the street and is lame, reply to the question "Did you go to the Police?" she said "No, I did not have sufficient for a bribe, I would get beaten."

Yet at the same time the papers were full of the 40 bill bribes the politicians got from the phone companies in bribes. I guess Telstra did not have such funds.

Re doing business, as Peter O suggests some of the problems of doing business. Getting an NGO (assistance for widows and children, schooling, local community envelopment etc, the people who live on < $0.50 /day) up and running, using locals to do the legal and governmental business takes a very long time. You will be charged a 'skin tax' if you are not of Indian descent and go into the offices with your local partners, as you are by definition a rich westerner.

Mao's cultural revolution to me was obscene yet having traveled from Calcutta to Kunming and seeing the huge difference, I wonder just what is needed to break the slavery of the past.

11 months ago report
Michael Leonard Furtado

Doctor at University of Queensland

Great article! Concerned about some of the responses missing the point that elites in one country expect to talk only with elites in another in a kind of 'policy officialese' that's often missing in Australia, but which John McCarthy has been wise to remind us about.

Its at this level that Indians are often appalled by Australian educational and other discourse, which makes no pretence to recognise and respect an archetype of the aspiring educated Indian, in the manner of those Indians, who despite…
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Great article! Concerned about some of the responses missing the point that elites in one country expect to talk only with elites in another in a kind of 'policy officialese' that's often missing in Australia, but which John McCarthy has been wise to remind us about.

Its at this level that Indians are often appalled by Australian educational and other discourse, which makes no pretence to recognise and respect an archetype of the aspiring educated Indian, in the manner of those Indians, who despite their minority in India and several other parts of the world, exert a symbolic power and respectability often unrecognised or brutally discounted in Australia.

Granted then that equality and democracy are desirably enshrined in several aspects of Australian society and culture, there's a kind of unconsciously brutalising directness in the manner of doing business in Australia that misses the almost neo-colonial formalised cultural imperatives that still abound in India.

I also suspect its 'whiteness' that gets in the way of more open and effective communication between Indians and Australians: in the UK, at an official educational and business level there's a very high degree of prescriptive attention, employing highly formalised, and to the Australian eye, even archaic modes of politeness that derive from at least two centuries of Indians leaving to study at Oxbridge.

While Australians are right to discount the influence of colour in forging economic and other ties, there are several centuries of imperial history that account for such realities and which must be addressed before real progress and effective communication is to ensue.

Even in the States, the American emphasis on friendliness is far better appreciated by Indians than by what Indians perceive as an overwhelmingly naff Australian cultural sterotype! What we need, in short, is a bit of a charm offensive in order to ditch the unfortunate bogan sterotype.

11 months ago report
1. Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Farmer
  
  In reply to Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Ah yes Michael it's a shocking business all this Australian stuff isn't it ... all that democracy with at least its appearance of classlessness and certainly castelessness? Why even the offer of a decent bribe gets one nowhere examwise. We just have no respect for money and social status. Barely civilised at all. Not a place for tall poppies at all.
  
  Give me some rough crude "bogans" anytime - not racists of course but people who will take new arrivals on face value and the content of their hearts rather than the contents of dad's wallet and their notions of social superiority.
  
  Let's talk about changing the nature of the students we select - people who want, need and really appreciate a chance - rather than changing our own character to meet these appalling expectations of the emerging middle class.
  
  But there's not much of a quid in that sort of business for our Universities is there?
  
  11 months ago report
2. Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Doctor at University of Queensland
  
  In reply to Peter Ormonde
  
  You missed the point, darling boy! You want the students, you play the game! Even Indians of modest means know the rules and play by them.
  
  11 months ago report
3. Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Farmer
  
  In reply to Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Ah Michael if you want the students you lobby the government to restore the PR rort that boosted the numbers in the first place. That was the game. Easier than changing the culture.
  
  Not too many Indians of modest means make it here as fee paying students Michael - modest means in India means most modest indeed.
  
  11 months ago report
4. Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Doctor at University of Queensland
  
  In reply to Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter, I conceed every point you make about the contradictions and conceits that Indian life offers. My concern relates to the gaps in our own discourse, which help explain why we're at the bottom of the English-speaking table in terms of India's current assessment of our desirability as a destination for study and business.
  
  While we are certainly all too easily recognised for the wealth and other material opportunities that we offer to potential migrants, there is a disdain in the Indian psyche…
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  Peter, I conceed every point you make about the contradictions and conceits that Indian life offers. My concern relates to the gaps in our own discourse, which help explain why we're at the bottom of the English-speaking table in terms of India's current assessment of our desirability as a destination for study and business.
  
  While we are certainly all too easily recognised for the wealth and other material opportunities that we offer to potential migrants, there is a disdain in the Indian psyche, even a contempt among its elites that helps shape English-speaking Indian public opinion about us that we cannot pretend does not exist and which has to be brought out into the open.
  
  Part of this is the memory of the White Australia policy. Incidentally, the onlooking Brits speak volubly about this, even though in actual fact its no more than a cultural memory though sadly all the more influential and remembered for its mythical power and the embarrassment, pain and guilt that it still evokes.
  
  Its as if there is a simmering cultural war on, barely subterranean and therefore all the easier to supress and pretend doesn't exist, chanelled into our cultural discourse but really to avoid understanding just how complicit we were in importing the narrowest aspects of imperial attitudinising.
  
