India, Australia and the Asian Century

Hamish McDonald

Autumn 2013: Volume One

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The Fearless Nadia Occasional Papers on India-Australia Relations

The Fearless Nadia Occasional papers are original essays commissioned by the Australia India Institute focusing on various aspects of the relationship between India and Australia. Fearless Nadia (1908-1996) was an Australian actress born Mary Ann Evans in Perth, Western Australia, who began her career working in the Zarko circus and eventually became a celebrated star of Hindi films in India. Fearless Nadia brought a new joie de vivre and chutzpah into Indian cinema with her breathtaking ‘stunts’. Her role in the renowned film Hunterwali, where she appeared dressed in boots and wielding a whip, became an iconic image in 1930s Bombay. The Occasional Papers series seeks to inject a similar audacity and creative dialogue into the relationship between India and Australia.

www.aii.unimelb.edu.au

Permission to use the name and image of “Fearless Nadia” is a courtesy extended by Wadia Movietone to the Australia India Institute for use only as the title of its Occasional Academic Papers. This is on the clear understanding that the name and image will be used only for the Occasional Academic Papers under this umbrella, and not for any commercial use. Wadia Movietone retains sole global copyright and ownership under intellectual property and copyright law of the Fearless Nadia and Hunterwali characters and personas, and any depiction and usage of the same.

The Australia India Institute expresses its deep gratitude to Wadia Movietone for this gesture and wishes to record the contribution of JBH Wadia who thought up the Hunterwali character, gave Mary Evans her screen name, and popularized the Fearless Nadia persona through his films.

The Australia India Institute, based at The University of Melbourne, is funded by the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, the State Government of Victoria, and The University of Melbourne. Copyright: Australia India Institute 2013

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The Fearless Nadia Occasional Papers on India-Australia Relations

EditorCHRISTOPHER KREMMER

India, Australia and the Asian CenturyExecutive Summary The immense public response to the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper creates a moment for Australia to throw its energies behind its goals with India, at once the most familiar and the most exotic of the big emerging powers in the region. Australia’s government, business and academic circles must invest in informing themselves about modern India and in getting to know its leaders, through more exchanges and meetings and establishment of research and study institutes in India as well as Australia. Careful building of knowledge and relationships will avoid disappointments in this most complex country.

Nothing in the White Paper dramatised the arrival of India in the forefront of Australia’s regional relationships more than the inclusion of Hindi among the four priority languages for teaching in schools (along with Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian). Hindi teaching in Australia’s schools will necessarily start from a low base, but the two existing Australian primary schools with Hindi language courses – Rangebank Public School in Melbourne’s Southeast and West Ryde Public School in northwest Sydney – and other community language teaching networks, provide models for the extension of Hindi teaching in our schools. Australia’s Indian diaspora, approaching half a million in size, is a pool of language and other expertise that should be tapped to assist in the roll out of the White Paper’s language policy on Hindi.

Recent opinion polls suggest Australia’s image in India has recovered from its nadir after Indian students suffered the effects of violent street crime in Australia in 2009-10. Effective action by Australian law enforcement and education officials brought the problem under control, but more needs to be done to persuade the Indian public that Australia is safe for Indian students and that its education system, which Indians surveyed held in high esteem, welcomes them. Australian vocational training institutions also need to push ahead with plans to provide low cost skills training in India itself, where the potential scale of the market offers enormous opportunities to those who can offer courses at an attractive price and deliver them with the right partners.

In the political and security realms, a window of opportunity has opened for Australia in India. This opportunity demands that we boost efforts to engage India’s leaders and administrators. Connections forged now will have beneficial effects for Australia and India for decades to come.

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India, Australia and the Asian CenturyHamish McDonaldDue to its framing as a formal White Paper of the Australian Government, the Australia in the Asian Century report has so far been taken much more seriously than the many previous “wake up” calls for Australians to attune themselves to emerging realities in their region.1 Whether it follows the fates of those earlier efforts, lapsing from public consciousness as existing connections and cultural investments reassert themselves, remains to be seen. But the initial widespread acceptance of its premises is encouraging. The main criticism is not the direction, but the immediate lack of resource commitments to achieve the ambitious goals of building on Australia’s strengths through further reform. The White Paper suggests that this be done by developing Asia-relevant capabilities including languages; connecting to Asian markets through corporate and institutional relationships; building an inclusive security regime in the region; and developing deeper, broader relationships with the nations of Asia.

In the White Paper, India is the big new inclusion in Australia’s outlook on Asia. Since it gained independence in 1947, India has periodically been “rediscovered” by Australian prime ministers, but has tended to be categorised quite differently from East Asian countries that have pursued export-led growth. India in its South Asian setting has been seen as an economic and strategic region unto itself. That has changed only recently with large-scale Indians investments in, and export contacts for, Queensland coal. Over almost the same short period, Australia has found itself with a very large, fast-growing Indian diaspora, and our political and business pundits have quickly caught on to the story of a rising India as a new pole of the global economy and regional power balance.

But India - vast in population, showing great disparities of wealth and education, multi-lingual, multi-religious, nuclear armed and unaligned - remains a peculiar challenge for closer engagement. How then to take the White Paper forward with India?

A three-step approach may assist in answering this question.

The first step is to realise that the White Paper is about us, the Australians, rather than our Asian partners like India. The document is written to convince us that we need to do much more if we wish to piggyback on Asia’s growth. It is a deeply utilitarian document. Summarised crudely, it says that Australia needs to plug in to Asia’s rising economies because that’s where the biggest demand for our goods and services will arise as a consequence of the expansion of Asia’s middle-classes.

1 See David Walker and Agnieszka Sobocinska, Australia’s Asia: From Yellow Peril to Asian Century, UWA Publishing, 2012.

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To some, this mercantilist approach seems crude, somehow unbecoming of Australia. Others point out that Asian societies are also steeped in a history of trade and economic interdependency. Yet because the language of the paper is so blunt in this respect, it is not in itself a useful tool for Australian ‘soft diplomacy’ efforts in India, or other Asian countries. The sooner we move on from words to actions, the better.

