Forging a future Taskforce wish list to bring Australia and India closer

The Australia India Institute’s “Perceptions Taskforce” recently released a report on the future of the India-Australia relationship, making 32 recommendations to improve relations between the two countries.

These include more cooperation in the areas of travel, education, defence, media, humanitarian aid, and specific suggestions for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

India-Australia relations have always been a confusing enigma, sometimes cordial, often hostile, occasionally tolerant. Starting with Pokhran in the late 1990s, relations stalled somewhat and reached an impasse in the late 2000s when the Indian students’ crisis erupted. Australia’s dilemma, in the wake of a vociferous response from Indian media backed by public protests by international students here, was to look beyond the lost decade, and make fresh attempts to improve relations with its neighbour who showed signs of becoming a force to reckon with in Asia.

Among other reforms, the Australia India Institute’s “Perceptions Taskforce” took ownership of a project to understand the state of relations between Australia and India, and to identify perceptions on how these two peoples and nations view one another. Have the conflicts irrevocably changed things for the worse, or is there opportunity to build bridges?

The six member taskforce set up in September 2011, consisted of senior diplomats Gopalaswami Parthasarathy and John McCarthy, political columnist Ashok Malik, journalists Maxine McKew and Christopher Kremmer and analyst Sanjaya Baru.

The report commissioned by the three-year-old Australia India Institute, entitled Beyond the Lost Decade and released in mid-July, is a must read for those who wish to have a deeper understanding of why the two countries have had such a fractured relationship in the past and the knife edge on which the relationship between the two currently sits.

Some of the recommendations made by the Taskforce are listed here.

What Australia can do

• Extend the visas of Indian students whose permanent residency prospects affected by changes to immigration regulations in 2008

• Offer to TAFE and vocational training students the same poststudy work entitlements as uni students

Facilitate the study of Hindi and Indian studies in schools and universities

• Initiate discussions to start visa-on-arrival travel for Australians in India

• Institute Australian awards for foreign nationals

• Institute scholarships for Australian students to study in India

Enable DFAT to raise awareness in India of exemplary initiatives such as the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund.

• Allow Australia’s broadcasters to provide content to Asian broadcasters

• Establish an Australia-India senior editors’ dialogue

Help prevent and/or speedily address problems that can damage Australia’s brand as an education provider by prioritising student safety, proper orientation, police liaison support, and the active involvement of local ethnic communities as contact points for international students, including Indians.

• Invite representatives of regiments of Indian troops who fought at Gallipoli to be Australia’s guests at the 100th anniversary commemorations of the campaign in 2015, and invite expressions of interest from film makers interested in stories about the shared experiences of Indian and Australian soldiers at Gallipoli.

• Establish deeper defence relations, with permanent positions in the Australian High Commission in New Delhi as well as joint training sessions between the forces

• Develop an online ‘one-stop shop’ website providing reliable information on all aspects of trade, diplomatic, educational, people-to-people cultural relations.

• Begin travelling exhibitions on art, history, heritage and sport between the two countries

• Expand the growing range of Australia-India annual lectures Increase interactions between Australian and Indian State and Federal parliamentarians

• Fund the Australian Institute of Criminology to undertake ongoing research into racism and crime, with an initial reference to inquire into the high profile incidents that impacted on relations with Indian in 2009-10.

• Encourage press to interact more, with exchange programs, for example

What India can do

• Propose regular Prime Ministerial visits between New Delhi and Canberra Establish a young political leaders program between India and Australia.

• Establish a naval attaché position at the Indian high commission in Canberra and open an Indian consulate in Brisbane

• Expedite the proposed restructuring of the territorial divisions of the MEA: split the 26-nation Southern Division and constitute a new Indo-Pacific or Australasia Division that could include Australia, NZ and the Pacific Islands.

• Have AusAID and India’s new Development Partnership Administration (DPA) combine efforts for humanitarian projects in less developed countries Encourage the setting up of taskforces and dialogues on Australia’s role in Indian energy and food security.

• Consider a policy of visa-on-arrival for citizens of Australia, which is currently available to citizens of NZ

• Encourage business associations such as CII and FICCI to interact with their counterparts in Australia, and institute short-term work and exchange programs for young Australian and Indian professionals.

• Encourage PTI and Doordarshan to establish a stronger presence in Australia, with a more robust network of stringers or fully fledged correspondents

• Explore joint possibilities of providing institutional and technical cooperation, including human resource training, to newly-emerging democracies in, for example, the Arab world.

What about the local Indian community?

Interestingly enough, while the report acknowledges the need for more involvement from the local Indian population to participate in mainstream debate, there has been no reference to the work which the local Indian community did to settle the fallout from the student crisis of 2009 nor the lobbying they undertook to persuade Australia to sell uranium to India. Input for the report was sought from diplomats who are on deputation for a few years, or from local academics who have not interacted in depth with the local community. That there was no local Indian Australian as part of the task force was surprising. One guesses that not one of 400,000 Indian Australians is amply qualified to offer suggestions to better the relationship between their country of birth and their country of adoption, with their unique long term perspective of both countries.