  Somehow our belief until recently about our being a monocultural socialist democracy has also blinded us to the crassness of our historical past and the continued limitations we place on Australian identity. I'm afraid our impression of ourselves about the openness, equality and generosity of our cultural practices are categorically not shared by most of India, who in many senses are the newly emerging English-speaking elites.
  
  On the Indian side its as if they have to kow-tow to a nation of European asylum-seekers, who seek to keep non-Europeans out. This is an overwhelming and damning judgment in the quality Indian English-speaking press (which runs to pages of cover equal only in size and, some would argue, quality to the NY Times and Le Monde).
  
  While this kind of insulting exchange about cultural stereotypes precisely illustrates my point that neither side has much to crow about (especially in inviting Australian reflection on the Indian masking of caste and corruption) and the endemic bribery and graft (though change has been registered on that front in recent years) there's a kind of ill-informed and ignorantly out-of-date historical judgment that does neither side any favours in reaching a modus operandi about progressing cultural understanding, trade and other exchange.
  
  If both sides allowed that to happen, it would give us a chance to know each other better, and, for our part, to show that Australia is far more sophisticated than Indians might give us credit for. We, in turn, would acknowledge that for all its contradictions and inequalities, India is the world's largest democracy, dramatically vibrant and even stable, despite living on the brink of the failed-state powderkeg that is Pakistan, highly secularised and pluralistic and much more deserving of the respect and attention than give her.
  
  I think the discourse on this question that the ABC's Geraldine Doogue has helped develop - critical but admiring, questing rather than judgmental - is about right. As with China, India is a cultural collosus and deserves much more respect than we show for the United States. (Indeed the cultural exchange between India and China, historical rivals though they be, is far more sophisticated and impressive than we give both nations credit for). The Canadians understand and participate in this discourse much more enthusiastically than we do. Its simply time that more of us did.
  
  11 months ago report
5. Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Farmer
  
  In reply to Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  No argument from me regarding the historical greatness of India and the respect the various cultures of India deserve. Curiously the metropolitan middle class monoculture that is emerging in India has little respect or regard for these cultures or traditions. And we are helping to do that.
  
  It's a commercial transaction this lure of overseas fee paying students. Let's not dress it up as some sort of aid program. We're doing this for a quid and the consequences for India are far from benign…
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  No argument from me regarding the historical greatness of India and the respect the various cultures of India deserve. Curiously the metropolitan middle class monoculture that is emerging in India has little respect or regard for these cultures or traditions. And we are helping to do that.
  
  It's a commercial transaction this lure of overseas fee paying students. Let's not dress it up as some sort of aid program. We're doing this for a quid and the consequences for India are far from benign.
  
  I'm all in favour of playing a positive role in our region and undoing the appalling legacy of the White Australia Policy. I just don't think we can overcome that legacy by simultaneously making a quid out of it.
  
  So sure let's do something positive for the region and its people. Let's start by offering educational opportunities to those who will never NEVER get them in India. No money in it - but training up some decent lawyers, agitators and honest, capable police and journalists would all be a great start.
  
  11 months ago report
Michael Leonard Furtado

Doctor at University of Queensland

No difficulty with your prescriptions, either, Peter; but your proscriptions about social justice, limiting it simply to a discourse of human rights and equity, are ironically unworkable, I'm afraid, because they appear to preclude all other considerations of consumption, economics, competition, science and technology, innovation and sustainability, property ownership and work.

Any review of the rise of capitalism and liberty in the West over the past half-millennium and its current takeover by…
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No difficulty with your prescriptions, either, Peter; but your proscriptions about social justice, limiting it simply to a discourse of human rights and equity, are ironically unworkable, I'm afraid, because they appear to preclude all other considerations of consumption, economics, competition, science and technology, innovation and sustainability, property ownership and work.

Any review of the rise of capitalism and liberty in the West over the past half-millennium and its current takeover by Asia (be it Niall Ferguson's or Pankaj Mishra's) shows that change is complex and always a mixed blessing, incorporating extraordinary examples of human progress and the struggle for freedom as well as individual achievement and enterprise.

I'm afraid that while you and I shut our eyes and doors to the clamour to enter, imposing conditions on who might come and study and who else might not, our borders will be broken down anyway by sheer literal and metaphorical force of the mainly economic pressure to survive by those who will not allow us to partake of our largely ill-gotten gains and who will decide these life and death issues for themselves.

Incidentally, you are wrong about the elites still controlling India's destiny. There has been a sizable increase in the middle-class and the new Indian student demographic is decidedly different to what it was a generation ago.

11 months ago report
1. Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Farmer
  
  In reply to Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  A yes social development ... always so much sweeter when we can make a quid out of it isn't it Michael?
  
  The mixed blessing always seems to be distributed the same way doesn't it? Some folks just get to wear the price of progress ... in India's case a lot of folks actually.
  
  Now don't go trying to paint me as some "gated community" absurdist Michael. I'm all for opening up this place that people who need to come, who have nowhere else to go, who want a future for their kids. But that is…
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  A yes social development ... always so much sweeter when we can make a quid out of it isn't it Michael?
  
  The mixed blessing always seems to be distributed the same way doesn't it? Some folks just get to wear the price of progress ... in India's case a lot of folks actually.
  
  Now don't go trying to paint me as some "gated community" absurdist Michael. I'm all for opening up this place that people who need to come, who have nowhere else to go, who want a future for their kids. But that is not the Indian middle class... they have a great future in India... imagine a sort of high rise Dallas or Dynasty.
  