The second step is to look at what we already have with India. The oft-repeated list of “cricket, Commonwealth and curry” is actually shorthand for a level of affinity that our diplomats can only dream about with most other regional partners. The Commonwealth refers to our comparable institutions - parliaments, public services, courts and police, stock exchanges, banks and corporations, armed forces - built in parallel on British models over the last century and a half (though Australians must remember that we stood on a different side of the imperial fence from most Indians, who resisted British rule). Curry is the lure of Indian culture that has attracted many Australians from Alfred Deakin on. Cricket is a shared code of skill and honour, pulling in players and fans from all classes in both countries.2 On the one hand, these commonalities may serve as a cushion to help ameliorate the problems that arise from time to time in relations between nations. On the other hand, slow progress in ties between Australia and India over decades suggests they may have acted as a placebo, or substitute for a genuine partnership.

The third step is to realise what we don’t have with India, and then set out to build it. It is this lack, which the White Paper does not explore in detail, that this paper will discuss. The missing links can be brought under three broad headings.

• A deep knowledge base about India in Australia

• More effective representation of contemporary Australia in India

• A comprehensive strategic relationship based on close economic, political, security and cultural relations

Australia needs to develop wider and deeper understanding of Indian history outside the imperial experience, including the Indian side of that experience. Our people and leaders should have a firmer grasp of India’s tumultuous political history post-1947 till today (beyond glimpses through the novels of Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry and Salman Rushdie). We need to better understand the complexities of India’s economic and social development in the context of global markets, and its unique strategic perspectives.

This paper argues for a quantum leap in Australia’s commitment to the relationship, backed by greater resources and smarter approaches. We need to put much more into the study of a country as large and complex as India. Specific funding for Indian studies and research must be benchmarked against the resources Australia now puts into institutions dedicated

2 As noted by Darshak Mehta, Sydney businessman and chair of the LBW Trust, an educational charity formed by cricketing enthusiasts: “Indians admire the total dedication and commitment of the Australian players, even despite the sledging. No other country captures the cricketing imagination of Indians: How can a nation of 23 million produce so many sporting champions?”

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to other big foreign relationships such as China and the United States. At present, such funding lags far behind, and the opportunities for studying India are woefully inadequate at school, university and mid-career levels.

Australia’s existing network of diplomatic missions and representative offices in India could serve as both a model and a mechanism for improving our understanding of that country. However, it would need to be rationalised, augmented and re-tasked if this objective were to be achieved. The Australian presence in India has expanded in recent years to include not only the Australian High Commission in New Delhi and consulates-general in Mumbai and Chennai, but also Austrade offices in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Cochin, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Pune, as well as State government offices representing NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. The weighting of this network leans heavily towards trade promotion – undoubtedly a major priority – but this urgently needs to be broadened as a means of rapidly generating a better knowledge base. One possible way of augmenting this network would be to establish Australian research bases in India, each of which could perhaps be attached to a leading university or institute. A research base located in New Delhi could track Indian policy debates in economics and social areas. Another in, say, Bangalore could have a more scientific and technical orientation, drawing in Australian experts in subjects such as earth sciences, space, climate change, water management and cyber-security to engage with Indian counterparts. This research base could carry forward the kinds of cooperation agreements signed during Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s visit to New Delhi in October 2012.

The existence of such a network of research centres could not only serve as a means for expanded research and information gathering by Australia in India; combined with more effective public diplomacy strategies executed and co-ordinated by our diplomatic posts, it could also make a significant contribution to deepening Indian understanding of Australia beyond cricket.

The recent poll of Indian public opinion commissioned by the Australia India Institute and the Lowy Institute for International Policy showed Indians are warmly disposed towards Australia, ranking us as a top four nation in several indices. This positive perception could be turned into a real asset were Australia to prioritise information sharing and other exchanges aimed at fostering a deeper and more nuanced image of Australia. In the absence of such an effort, negative perceptions associated with violent incidents affecting Indian students in Australia in 2009-10 are proving slow to dissipate. The A.I.I/Lowy Poll found that 62 per cent of respondents considered Australia to be a dangerous place for Indian students. Yet, despite these reservations, 75 per cent of respondents ranked Australia second only to the United States as a good place to be educated, preferring an Australian education to the alternatives offered by Canada, Singapore, Britain and Germany. This represents a real opportunity for Australia, but investment will be required if we are to take advantage of it.

Recent efforts have demonstrated the effectiveness of creative thinking in boosting Australia’s public diplomacy efforts. For example, in July 2012, the Australia India Institute’s

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Perceptions Taskforce suggested that Australia make better use of its national awards system to honour Indian achievers.3 In October that year, the Australian government awarded Indian cricket great Sachin Tendulkar the Order of Australia, an action which generated substantial goodwill and not a little positive publicity for Australia in India.

In other areas, such as media, progress is slower. While the major Australian media groups (News Ltd, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Fairfax Media) now have correspondents stationed in New Delhi, their attention is all too often drawn to dramatic and violent events in neighbouring countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. With few exceptions, India-based correspondents have tended to ignore the less dramatic but significant shifts occurring within India. This requires both a shift in the “news values” of their editors and additional reporting resources on the ground in India. More criticism and demand from the consumers of news would help.4 But so too would a Senior Editors’ Dialogue, as recommended by the Perceptions Taskforce along the lines of a previous successful effort with Indonesia. Targeted financial support that assisted Australian and Indian film makers to develop television documentaries could help deepen public understanding of our different, yet linked histories and contemporary realities. The recently signed Memorandum of Understanding between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and India’s public broadcasting authority Prasar Bharati could facilitate joint film and television productions.

