AIBC gets the long handle

BY DARSHAK MEHTA

Indian High Commissioner Smt. Sujatha

Singh took direct aim at the Australia India Business Council in her address on the 25th Anniversary of the AIBC in Sydney on August 29.

In an extraordinary attack, Her Excellency expressed her frustration that the AIBC had not fulfilled its potential in “exponentially expanding the economic relationship” between India and Australia. She publicly asked for it “to transform itself to become a truly effective body” and play a more important and representative role. She alluded to the fact that it seemed obsessed with process rather than focusing “on issues of substance”.

She conceded that on its own the NSW chapter was functioning well so, it was apparent that her swipe was at the organisation’s operations at the national level which are yet to be at par “with the most professional Business Councils in Australia and India”.

Indian diplomats rarely speak out in unobfuscatory language and the audience certainly grasped (if not, gasped at!) the disappointment of the High Commissioner and the timing, venue and importance of her message delivered right between the eyes, at the organisation’s Annual Dinner in the presence of an array of senior politicians and business folk.

The audience heard her in stunned silence and if the AIBC take the message to heart in the spirit in which it was delivered, it will be the first step in righting itself.

The Dinner was well patronised and the venue was wonderful as was the food. However, the AIBC committee needs to do some hard-thinking regarding organisational matters, prior to such events. They had lined up not one or two and certainly not three or four but NINE speakers in the course of the evening – and that does not include the MC, Dean Jones, the former Australian cricketer, in itself an unusual choice.

The Speakers were: John Robertson (Leader of the NSW Opposition); Andrew Stoner (Deputy Premier of NSW); John Alexander MP (conveying Federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott’s message: question – would the opposition leader have ever missed an Australia-Israel Business Council 25th Anniversary Dinner?); Dipen Rughani AIBC NSW President, H.E. Smt. Sujatha Singh, Trade Minister Dr Craig Emerson, and the great Bob Hawke who was the real draw-card of the evening. And it ended with Arun Jagatramka of Gujarat NRE delivering a Vote of Thanks and Sheba Nandkeolyar – for thanking the Committee

To mind that was at least FIVE speakers too many.

Would it not have been more appropriate and stimulating to hear a senior Australian or Indian business leader give the key-note address?

And, the old Indian obsession with politicians continues. When will the Indian community realise that these people are happy to go to the opening of an envelope and mouth banalities till the cows come home? What is more important is hard and continuing engagement on issues and policies, not soft appearances.

The Live Auction bombed spectacularly and embarrassingly. The quantity of the Silent Auction merchandise was overwhelming though the quality was not!

The Vote of Thanks was delivered to a half empty room, which was not the fault of Jagatramka, but a tremendous insult to him. Worst still, the people being thanked (on the top table) had all scooted home, by then!

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke in a nostalgic address, bordering on the emotional, reminisced about his close affinity and relationship with the late Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi and the circumstances leading to the establishment of the AIBC in the late ‘80s. Hawke can still captivate them as few can and inviting him was the smartest thing that the AIBC did. It would have been good to schedule his address much earlier in the evening and certainly before the tamasha

Not sure of dance and song at serious business events, either.

Do our countries have so little in common that we clutch at straws and bring up cricket all night long, as almost every speaker did?