  The posturing by the Australian education industry is not about "helping India" or addressing the inequalities of the country - it is about pulling in a stream of full-fee students using any means possible including by rorting the process by offering a walk-up start on immigration. A particularly self-serving notion of public benefit.
  
  Now I'm not shutting my eyes to anything Michael. But like Gandhi I reckon India needs more than what the western powers offer her when it comes to development. The price of a rising middle class, rising by grinding down the poor, rising with the help of Australian universities, is too great a cost and will destroy those things that are essentially Indian.
  
  How many children of bus-drivers make it to UQU Michael, how many children of farmers or chai wallahs? The demographic of India's elites hasn't changed... there are just more of the same. And the entry point into the elite is getting tighter not wider. And we are helping make life tougher for those who do not have the cash to buy their way in to our universities and colleges.
  
  Don't dress the recent role of Australian universities up as some sort of developmental aid project - it is about fees and cash Michael - nothing more.
  
  11 months ago report
2. Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Doctor at University of Queensland
  
  In reply to Peter Ormonde
  
  So how will we set up a Gandhian solution to the problem, Peter? Most of Gandhi's solutions (low technology, a protectionist government, non-aligned foreign policy) were implemented within the forty year phase after Indian independence. The poor actually got poorer over that period of time. Are you linking this with middle-class corruption, graft and the like, or was Gandhi's philosophy, some of it quite esoteric, also wrong?
  
  In the several phases of global development that might explain why Australia…
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  So how will we set up a Gandhian solution to the problem, Peter? Most of Gandhi's solutions (low technology, a protectionist government, non-aligned foreign policy) were implemented within the forty year phase after Indian independence. The poor actually got poorer over that period of time. Are you linking this with middle-class corruption, graft and the like, or was Gandhi's philosophy, some of it quite esoteric, also wrong?
  
  In the several phases of global development that might explain why Australia is such a wealthy community, might not luck or accident, the exclusion of certain kinds of foreigners and emulating the emu (or ostrich) have at least something to do with it?
  
  Has all of our wealth and social capital entirely been 'grown' through our commendable commitment to the 'fair go' or have our social policies, the strength of our democratic institutions (especially circa November 1975) and our attachment to human rights (especially towards our First Nations people) been and continue to be a highly challenging work-in-progress?
  
  Granted that social justice must be given the first priority (called 'the preferential option for the poor' in the tradition of my upbringing) where do we start? By shutting up shop or through working for change...a new foreign policy covenant that genuinely places the needs of the least advantaged over all others?
  
  By way of illustration, if you've been watching Downton Abbey, that social drama about not just a change in cultural manners but also of the balance of class power in Britain over the Great War, might you not have noticed the extent to which the Fenian (code for Roman Catholic) chauffeur is reconstructed into an up and coming political journalist, who marries the second daughter of a Protestant establishment family and mirrors the transition that repositioned Catholics everywhere in the English-speaking world (including Australia) as having finally 'arrived'?
  
  Isn't it true that these first cohorts were educated, middle-class and sharing with their Protestant cohorts the kind of aspirant values and mores that made it not just easier for them to integrate but for those who came after them (in Australia's instance, the vast import of European and predominantly Catholic refugees after the Second World War)?
  
  Where, indeed, is there any allowance in your critique for the 'gradualistic progress' that accounts for Australia's fine reputation as a nation in which fairness matters, or are Indians somehow racially and ethnically marked out, beyond explanations that reside in endemic poverty, inequality and cultural particularity, as beyond the pale (no pun intended)?
  
  Without answering that, our critique and grand show of disgust amounts to nothing very impressive and raises suspicions of passionate antipathies betraying but secret affinities. If hatred of those who deliberately suppress the rights of the least advantaged is all we have to offer, we will have effectively become that gated community that you despise... a mutual admiration society of morally disapproving has-beens who resort to raising the drawbridge at the least sign of a problem that must be sorted.
  
  At some stage, as in any breakdown caused by injustice, protagonists have to move on. Forgiveness (of debt, for a start) is one way to proceed, engaging in cultural critique (as in The Conversation) as well as understanding, and a very clear and honest examination of conscience, as currently conducted on the telly, about the extent to which our polite judgments might actually conceal our appalling reputation for being 'dumb, drunk and racist'?
  
  11 months ago report
3. Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Farmer
  
  In reply to Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  No Michael, our wealth at least has been founded on what we found here ... stealing by finding according to Common Law. But our "social capital" - not a notion I accept incidentally comes from the people who came and yes from the notion of a fair go, and from the (ongoing) political struggles to establish it in practice.
  
  We delude ourselves if we believe we have a reputation for fairness. Our neighbours well remember the White Australia Policy and the selectivity of our fairness; they find our…
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  No Michael, our wealth at least has been founded on what we found here ... stealing by finding according to Common Law. But our "social capital" - not a notion I accept incidentally comes from the people who came and yes from the notion of a fair go, and from the (ongoing) political struggles to establish it in practice.
  
  We delude ourselves if we believe we have a reputation for fairness. Our neighbours well remember the White Australia Policy and the selectivity of our fairness; they find our more patronising comments and advice on how they should conduct themselves with the scorn it deserves.
  
  It's getting better slowly but it will take more than making a few billion out of relatively wealthy Indian students which we attract by offering them a chance to buy their way in to Permanent Residence.
  