Building the comprehensive strategic relationship with India that the White Paper and both sides of Australian politics desire will be a work of decades in which governments and businesses do the heavy lifting. But important new opportunities have emerged with the clearance for uranium exports given by the Australian Labor Party government in October 2012. This has created a window of opportunity in which a rapid expansion of high-level contacts is possible. It is a once in a generation opportunity that Australia must not miss. Investment in facilitating such contacts now will be repaid a hundred-fold during the course of this century. It is the role of government to help provide the framework for business, academic and people-to-people contacts to thrive, never mind that India may be slow to reciprocate, partly due to its limited diplomatic resources. With the big negatives - the uranium export ban, and the attacks on Indian students - fading from the agenda, the emphasis must now be on quickly establishing beachheads of friendship and influence, then steadily pursuing positives in the relationship, taking a long perspective and learning lessons from past failures.

Two priority areas – the security relationship and uranium sales – require Australian leaders and officials to exercise acute sensitivity and prudence lest carelessness produce new setbacks. After the irritation caused by Kevin Rudd’s unilateral dismissal of a four-way defence arrangement with Japan, India and the United States (even though New Delhi was reluctant to entertain this Japanese-promoted idea), Canberra should be wary of attempting to push multilateral defence arrangements with India, and focus instead on bilateral cooperation. Australia’s alliance with the United States is not necessarily a plus in Indian defence and strategic policy circles, though they themselves have moved closer to

3 Australia India Institute Perceptions Taskforce, Beyond the Lost Decade, Melbourne, 2012.4 For the distractions of a New Delhi-based correspondent, see Jonathan Harley, Lost in Transmission, Bantam 2004.

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Washington over the past 15 years. Australia’s most attractive resource for India will be its insights into China, East Asia, and Southeast Asia (particularly Indonesia). The network of research centres proposed earlier in this paper could provide one conduit for the sharing of such insights and perspectives.

Nuclear issues are also extremely complex and delicately balanced. Bad feeling from Australia’s intemperate reaction to India’s 1998 nuclear test explosions has faded. With negotiations towards a safeguards agreement for civilian-use nuclear fuel supply from Australia underway, Canberra is closer to recognising India as a responsible nuclear power, a recognition that would be welcome in New Delhi. The strategic dialogue at the ministerial level, and also at “1.5 track” dialogues such as the 2012 Australia India Roundtable in New Delhi, can help to build mutual confidence and overcome obstacles on the way to a new working relationship between Canberra and New Delhi on security issues. Australia comes to this discussion as a power explicitly placing itself under the US extended nuclear deterrence, so moral posturing about the legitimacy of nuclear deterrence can achieve little except offence. Australian political leaders must ensure that officials conducting the safeguards negotiations are equipped with a clear understanding of what the national interest demands. No safeguards are perfect. From Australia’s point of view the political challenge is secure a deal that prevents nuclear proliferation or diversion of Australian uranium into India’s nuclear weapons program, whilst maintaining some kind of parity with what the United States seeks from India in similar negotiations. To require additional safeguards to those imposed on other nuclear powers to which Australian uranium can legally be sold, would risk exposing Canberra to the charge that it discriminates against India when it comes to nuclear issues, thereby leading to a recrudescence of tensions.

In a globalised world dominated by market economies, nations that build barriers and look inwards will make harder roads for themselves. An economy based on free trade, prudent financial management, high productivity and support for innovation is obviously crucial, but equally it is not sufficient. Countries that are also reasonably self-conscious about how they are perceived, and invest in ensuring that their own citizens are more knowledgeable and familiar with other nations and cultures, will be the ones more likely to prosper and enjoy security.

For the rest of this paper, I wish to focus on three areas in which the recommendations of the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper need to be thoughtfully approached if they are to produce valuable outcomes, particularly in relation to India. For the purposes of this discussion we will call them ‘Educating Australia’, ‘Engaging Business’, and ‘The Indian Diaspora in Australia’.

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Educating AustraliaNothing in the White Paper dramatised the arrival of India in the forefront of Australia’s regional relationships more than the inclusion of Hindi among the four priority languages for teaching in schools (along with Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian). The White Paper sets the ambitious target of giving all students access to one of these languages continuously throughout their schooling, presumably by the target date for general “Asia literacy” of 2025. Taking in the language pools of Urdu (the same spoken language as Hindi but written in Arabic script) and second-language speakers of Hindi, a student of Hindi will acquire direct access to the world’s second largest language pool (known in former times as “Hindustani”), of about 600 million speakers. Side-branches of study lead to Iranian, Arabic, the Turkic languages, major Indian language groups such as Bengali, and the ancient Sanskrit.

Hindi is the language of India’s most prolific film industry, centred on “Bollywood” (from Bombay, the former name of Mumbai), reaching audiences across India even in regions with their own vernacular cinema. Increasingly, Indian films are based on big budgets and international qualities. Figures such as director Shekhar Kapur and musical composer A.R. Rahman have made the leap into films of global appeal. While the English language media remains strong, more rapid advances are now being made in newspapers and television programming in Hindi and other Indian languages. Delhi University’s Alok Rai has said Hindi contains the democratic “energies” of India.

The White Paper’s inclusion of Hindi has been welcomed by the Indian-Australian community and by the small band of teachers already involved in Indian studies – but not without some trepidation. The way in which Korean has been dropped from the list of priority Asian languages for schools, after resources and student effort have been put into it, shows that good intent is not enough. Resources must follow.

With the most likely early demand for Hindi teaching coming from schools drawing pupils from the Indian diaspora, there will be mixed feelings among parents from non-Hindi language groups (Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil etc.) trying to keep their children versed in these languages to connect with extended families and ancestral homes. However, with the chances of getting these languages included in an Australian school curriculum being slim, many are likely to accept Hindi as the most workable compromise.