  Now if you really want to "do something" for India we set up something like a seriously large Colombo Scheme - we use our capacities to train up the locals with ability (not just the cash) - and we send them back home at the end of it - to become lawyers, doctors, honest policemen and political agitators.
  
  Everyone who has ever gone near India as a policy has gone there to take, to make money. Our universities were doing the same. Don't dress it up as helping India - that was the last thing on our minds.
  
  I'm not saying we should refuse Indian students or students from any overseas source whatsoever. Nor am I dumb, drunk or racist. But I am saying that that deal should not be sweetened with the lure of Permanent Residence so they never have to go back and work and live there. That is just strip mining the place. Again.
  
  11 months ago report
4. Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Doctor at University of Queensland
  
  In reply to Peter Ormonde
  
  I understand the prognosis, Peter, but I dont agree with the diagnosis. Its rather more replete with punitive and, in my view, unrealistic correctives than with any of the altruism that used to be part and parcel of AIDAB and British Council development assistance policy frame.
  
  In fact, Gandhi himself (not a Marxist and disinterested in using the class theory that you insist upon) would observe that there's not much that's Gandhian in your analysis, given that you're more interested in stopping…
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  I understand the prognosis, Peter, but I dont agree with the diagnosis. Its rather more replete with punitive and, in my view, unrealistic correctives than with any of the altruism that used to be part and parcel of AIDAB and British Council development assistance policy frame.
  
  In fact, Gandhi himself (not a Marxist and disinterested in using the class theory that you insist upon) would observe that there's not much that's Gandhian in your analysis, given that you're more interested in stopping an undoubted abuse of the system (on both sides, as you show) than in offering a way out of it.
  
  There IS a third way, then, that altruism suggests, with a focus on genuine, rather than globalising, cultural exchange (which invariably rewards the highest bidder) rather than seeking to identify projects that mutually benefit both project participant countries.
  
  Some of these work rather well in India, e.g. low-tech cottage industries, which protect the livelihood of their workers and have growing markets in the developed world. There are also increasingly successful schemes such as the founding of low-interest banks, e.g. the Gramen Bank.
  
  It's a well-established tradition in the West thats student exchanges are promoted to advance such projects and i know several universities that support such schemes. The benefits here are mutual. My own children have participated in them, despite their relatively economically privileged background (and having an Indian parent!). They both work in industries that attach more importance to social justice and creativity than to high wages, and they're not alone in their commitment to supporting global fairness.
  
  As to India itself, there are several thousand people, many of them highly qualified Indians, working in community development projects that involve a combination of social justice, educational and market skills. My own cousin, Peter D'Cruz, is a higly qualified educator and community development worker, who services a rural agricultural school in Maharashthra. He happens to be a Jesuit, with a passionate interest in social justice, and especially in promoting and enhancing the status of the Dalit community.
  
  (In case this is regarded as obscure and unrepresentative, the Indian Jesuit province is the largest in the world and generously supported by Australians). There are several other non-government organisations, not all of them Christian or evangelical, who view development in such humanistic, rather than rigidly materialistic and therefore potentially exploitative terms.
  
  I appreciate the passion with which you address your remarks, but my concern is also about the extent to which you typecast the Indian (and Australian) middle-classes. Some of them are people of immense vision and extraordinary generosity and courage. Let's encourage them in this rather than focus so morally-depletingly on the immense and undoubtedly immobilising effect of the struggle in it!
  
  11 months ago report
5. Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Farmer
  
  In reply to Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Michael,
  
  I'm glad you have some on the ground contacts in the field in India. Especially with the scheduled castes. Your cousin will be able to tell you how things have been going for the Dalits during the great economic boom. The point is that they are not just being left out of India's economic miracle - they are being ground down even further. The new wealth comes from a very old source Michael.
  
  Now as for Gandhi - fully aware that he was no simplistic marxist. I don't think a simple…
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  Michael,
  
  I'm glad you have some on the ground contacts in the field in India. Especially with the scheduled castes. Your cousin will be able to tell you how things have been going for the Dalits during the great economic boom. The point is that they are not just being left out of India's economic miracle - they are being ground down even further. The new wealth comes from a very old source Michael.
  
  Now as for Gandhi - fully aware that he was no simplistic marxist. I don't think a simple marxist class model of an industrial capitalist economy made much sense in the India of his time, where caste, religion, and a score of other measures were far more deterministic and far more immediately relevant. But I think your cousin will be able to explain that a class model of some sort - one in which the market and money are increasingly the sole determinant of one's social status and opportunities - is becoming more relevant and appropriate.
  
  What I liked about Gandhi's vision for India was the recognition that it required a different path ... that the growth of a market based system would further impoverish and marginalised the poor and most marginal ... that central to India's economic future was work, food production and an inclusive civil society.
  
  Now economically none of that made any "sense" whatsoever - at least to our notions of economics that prevailed at the time. Gandhi's vision was of a shared poverty... a nation of near subsistence peasants. I don't think that was true - or at least not inevitable. I think India has more smarts and more options than a single outcome.
  
  Anyway this is a bit tangential to the focus of this discussion - which is the need for us to be more accommodating of visitors - for whatever reason they come. No problem there at all.
  
  But it would be an error - a factual mistake - to believe that the outbreak of individual hostilities of a few years ago is responsible for the decline in student numbers. The real cause is addressed by those university administrators advocating a return to the "relaxed" Permanent Residency access that operated under Howard. This was perhaps his most cynical policy given what was going on with other aspects of immigration control under his hand.
  
  My point is that artifically subsidising universities by linking residency to study does nothing whatsoever for India - it is strip mining their talented, wealthier kids, their better educated kids. And India needs them.
  
  What it doesn't need is a corrupt, brutal economic system that sees our graduates return home to start ripping off the poor, demolishing their slums and seizing their farms. But this is India's problem - not ours - it is theirs to solve.
  
  We can help by exposing guest students to life in a western "liberalish" country, where the cops are (mostly) honest, where bribes are largely unnecessary and in fact illegal, where concern for fair wages and basic living standards - the fair go - is built into the fabric of the place and our politics. They might also learn about engineering or whatever which might be useful.
  
  So I reckon being welcoming - ensuring that the extracurricular elements of the course are met - that there is a culture on our campuses that welcomes, accepts and "adopts" students is part of the place. To a greater extent universities should take on a parental role - looking after any and all aspects of living in a strange place. Jobs that pay proper money, decent housing ... all that sort of stuff, plus a bit of dragging them out of their comfort zone.
  
  Now I know most of not all universities do a bit of this but it is obviously OBVIOUSLY not good enough is it? Too much take and not enough ploughed back I reckon.
  
  Anyway I'm glad you have some contacts doing good things in Maharastra - in many ways that is the front line of the economic miracle. Must be like trying to stick one's finger in Hoover Dam. Talk to him about how UQU can help.
  
  Gotta go and sort the chooks.
  
  11 months ago report
6. Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Doctor at University of Queensland
  
  In reply to Peter Ormonde
  
  Thanks, Peter. I admire your passion and commitment to justice.
  
  A minor detail: the Indian class constituency that you object to is not 'Old India' or in any other way an exact replica of an intransigent and unchanging plutocracy, but indeed a 'New India' with a strong mercantile profile.
  
  There are few 'Brahmins', and especially Bengalis here, but lots of 'Kshatriyas' or warriors, quite a few of them Punjabis, who a generation ago would have been hereditary farmers, and quite a few Gujeratis…
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  Thanks, Peter. I admire your passion and commitment to justice.
  
  A minor detail: the Indian class constituency that you object to is not 'Old India' or in any other way an exact replica of an intransigent and unchanging plutocracy, but indeed a 'New India' with a strong mercantile profile.
  
  There are few 'Brahmins', and especially Bengalis here, but lots of 'Kshatriyas' or warriors, quite a few of them Punjabis, who a generation ago would have been hereditary farmers, and quite a few Gujeratis, Orissans, etc.
  
  The profile is certainly different from the elites who studied in Britain up until about the 1970s, when protection began to disintegrate under the weight, very often, of its own privileged hubris, and a hungry, even aggressive, highly resilient and versatile new class of 'second-wave' Indians, as they are sometimes pejoratively typecast (and, in my view, unjustly identified with an earlier and more oppressive Indian elite) began to show exactly what Indians could do, if and when the brakes that so protected Western and upper caste Indian commercial interests, were lifted.
  
  I understand your jaundice at what has subsequently eventuated and sympathise with most of the critique that you make in regard to its continued unjust and predatory affects on the poor. But I submit that your analysis is microtheoretically flawed and not the whole story, otherwise we'd be well on our way to nutting out a solution, instead of retreating to feeding the chooks.
  
  Thanks for engaging!
  
  11 months ago report
7. Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Farmer
  
  In reply to Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Not feeding them - they were out - a mass breakout - a feathery riot - and were into the strawberries! Not a retreat by any means - a crisis of most dire consequences.
  
  As I implied above the old India is changing - from its traditional castes to an economic domination ... but it is substantially built on the grinding down of the poor and the dispossessed. It is not about making money - it's about taking it from others... the usual system. It's a pity that Australian Universities want to be joining in to make a quid out of it
  
  I reckon your cousin would be able to fill you in on the "microtheoretical flaws" far better than I could from here and I suspect that he is most ambivalent if not hostile to the modern miracle and its consequences for the poor. The fate of India's poor is not microtheoretical. Not theoretical and certainly not micro.
  
  11 months ago report
Michael Leonard Furtado

Doctor at University of Queensland

Peter, sorry you were faced with a massed feathery uprising. Not being able to control your chooks (are they Indian?) suggests that all may not be too well in the Ormonde household. Perchance we need Dianna's help, lurching from crisis to crisis with finely honed skills in policy analysis but not much chance of a solution, and instead a marked persistence in singling India out for demonisation over all other contenders.

I checked, as you suggested, with my cousin, whose parish is not far from…
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Peter, sorry you were faced with a massed feathery uprising. Not being able to control your chooks (are they Indian?) suggests that all may not be too well in the Ormonde household. Perchance we need Dianna's help, lurching from crisis to crisis with finely honed skills in policy analysis but not much chance of a solution, and instead a marked persistence in singling India out for demonisation over all other contenders.

I checked, as you suggested, with my cousin, whose parish is not far from Pune, a burgeoning metropolis, where a somewhat overactive rightwing religious extremist party in power has been a worry in recent years, accusing development workers of overempowering the traditionally dispossessed.

He referred to this as a constant local issue but one in which the balance of power had shifted in recent years in favour of a coalition of minority parties. There were problems too, he added, of overzealous religious fundamentalists, including Christians, proselytising among the Dalits.