Hindi language study starts from a low base in Australian schools and universities, however. The Rangebank Public School in Melbourne’s Southeast may be the only primary or secondary school in the country with Hindi in its regular curriculum for all 380 students from preparatory to Year 6 since early 2012. The West Ryde Public School in northwest Sydney offers Hindi as one of three language choices to all students, with 120 students choosing it in 2013. Seven other primary schools in Sydney offer Hindi, with about 300 students enrolled. Otherwise, Hindi is taught as an extra-curricular subject, through community and weekend classes, in NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia, and the ACT.

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Among the three states with some Hindi teaching at school level, the Victorian School of Languages employs 14 Hindi teachers for after-school classes for 359 students from prep to Year 12, with 62 students across Years 11 and 12 studying Hindi for the VCE. NSW has 14 Hindi teachers for government schools and a further six in the Saturday School of Community Languages, with 17 students sitting Hindi for the Higher School Certificate last year. South Australia has three registered teachers and about 100 students across all school years.5 Overall we are looking at 700 to 1000 school-age students studying Hindi at varying levels of intensity.

Typically, teachers come from the Indian-origin community. Pioneering work in NSW came from the Indo-Aust Bal Bharathi Vidyalaya Hindi School (IABBV-Hindi School), which has operated since 1987 largely through the efforts of volunteers such as founder Mala Mehta, and drawing financial support and backing from the NSW Department of Education and Training. The foundation provides weekend classes for 90 children, from pre-school to matriculation levels. In 2007, Hindi was added as a course for the Saturday School of Community Languages, with courses accredited for the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate. Study centres have been opened at two high schools in Sydney.

The prospect is for Hindi language teaching to grow organically out of existing programs, with an emphasis on quality rather than a quick rush for larger numbers. At school level, the Indian diaspora in Australia is likely to supply the initial demand for Hindi teaching and the supply of teachers as well, from a community with many native speakers with a generally high level of education who with the right training can be turned into excellent teachers.

The experiences at Rangebank, West Ryde and the IABBV-Hindi School could be investigated as pilot programs for wider emulation throughout Australia. In particular, a federal-state team could look at practical ways to turn qualified linguists in the Indian-Australian community into qualified teachers, perhaps through a speeded-up or specialised diploma of education.

For Indian studies to be incorporated in standard subjects at schools, much more investment in mid-career training and familiarisation for teachers is required. The new Australian Curriculum has a cross-curriculum priority of Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, meaning that teachers in all subjects and at all levels must (in theory) include content and a focus on Asia. But curriculum is focused on generic student outcomes rather than content or syllabuses. The new curriculum does include some mention of India and includes some examples (or ‘elaborations’) of content that assist teachers to understand what they might do. Some of the elaborations in each subject use India examples. “In reality it still mostly comes back to the individual teacher or school who decide the content used in the classroom to achieve the student outcomes,” says Kathe Kirby, executive director of the Asia Education Foundation at the University of Melbourne. “The key to more India content in Australian schools is the training and professional development of teachers combined with the engagement of school principals who will ensure that their school curriculum is Asia literate.”

5 Justine Ferrari, “We need to talk about Hindi”, The Australian, October 30, 2012

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At one time, from the 1950s to the early 1990s, Australian universities had a widely noted place in international studies of India, with scholars like A.L. Basham engaged at the Australian National University, and concentrations of talent at Sydney, Monash, La Trobe, Adelaide, Flinders, Curtin and Western Australian universities. The downward spiral of demand and availability then set in, with retiring scholars not replaced. Meanwhile, Singapore’s government-led drive to establish itself as a major focus of Indian scholarship saw some of Australia’s remaining specialists recruited by the National University of Singapore.

With the University of Sydney dropping the teaching of Hindi, the only universities teaching the language are the ANU and La Trobe – though the latter’s 17 students have been taught by a temporary teacher since the ANU hired its Hindi specialist, Peter Friedlander, after the retirement of its own veteran Hindi teacher, Richard Barz.6 With this and other appointments in political science and international relations, the ANU is rebuilding its India/South Asia capabilities significantly, as is the University of Melbourne with its financial and in-kind support for the Australia India Institute and the recent establishment of a permanent Chair in Contemporary Indian Studies initially funded by the Victorian State government.

In the teaching of Indian history, politics, economics and other disciplines, the universities have more to offer, with most of the larger institutions having specialists who include India in courses, or who could do so at short notice. In October 2012, the Indian government undertook to fund five chairs at Australian universities for eminent Indian scholars, through the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. These chairs are to be located at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of Technology Sydney, Macquarie University, and one other not yet specified.

At universities, the initial student body is more likely to come from a wider spectrum of the Australian community than at schools, particularly as a large proportion of students from Indian migrant families still choose vocational education. To speed up the introduction of Hindi for students from non-Indian backgrounds, more options should be created for students to undertake intensive bursts of language training to complement their studies in the humanities and sciences, including through in-country immersion courses. As Kama Maclean, associate professor in South Asian studies at the University of NSW (and graduate in Hindi from La Trobe), notes, language study enhances area studies, encouraging students to specialise in a region. “Indian studies without any language just doesn’t stand up as a serious engagement of India, and nobody (in my field, anyway) can undertake a PhD and be internationally recognised without a language component” Maclean says.

At a later stage, Australian universities might diversify their linkages with non-Hindi regions, but perhaps initially consortiums of universities such as the Group of Eight might think about setting up, as well as the research bases in New Delhi and Bangalore suggested above, an “Australia Bhavan” in one or two of the university cities of northern India such as Lucknow or Allahabad where undergraduate students might stay for short immersion courses and start to explore India at local level.

6 Bernard Lane, “New blood for Hindi at La Trobe” The Australian, April 22, 2013

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The idea of student exchanges between Australian and Asian universities is one pushed in the White Paper, with all of our universities urged to have one such relationship by 2025. The Coalition parties, under their leader Tony Abbott and deputy leader Julie Bishop also promise a “reverse Colombo plan” where thousands of Australia’s top students will be placed in a university in Asia for part of their studies. The Coalition also sees such students being taken in as interns by Australian companies operating in Asian countries.