As it happened, he had just returned from a Jesuit development conference in Chapas (Mexico), where he said the problems were broadly similar. Although Mexico hasn't a caste system, the poor are largely Indigenous, while the powerful are still recognisably Hispanic. Their diets (of the rural peasantry) are terrible and increasingly dictated by the monopoly power of multinational companies. The managing director of CocaCola Mexico happens to be the governor of Chapas!

The pattern for the elite is to attend universities in North America, Canada and Europe and then return to manage the family business or farm. The rest become drugrunners or try to make it over the border into the US for menial work, where they are arrested and promptly returned home and where they form the bulk of cheap US Latino labor.

The Canadians, he observed, were more availing but had the advantage of a vast buffer state between Mexico and themselves. Their Anglophone culture, he suggested, inclined them to a more socially liberal attitude to immigrants, refugees and students. He noted a categoric difference in this regard between Canada and Australia!

He didnt attach much importance to caste difference and the fact that most Mexicans are Roman Catholic, while most Indians are Hindu. He ruefully remarked (as a Catholic priest!) that the Vatican had stamped out all development of Basic Christian Communities and the Latin American 'liberation' movement and that the Church had largely sided with the elite.

In his estimation the problem with India, which you correctly adduce, was not unique, but typical of that of any burgeoning developing country, including Brazil, China and Nigeria. He cautioned that there was a powerful and growing anti-corruption movement that had achieved significant victories, including a successful recent Gandhian threat by a Hindu priest (Baba Ramdev) to fast to the death to draw attention to this endemic scandal.

He knew, as I do, of many Indian students - some in Australia - who supported the principle of merit and equal opportunity, and expressed his concern that your forceful assertions that nothing had changed and that Indians were uniquely pathologically inclined to bend the rules to suit their own interests was over the top and extreme.

He particularly pointed out the contradiction in your analysis between accusing them of applying for student visas in order to gain permanent residence, and your assertion that they would return to privileged positions in India, thereby to redouble their efforts at oppressing the poor.

I note and commend you for your concern for social justice. However, I simply do not agree with your puzzling and obstinate attitude.

11 months ago report
1. Peter Ormonde
  
  Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Farmer
  
  In reply to Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  No no no Mr F, my chooks are an American breed, silver and gold laced wyandottes... cute but rebellious to the core.
  
  Now I reckon you're just having an argument rather than a discussion. I am not - definitely not - singling out Indians as uniquely corrupt. But this article is about India and "the lost decade". Ghana and Pakistan probably beat it hands down. Poverty and despair rarely bring out the best in people.
  
  I am not saying that Indians are uniquely pathologically inclined to bend…
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  No no no Mr F, my chooks are an American breed, silver and gold laced wyandottes... cute but rebellious to the core.
  
  Now I reckon you're just having an argument rather than a discussion. I am not - definitely not - singling out Indians as uniquely corrupt. But this article is about India and "the lost decade". Ghana and Pakistan probably beat it hands down. Poverty and despair rarely bring out the best in people.
  
  I am not saying that Indians are uniquely pathologically inclined to bend the rules. Nothing unique about it. But corruption in India is endemic and near universal. It has actually become a major impediment in the growth of the Indian economy at least as far as foreign investment is concerned. Too many hands, too many brown paper bags.
  
  Here's a simple illustration: my sister in law works for the local gas supply company providing bottled gas on which everyone cooks in Bhopal. There is a "nine month waiting list" to get onto the system and get one's first bottle. However that waiting period can easily be stretched into years. But of course for 300 rups one gets immediate service. She never has to touch her meagre salary.
  
  Another: I was listening to a man whose 11 year old son had disappeared from the family home in Bhopal. He went to the police but since he was poor and had no money for a bribe they were uninterested. So, becoming suspicious he jumped over the fence to the house next door and found the dismembered corpses of several local children who had been cannibalised. This happened nine months ago. The Australian journalist who visited him was the first contact this father had with any media or authority. No one was interested not even the ghoulish local newspapers.
  
  That last story is a pretty reasonable allegory for India as a whole actually where the modern miracle sees the children of the poor being devoured as if they did not exist.
  
  Now don't go implying I am racist towards Indians singling them out. But I am most wary of Australian universities hungry for fees claiming that they are making some efforts at "helping" India. They are simply helping themselves as have most who have ever had reason to set up in the place.
  
  I am well aware of Shiv Senna's rise to power - a rather dangerous development in Maharastra - your cousin should be most most careful.
  
  11 months ago report
2. John Holmes
  
  Agronomist - semi retired consultant
  
  In reply to Peter Ormonde
  
  Good to see that well looked after chooks do manipulate their carers, something about the domestication of humans by their animals there.
  
  I showed your comment "the modern miracle sees the children of the poor being devoured as if they did not exist." to my wife who with congratulates you on succinctly summarizing the issues She sees in the community development project that she is assisting in the India. I mentioned some of the problems seen in my comment above above.
  
  Working in a small firm…
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  Good to see that well looked after chooks do manipulate their carers, something about the domestication of humans by their animals there.
  
  I showed your comment "the modern miracle sees the children of the poor being devoured as if they did not exist." to my wife who with congratulates you on succinctly summarizing the issues She sees in the community development project that she is assisting in the India. I mentioned some of the problems seen in my comment above above.
  