Such exchanges are already happening. Monash has set up a joint academy with the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, in which postgraduate students are simultaneously enrolled, supervised and accredited in both institutions, pursing research in subjects such as computer engineering, infrastructure engineering, clean energy, water, stem cell research and nanotechnology. Study is mostly in India, but Indian students have the option of six months attachment at Monash. The first successful PhD candidate, Vikram Vishal, recently won National Young Scientist at the Indian Science Congress for his research into carbon sequestration. A Victorian government program is also bringing 10 new PhD students from India to the state’s universities each year, so that after three years there will be 30 such Indian research scholars in the state at any one time. The Australia India Institute’s new internship program for undergraduate and postgraduate students drew 200 applications for the two month-long placements with Indian and Australian companies and institutions in India’s financial capital, Mumbai in mid-2013.

Australian students would be even more likely to volunteer for longer exchanges if the time abroad counted towards their degree, not an additional period of study (unless of course it was linked to employment opportunities). For their part, Australian companies may be wary of the additional responsibility of looking after interns.

Mid-career study is also a highly prospective pathway for furthering the White Paper’s objectives. The Asialink institute attached to the University of Melbourne has put 530 mid-career executives, professionals and public servants through its nine-month Asian leadership program since 1998. The part-time program introduces the leadership students to contemporary politics, economics and society across a range of Asian countries, including India. Alumni include two present members of the federal parliament. The Australia India Institute also has an Emerging Leader Fellowship program that brings highly-talented Indians in diverse fields to Australia for two-month attachments.7 This highly regarded program could be scaled up and rolled out across Australia to deepen bonds of knowledge and familiarity with Australia across India’s government, media and business communities. In addition, Australian universities could consider a more specialised course, perhaps a master’s degree focused on business culture and economic settings of the five major economies given priority in the White Paper, including India. Such a course could be highly attractive to young professionals in India and other countries in the region, as well as Australians and their employers.

7 Educational and training sector consultant Prasenjit Kundu said he expected an enjoyable “paid holiday” but ended up with a range of valuable insights and connections in his field.

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A caveat about the sustainability of Indian language study is that the writers of the White Paper might have placed too much weight on the commercial utility of Hindi. Unlike all the other four pillars of the Asian economic resurgence (Japan, China, South Korea and Indonesia) as perceived in the White Paper, India has a domestic corporate and governmental culture operating in English at executive level. The elite cadres of the Indian government (the administrative, diplomatic, police and security, forestry etc. services, and the armed forces at officer level) all operate in English. Corporate regulation and higher-level litigation are conducted in English. The main business and economic newspapers are in English, as is much, if not most of high-level academic writing. Even Australian businessmen of Indian origin say they have never conducted commercial correspondence other than in English. An Australian company representative in India would be unlikely to find lack of Hindi ability a critical handicap especially as many would be based in non-Hindi speaking cities (Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata). Those based in “Hindi belt” cities including New Delhi would have no trouble recruiting able bi-lingual or multi-lingual staff, and would be wise to rely on them. Across India, as Alok Rai has noted, Indians have switched from an early post-independence tendency to see English as a colonial hangover to a perception of English ability as the key to participation in globalised prosperity.8

Yet if our business executives and others can be disabused of the notion of Hindi as the open sesame to “a market of 1.3 billion” or a huge middle class (of wildly varying estimations), Hindi language and Indian studies can be placed in a wider, longer-term context of national information, familiarisation and affinity-building that will bring many spin-offs, including commercial ones, and progress towards the strategic goal of security within the region. While not essential, knowledge of Hindi would vastly augment the “feel” of audiences and markets for any executive involved with marketing and advertising, media programming and exchanges, and sports promotion and administration (Think of Brett Lee’s part-Hindi song “Main Tumhara Hoon”). For anyone spending time in India, of course, knowledge of the local language, even at basic level, enhances the sense of connection with people and place, including in workplaces. Once outside the major cities, it is immensely useful.

Engaging BusinessSince India embraced market-based reforms in 1991, Australian business has had periodic bouts of enthusiasm about the country’s economic prospects and domestic market growth. These ‘Indian summers’ of interest provided lessons and examples for our enterprises, the main one being that relationships and persistence are the key.

Leighton Holdings has been operating in India since 1998, completing more than a dozen large-scale construction, infrastructure and mining projects. Its move into a joint venture with the Welspun group of entrepreneur B.K.Goenka connected it with one of India’s most highly regarded, and fast-growing, new business houses. A $5.5 billion coal mine in eastern Jharkhand state for the National Thermal Power Corp by its Thiess subsidiary moved into production in early 2013 after nearly a decade of negotiation and preparation.

8 See paper by Alok Rai, for the “The Reluctant Superpower” conference, Australia India Institute, September 2011.

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The trucking and logistics firm Linfox is another corporate Australian with staying power, having been on the roads of India for eight years. Its fleet of 150 trucks deliver products from Indian customers including Hindustan Lever, Tata BlueScope, Tata Steel, and Asian Paints, and will expand with a further 250 prime movers being purchased from Tata Motors.

Both Leighton and Linfox have pursued social responsibility programs, as well as staff development, and Linfox has sent several of its managers to the famous Mount Eliza Business School near Melbourne. As noted in the White Paper, Leighton runs a trade training school in India to bring local recruits up to required standard. Linfox sponsors a literacy program and together with Tata Steel sponsors a program to reduce HIV infection among trucking crews (a notorious vector of the disease in India, as in many developing countries).