  Working in a small firm importing and selling generic pesticides in WA, we imported our herbicides mostly from China and our insecticides form India. At the time, that was who had sorted out the production systems for each best. While dealing with China had its problems, just make sure that you are extremely specific in your order, other wise you may not get what you assumed that you would get, most of the time the materials arrived more or less on time. Just do not order and not take into account Chinese new year.
  
  Similar for India as long as your agents paid the right bribes. If not, as in one case when WA was out of insecticides and the lupin crop was seriously at risk, a 20 ton order of insecticide tech was ordered to be deliverer by plane. All we well until the last customs inspection at the airport where some one demanded a big bribe. So the whole shipment was sent back to the factory, 180 miles, and then re shipped back after the bribes had been paid. Meanwhile we had lost that booking for the plane and it took time to get another one.
  
  Net result delay of 2 - 3 weeks in getting product to farmers.
  
  If you are going to operate on a just in time basis, the supply lines need to be reliable.
  
  India has a huge potential to off set China as a supplier, as one should not have all of ones supplies are sourced from one market. Factories burn, raw materials get short, deals go belly up, and governments change policy. Yet delays due to corruption are of a substantial different order as destroy confidence.
  
  Interesting re Mr F comments re Christianity and the Dalits. How long does Christianity need to be in a culture till it is part of it? St Thomas was killed there and there are records from AD 218 in the north of an active presence of Christianity. Who speaks for the poor and enslaved?
  
  11 months ago report
Michael Leonard Furtado

Doctor at University of Queensland

I've never said that Peter was a racist, nor indeed have I criticised him for his forthright and unequivocal defense of the Dalits. Indeed, I share these concerns with him and have established my credentials, as an educator committed to social inclusion, as committed to the struggle to protect and improve their rights.

What I have taken issue with is the more than a detectable whiff of sinking the slipper into victims of Australia's neoliberal Indian student-enrolment policy frame that has sought…
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I've never said that Peter was a racist, nor indeed have I criticised him for his forthright and unequivocal defense of the Dalits. Indeed, I share these concerns with him and have established my credentials, as an educator committed to social inclusion, as committed to the struggle to protect and improve their rights.

What I have taken issue with is the more than a detectable whiff of sinking the slipper into victims of Australia's neoliberal Indian student-enrolment policy frame that has sought to increase numbers in return for more full-fee dollars, and in respect of which the client or source country has responded by upping the anti in relation to pressuring the Australian government for a higher return for higher fees, such as the right of permanent settlement and such like.

Most lower-middle class students, who constitute the majority of Indian applicants for Australia, borrow the bulk of their fees, and have little or no chance of repaying these without the likelihood of permanent residence and the kind of employment that generates such a return.

(Shades of indentured labour here, methinks, when I survey tha extent to which Australia's taxis, servos and care-providers are 'manned' by vulnerable and sometimes all too easily exploited Indians, some with qualifications far in excess of the tasks they perform, in order to survive economically...but doubtless Peter will see this comment as a residue of my/their casteism).

Granted that there is almost nothing equitable or meritocratic ON BOTH SIDES in this arrangement, any ethicist would conclude that the greater moral problem lies within the neoliberal policy frame which pressurises the poor (which indeed the lower middle-class Australian Indian student body undoubtedly predominantly constitutes) and which underpins such a corrupted rationale.

There are simply no scions of rich Indian families that choose to be educated in Australia, if indeed there ever were. Those who made it here did so through the dismantling of discriminatory policies and therefore as highly competent immigrants!

In fact I am bemused that Peter and John invoke Justin Norrie's article for solace, when almost everything they have argued is opposed to it, though I do question Justin's all too facile reference to how well multiculturalism has stood up to the test of time, especially during the Howard era, which almost exactly overlays the period of our policy problems!

Of course, I absolutely deplore the increasingly commodified and economistic terms in which the dominant neoliberal policy frame has been designed, moving very far away indeed from an authentic development-aid partnership of yesteryear that was far more human, as much concerned about social development as economic, and in respect of which several NGOs still prefer to go it alone and honour, sometimes at great cost to themselves for having the guts to resist and challenge the government's policy raison d'etre.

Moving onto John's comments about Christian claims to Indian identity: there are more Christians, both practising and otherwise, in India than overhere, and indeed their presence in India predates that in Australia, where it could be argued that they are largely the non-practising cultural remnant of European secularists (which might explain why Asian Christians are more committed Church-attenders in Australia and offer themselves in greater numbers for the priesthood and pastorate than European Australians).

Nonetheless, and notwithstanding John's criticism, the Indian attacks on Christians for protecting Dalits are nothing short of deplorable, leading at times to murder. What I do obect to, as a practising Catholic, is the highly impositional and evangelical terms in which some Christians proselytise in India and in respect of which there has clearly been as negative a reaction in India as there is to the settlement of Muslims in Australia post-9/11!

11 months ago report
Oliver D'Souza

logged in via Facebook

I think there could not be a bigger misrepresentation than saying that the economic boom in India has benefited the <a href="http://www.truthaboutdalits.com">Dalits Of India</a>. Sir, the real fact is that the boom has happened for those who had something - money or liquidate-able assets to garner money that they could invest or put in self-emancipation efforts through the opportunities provided by the boom. But the fact fact is that most dalits have very little money to even eat two square meals a day. The boom has passed them by as has everything else. Let's not be fooled, the upper castes get keeping richer the Dalits keep getting poorer. That's the reality.