The Australian High Commission registers some 150 Australian companies with representation in India and investments totalling $5 billion. Among them, despite its problems earlier in frontline banking, is the ANZ Bank, with a 100 per cent-owned subsidiary in Bangalore employing 5000 staff in back-office processing for its worldwide operations. ANZ’s earlier departure from India was one of several, well-publicised retreats from the Indian market in the first decade of market reforms that have left a lingering impression that Australian companies lack endurance and long-term vision to see beyond short-term investment obstacles in Asia. The bank sold its ANZ Grindlays chain of over 50 retail branches in 2000, after years of litigation flowing from a Rs 5.06 billion (then $253 million) loss in Mumbai’s securities trading crisis of 1992. The Indian branch network is now reported to be the most profitable sector for the new owner, Standard Chartered. Likewise Telstra, in its joint venture with the B.K.Modi group, made possible India’s first mobile telephone call in Kolkata in 1995, only to pull out five years later. The late Australian media mogul, Kerry Packer, entered a short-lived television and IT venture with the controversial company Himachal Futuristic and stockbroker Ketan Parekh in 2000, but sold out some 18 months later with a reported $US 225 million loss. The national carrier Qantas has likewise added to the image of fickle, short-term commitment, changing the route of its daily direct service to Mumbai and recently reverting to a code-sharing deal with Indian carrier Jet Airways beyond Singapore. Not surprisingly, these examples by very big enterprises and players have tended to colour views.9 If more widely known, the Modi-Telstra and Consolidated Press Holdings (Packer) experiences would be salutary lessons in the importance of choosing the right local partner, as well as appreciating the sometimes lengthy gestation period of ventures in India before profits appear.

Yet a kind of persistence is apparent on the part of some who have had their fingers burnt. ANZ Bank under its present leadership is making a re-entry to the Indian banking scene with a branch in Mumbai, while Telstra moved in 2009 to scale up its remaining investment in data service provision.

It has to be conceded also that India is not rated a particularly welcoming country for business investment, nor is it very highly rated for its ease of doing business. The foreign investment regime is complicated, and restrictive in many sectors that would be attractive to Australian enterprises. The judicial system often fails to speedily resolve disputes, and finding a local partner operating to acceptable corporate governance standards is often difficult.

9 “In my view Australian firms lack the resilience to stay on and compete in Indian mar-kets,” notes former Indian high commissioner to Australia G. Parthasarathy.

India is also a market where the right “price point” for mass consumption is often well below the normal range of consideration for companies from markets like Australia. The success of Hindustan Lever with its small sachets of laundry powder and shampoo, the Rs 4 (2 cent) per minute prepaid calls that triggered the explosion of mobile phones last decade, the earlier success of Japanese motorcycle ventures, and the Maruti-Suzuki and Tata Nano mini-cars, are all examples of this price sensitivity.10

A newer phenomenon is Indian investment in Australia, bringing scores of Indian firms into projects ranging from the $10 billion integrated coal, rail and loading system of Adani Ports in Queensland to Riverina Oils and Bio-Energy’s $100 million edible oils plant at Wagga Wagga to the Mahindra group’s aerospace interests in Melbourne to IT firms such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys in Sydney and other capitals. By the end of the decade, this Indian investment is likely to reach $20 billion on the basis of approvals.

The Indian presence will inevitably bring a wider range of Australian enterprises into commercial ties and cooperation with Indian firms. One example was that of a Sydney-based IT form, Financial Network Services, which had developed core banking software for its client-base of about 100 large and small banks in 35 countries. TCS found the software ideal for its bid for a large tender from State Bank of India, and bought out the Sydney firm. The software is now being applied in SBI’s 15 000 branches and 175 million accounts, and is being taken by TCS into a contract with Bank of China.

While the Sydney firm’s founders were happy enough with the $26 million buyout, a lesson pointed out by the Australian-based TCS advisor Neville Roach is that Australian IT firms should get out more into markets such as India to realise their strengths. Perhaps this is starting to happen. Dinesh Anand, head of the ANZ Bank’s India desk in Melbourne, reports that 300 people came to a briefing ahead of a recent Victorian trade delegation to India. In previous years it would be a tenth that number showing interest. Indeed, as Roach urges: “The biggest single thing we can do is go there. The attitude of waiting and watching until everything is well in India - it’s not stopping the Germans, the Koreans, the Japanese. There is a definite first entry advantage.”

Two-way trade is not growing automatically. The total dropped back to $18.3 billion in 2011-12, from $21 billion in 2010-11. More drive from the Australian side is called for, with initiative coming from the top of the corporate world. At present, the Australian and Indian business communities have only a pale shadow of the Australia-China CEO Forum, held alongside the latest Boao Forum and official visit by the Australian prime minister. The Australia-China forum includes about 20 on each side of the leaders of the largest corporations, financial institutions and regulatory bodies, in Australia’s case under sponsorship of the Business Council of Australia (BCA). The Australia-India CEO Forum, begun in 2012 under chairmanship of Linfox’s Lindsay Fox and Naveen Jindal of the Jindal steelmaking group, is a more modest, low-profile event, involving a few business leaders on each side. An Australia-India Business Council meeting is held alongside similar prime ministerial and ministerial visits, but as these are often called at short notice, top-level business representation is thin.

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10 Rama Bijapurkar, We Are Like That Only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India, Penguin Books India, 2009.

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What would kick the economic relationship along would be a regular, high-level business forum. A formal business conference might be one approach, alternating in each country and rotating around the bigger state capitals, with four or five of the council’s top-50 corporate chiefs tapped to lead discussions as a national service, relying on papers on global trends, economic reforms in the two countries, and market experiences. Roger Corbett, who as chief executive of Woolworths pursued retail collaboration with the Tata group, suggests the high-profile Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce as a model for India. Out of such mutual familiarisation could emerge fruitful collaborations in directions not always possible to forsee.

The Indian Diaspora in AustraliaIf natural resources form the mainstay of Australian exports to India, then human resources are what India has to offer in return.

For the first time, in 2011-12 (July-June) India was the largest source of permanent immigration for Australia, with Indians comprising nearly 16 per cent of the total migrant intake. The 2011 census showed 295,362 people in Australia to have been born in India, included in a wider pool of 390,894 stating they had Indian ancestry. Together with a temporary population of students, tourists and workers, the Indian diaspora in Australia at any one time numbers 450,000. A demographic study of this diaspora, looking at their regional and social origins in India and their pathways to Australia, should be undertaken.

Especially in the larger cities, Indian faces are more and more visible at all levels, and increasingly accepted as part of the human mix of our multicultural society. Where concentrated in particular districts, such as the Northwest of Sydney, the diaspora is starting to come into electoral calculations.

As well as being a resource of high professional talent and entrepreneurship, the Indian community has proven a great stabiliser in the bilateral relationship, its testimony countering the more extreme reporting in India about attacks on Indian students in 2009 and its leaders helping guide Australian authorities in their responses. That the flow of Indian visitors to Australia (152,000 in 2011-12) is approaching that of Australians to India (186,000 in the same year) despite adverse currency movements is partly due to the reassuring messages being sent to friends and relatives.

The recent poll of Indian public opinion by the Australia India Institute and the Lowy Insti-tute showed that Australia ranks close to the top among the foreign countries regarded most warmly. Yet the 2009 crisis is still being felt. Australia was still considered a dangerous place for Indian students by 62 per cent of respondents, though 53 per cent consider it safer than a few years ago, and 49 per cent thought Australia generally a safe country. Despite these reservations, Australia ranked second after the United States as a good place to be educated, according to 75 per cent of Indians, and rates more highly than Canada, Singapore, Britain and Germany.

Student numbers from India remain below half the peak level of 121,000 enrolments in 2009 attained after several years of explosive growth, at 54,396 enrolments in 2012. The decline may not have levelled out with 30,023 Indian students enrolled in March this year, which is 17.9 per cent below the number in March 2012.

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The educational sector remains under-performing, and needs careful nurturing. As much as anything, the student exchange is the wellspring of a thriving relationship between the two countries, connecting what would be an ageing, slow-growing Australia to a friendly country potentially enjoying a demographic dividend in which we can share.

Yet few community leaders would like a return to the situation just before the crisis hit, and many see an unfortunate balance in the make-up of the Indian student intake. The pre-2009 growth was notoriously driven by an immigration back channel disguised as vocational training. Though there were many genuine seekers of training and experience in Australia, and well-intended and qualified providers of that training, the program was also abused at both ends of the student flow - as thoroughly exposed in the wake of the violence scare. Though the linkage with migration has been made more conditional and uncertain, the intake remains heavily weighted to vocational training over higher education, in contrast to the student bodies from most other Asian countries including China. There is a strong feeling among community leaders that Australia has to work much harder to get the “best and brightest” from India.

While we should certainly aim to get our share of India’s top brains studying at our universities, it has to be said that taking students from a broader swathe of Indian society and outside existing elites will extend people-to-people linkages in all kinds of unforseen ways. Those who stay in Australia are often supported by substantial family investments in new small businesses, taxi licences and so on. Those who return will more readily think of Australian methods and partnerships for what they do.

The loss of competitiveness from the high Australian dollar and extremely high rents in Australian cities, notably Sydney, applies to all foreign students, and concerns about student safety have been raised by governments other than India at times. However India has a particular overhang of unease about safety, possibly more sensitivity to pricing, and being located further flying hours and time zones from Australia, perhaps not so influenced by proximity. For Indian students aiming for higher education and postgraduate degrees, institutional prestige and rankings are keenly weighed, along with post-educational opportunities. It might also be argued that Indians (and South Asians generally) are more alert for signs of discrimination or disadvantage.

To build and improve the educational connection, Australian governments and institutions must continually monitor providers and take steps to ensure the student experience is a happy one. Quality of courses must be established and policed, and questions raised about the level of self-regulation must be answered.

Universities are already sorting themselves into tiers, between the large research institutions and some of the smaller, more vocational ones that have given trouble. The Technical and Further Education (TAFE) systems run by state governments need urgent review. In three states (NSW, Victoria, and Queensland), the TAFE systems are a battleground between state governments, teaching staff, and local communities, and to some extent a public-vs.-private split between the two sides of Australian politics. Their finances have suffered severely from the sharp decline in vocational student numbers, particularly from India and Nepal, as well as putting stresses on state budgets from subsidised domestic demand for training. Yet in contrast to the private vocational training industry, the TAFE colleges have been pillars

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of quality. The drawback is a public sector mentality, and absence of entrepreneurship in moving more to the “export” side of training, either with foreign students in Australia or taking their courses to campuses in other countries. One example of this risk-averse spirit came with a project involving the NSW TAFE system and Tata Consultancy Services to provide courses in retailing for Indian students. According to Tata’s Neville Roach, the TAFE network was unable to put up the modest $40,000 required for its side of the financing. Along with the high dollar, a more precisely targeted linkage between study/ work experience and permanent residency will make it hard to regain the peak numbers of in-country students from India. For Australia to grow its vocational education sector more strongly, it will have to build the external operations of our colleges. Prasenjit Kundu, whose consultancy Globsyn Skills Development is a partner of India’s National Skills Development Corporation (a government-industry enterprise) suggests a consortium approach involving state and private providers with government backing. “India respects the authenticity of government-backed organisations,” he notes. On its side, the Indian government is adjusting its foreign investment and other controls to help this happen, recognising that a massive upgrading of skills is necessary for the country to take best advantage of its “demographic dividend” of a youth bulge in the population.

But to assure a continuing flow of students into Australia, student welfare also needs a higher priority, with students and their families made to feel that we regard foreign students as our own while in our charge. The February 2013 report of the federal government’s International Education Advisory Council, chaired by Michael Chaney, addresses this issue squarely in its recommendations.

Among other things, it urges a stock-take and certification system for student accommodation, including rental properties closes to campuses, and ensuring that international students have access to appropriate treatment in public hospitals, “given that they are required to have visa length health insurance cover”.