8 months ago report
1. Oliver D'Souza
  
  logged in via Facebook
  
  In reply to Oliver D'Souza
  
  Correction to previous post:
  
  I think there could not be a bigger misrepresentation than saying that the economic boom in India has benefited the ("http://www.truthaboutdalits.com";) Dalits Of India . Sir, the real fact is that the boom has happened for those who had something - money or liquidate-able assets to garner money that they could invest or put in self-emancipation efforts through the opportunities provided by the boom. But the fact fact is that most dalits have very little money to even eat two square meals a day. The boom has passed them by as has everything else. Let's not be fooled, the upper castes get keeping richer the Dalits keep getting poorer. That's the reality.
  
  8 months ago report
2. Michael Leonard Furtado
  
  Doctor at University of Queensland
  
  In reply to Oliver D'Souza
  
  Thanks for your post, Oliver. I agree entirely with you and speak as an Australian Indian whose entire professional and personal life in one form or another has been committed to drawing attention to and promoting human rights while redressing social injustice on several fronts. My concern about this blog, if you'd care to follow the thread, is the extent to which some of its contributors have used the undoubted corruption and inability of India's social, political and economic systems to deliver…
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  Thanks for your post, Oliver. I agree entirely with you and speak as an Australian Indian whose entire professional and personal life in one form or another has been committed to drawing attention to and promoting human rights while redressing social injustice on several fronts. My concern about this blog, if you'd care to follow the thread, is the extent to which some of its contributors have used the undoubted corruption and inability of India's social, political and economic systems to deliver a modicum of justice to the Dalits, to argue a case against the tenor of this article, which has nothing to do with such a thing.
  
  Not only is this a solecism and a distraction, it does nothing for the Dalits and potentially adds to a stereotype about Indians in Australia that discriminates against them. By all means lets not pretend that the situation of the Dalits isn't desparate and try instead to link aspects of Australia's foreign and development aid and trade and defense policies to redress this scandal (instead of, for instance, negotiating selling our uranium to India for our own purely selfish economic advantage) but let's also not confuse the two issues, both of which address situations of social injustice and abuse of human rights (one subtle and the other blatant) neither of which, and granted their moral disproportionality, should be swept under the carpet!
  
  8 months ago report
Stuart Clark

Student (UQ)

I would like to see the Indian establishment and educated classes spend more talking about the enormous differences in wealth between themselves, and the poorer people in their society, rather than blaming other cultures (particularly "whites" as they do), and whinging about not having someone to hold their hand once they disembark at Tullamarine airport (I've moved abroad a couple of times before, and yes, settling in is tough)... this typically comes from individuals within the Indian community…
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I would like to see the Indian establishment and educated classes spend more talking about the enormous differences in wealth between themselves, and the poorer people in their society, rather than blaming other cultures (particularly "whites" as they do), and whinging about not having someone to hold their hand once they disembark at Tullamarine airport (I've moved abroad a couple of times before, and yes, settling in is tough)... this typically comes from individuals within the Indian community with a chip on their shoulder, who would rather narrowly blame all of their internal challenges on structural and cultural remnants such as the legacy of colonialism.

While we're discussing the balance of economic means vs social equality and justice via educational channels, for Indian students gaining entry into Australia en masse... and with the post, systemic effects of rigid, caste limitations and bureaucratic discrimination in India aside... perhaps is it worth reflecting on how resistant the Indian Government have historically remained to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into their country? Which cost their development dearly before the IMF bailed them out in 1991, and from which they've since begun to prosper through greater trade liberalisation, even if internally biased towards benefitting sections of the urban classes.

While the Chinese since the days of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, were broad-minded enough to see the benefits of external investment, and its mutually beneficial effects towards skilling local people, which also helped to reduce the low-income, labour surplus in the poor, rural, Agricultural communities...

The Indian elite have instead strongly denied foreign investment access, while they use their bias of inward-looking, Government supported, higher-education to freely benefit an advantaged, roaming elite of skilled, Indian employees around the world.

Narrow-minded elements in the Indian media and elite, would rather project a false image of a white, mono-cultural Australia... while they deny their shame for internal racism and rural exploitation and/or neglect... hmm... so much for creating an economy to produce more social equality by the Gandhian dynasty - ahem, fail!

Me - I'm a mixed-race Australian, who doesn't self-select my culture - I just try to recognise the truth, be myself, and be open to new knowledge from different people. I love a diversity of cultures. I'm against possessiveness, and one-sided, untruthful judgments of culture... but can anyone argue with the double-standards of the Indian elite (media, politicians, anyone with a socially influential voice or power) given limited foreign opportunities within India, vs their abundance of opportunities abroad... that needs to be highlighted!!!

What would be the answer to this simple, statistical question, I wonder:
% of Australian (by Australian born) Investment (self-educational or business) as a proportion of total Indian GDP vs % of Indian Investment (by Indian born) as a proportion of Australian GDP?
I'm quite sure you'll encounter a more open Australian economy, and it is btw encouragingly diverse, given the short history post-indigenous culture...

Even the Australian cricket team had an Aboriginal, who was racially abused at, by the mono-cultural Indian cricket team, however Cricket Australia ashamedly sided against our emotionally targeted Symonds, out of disgraceful political correctness, which said nothing for equality...! Now I'm aware of the pun there, because you should neither describe the Indian or Australian cricket teams as mono-cultural, just because they are all brown, or they are all mostly white!!!

7 months ago report

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