The council also takes up the vexed question of public transport concessions. It urges that governments “ensure that international students in each jurisdiction are treated in an equal way to domestic students with respect to transport concessions.” NSW and Victoria are the two hold-out states in this matter, which has taken on a certain symbolism as well being judged to affect student safety (as many students are walking at night to save money). The NSW government’s decision, announced in India by Premier Barry O’Farrell in October 2012, to give international students a 35 per cent discount on public transport fares has failed to silence pressure for the full concession rate that applied for domestic students. That the state government then revealed the 35 per cent concession would cost it nothing, as foreign students would otherwise have been avoiding public transport, also detracted from the gesture. The remedy, if a state like NSW cannot find this small investment in an industry earning it $6 billion a year by O’Farrell’s estimate, is to fold a transport levy into fee structures, so that cheap public transport travel and other services like personal and career counselling look to be provided equitably.

Finally, the federal government must avoid leaving students in the lurch through sudden rule changes, as happened with the refusal to “grandfather” changes to the linkage between student visas and permanent residency qualification after the 2009 crisis. Similarly, a more open mentality must permeate the immigration regime, so that the rule-abiding majority

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are not penalised by the abuses of a few. Currently Indian student visa applications take longer and are more subject to rejection than most other national groupings.

Australians generally need to be disabused of remaining notions that hosting foreign students is a kind of aid program similar to the Colombo Plan. Indian and other foreign students are customers, not aid recipients, paying full-cost fees. As Tata’s Neville Roach observes: “We are not doing these people a favour. They are doing it for us.”

Indeed, as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s Supriya Singh has noted, education reversed the typical flow of remittances from migrants in wealthy countries to their former homes. “…in the 2000s, Australian education became a recognised pathway to migration,” Singh wrote. “Families of the nearly 100,000 Indian students in 2010 paid $2.9 billion, as a deposit on the possibility of migration and a better future.”

A government-industry advertising campaign might remind Australians of what foreign students and their families bring to our economy, and deepen the sense of welcome.

The healthy rise in Indian visitor numbers shows that interest in travel to Australia is strong, but even greater numbers could be tapped for the hard-pressed tourism sector by easier visas for low-risk visitors. Indian residents say it can take 15 days for a visa application to get to “first base” while India’s partly on-line system takes three to five working days. The extension of long-term multiple entry visas for distinguished business executives, sports figures, media and other professionals could also create a stock of goodwill for Australia.

Getting many more Indians and Australians “going there” to the others’ country has to be the foundation for developing ties in the Asian century.

ConclusionAlthough Australia and India have many deep and long-standing linkages, there is a continuing risk of complacency and drift that could see opportunities ignored for a deeper relationship with great potential economic and national security benefits, certainly on our side. The White Paper pointed to an Australia (and Australians) boldly exploring the opportunities of Asia, accepting the greater cross-border movement of people and capital that is intrinsic to the globalised economy and world community in which we all now live. With India, where the economic relationship is just at the beginning, the White Paper is steering us towards the early investments in institutions and human capabilities that will help Australia avoid being stuck in the “quarry” trap of other regional relationships. And thanks to the shared things we have, embracing this particular “other” might be the easiest of all.

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RecommendationsRebalance Australia’s diplomatic representation in India; rationalise Austrade presence to minimise duplication of effort and fund an expanded network of resources for general information gathering and dissemination, and relationship building.

Establish two Australian research bases in India, one in New Delhi for political-social-economic studies, one in Bangalore for scientific and environmental collaboration.

Benchmark funding for Indian studies and research against resources for China and the United States studies.

Establish an “Australia Bhavan [House]” in a north Indian city for Australian undergraduates to take Hindi immersion courses.

Extend opportunities for Australian students to spend part of their courses at Indian institutions and corporations, drawing lessons from the new Australia India Institute intern program in Mumbai.

Expand fellowship programs like the Australia India Institute’s Emerging Leader Fellowships to allow mid-career professionals to spend time developing their ideas and undertaking research in Australia.

Create new opportunities for Australians to deepen their India knowledge base by developing exchange programs in India, and a new master’s degree in The Economy of Contemporary India.

Establish an annual high-level Australia-India business forum alternating in each country and rotating around state capitals.

Undertake a demographic study of the Indian diaspora in Australia, looking at their regional and social origins in India and their pathways to Australia.

To facilitate the introduction of Hindi language teaching in schools, establish a federal-state team to design a nationally accredited course for native speakers of Hindi who wish to become qualified language teachers, perhaps through a speeded-up or specialised diploma of education. The team could also consider the introduction of new measures and incentives that facilitate the uptake of tuition in foreign languages in general by Australian high school students.

Build on the TAFE systems to cement quality standards in vocational education. Develop more entrepreneurial arms for offshore courses, in India and elsewhere, where possible through a state-private consortium.

Remove remaining State government discrimination against foreign students in public transport concessions.

Fund a government-industry advertising campaign to remind Australians of what foreign students and their families bring to the economy.

Facilitate less complex visa application and approval processes for low-risk Indian visitors to Australia and vice-versa.

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The AuthorHamish McDonald was born in Melbourne in 1948 and entered journalism after graduating in arts from the University of Sydney. He has been a foreign correspondent in Jakarta, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New Delhi and Beijing, and has been Regional Editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and foreign editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. His longest overseas posting was in India 1990-97 for the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Australian Financial Review. He has won the Walkley Award twice, had a report on Burma for the FEER read into the record of the US Congress, and his co-directed documentary on AIDS/HIV in India “The New Untouchables” won a Golden Eagle Award at the Washington DC Film Festival. Among his books is Mahabharata in Polyester, the story of India’s Reliance group, which has been a best-seller in India under the title Ambani & Sons. He is currently Journalist-in-Residence at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, and in early 2014 will be a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

 

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