Leading political figures of Australia have been travelling to India to allay fears of 'attacks' on Indians in their country. The Indian media has been describing these attacks on students and workers as 'racist'. What is actually going on?
During the past six years, the number of Indian students in Australia is estimated to have grown manifold—there were nearly 20,000 new students in 2008. The annual growth of Indian students has been reported to be 46 per cent during this period.
Why has Australia become such a favourite educational destination suddenly? The country earned nearly $14 billion last year in foreign exchange from international students; it has, in fact, become a large source of employment and revenue, beside increasingly contributing to the country's GDP. But unfortunately, this growth has not taken place in universities and other reputed Australian academic institutions; most of the enrolments are happening in private providers of vocational skills. So, hundreds of such providers have sprung up in cities like Melbourne and Sydney to cater to this so-called increased demand from Indian students. And, they are teaching them how to be a cook, barber, travel agent, etc. Thousands of Indian students are spending lots of money to secure this 'foreign' education from not-so-credible institutions. These institutes have small 'lecture halls' in poorer, cheaper and farther suburbs. In order to meet their growing costs of 'learning', these students also do some informal, part-time, low-paying jobs which require working during odd and late hours. Perhaps that is why most taxi drivers in Melbourne are Indian students.
Why such a 'gold rush' to get educated, and that too from rural areas of Punjab? It transpires that the Australian government, during the time of Hon Philip Ruddick as Immigration Minister, had made a policy that gave preference to those immigrants who had an Australian educational qualification in grant of residency status. Now, in this situation, unscrupulous 'educational agents' have mushroomed both in India and Australia. By using this provision and taking advantage of the largely unregulated private vocational education sector of Australia, these agents create the possibility of migration in the minds of unsuspecting Indian youth and lure them into selling land or taking huge loans to pay for Australian education.
These 'new' students have no knowledge of life in Australia and hence they don't know how to conduct themselves there.
Recent media reports suggest that the provincial government in Victoria has begun to review these private vocational education providers and found that many of them don't have the necessary standards as mandated by their own laws. Recent studies (The Australian, September 30, 2009) have shown that quality control for international students in such educational institutions is much weaker in comparison to those catering to domestic students. It has been reported that some of these vocational courses have been conducted in Punjabi, not in English. Many students admitted to these programmes didn't even possess the specified minimum English language skills. In fact, systems of quality control in Australia need to be upgraded just as much as they do in India.
The above facts may explain why many Indian students feel frustrated, cheated and duped; or that some Indian students feel happy to have 'beaten' the system to secure the necessary 'qualification' to get residency status. But, it still does not explain why they have been attacked? It appears that the experience of many recent immigrants in Australia, specially those who are non-white and non-professionally qualified, has been similar; they have faced attacks in shops, taxis and subways. That this points to racism in Australian society cannot be disputed. That this gets accentuated in times of economic hardships, when competition for jobs is intense, is understandable. But, it also points towards the culture, practices and procedures of policing in Australia. It may well be that such 'minor' incidents are not seriously pursued in this system, while attacks on public or private property are more seriously investigated.
Finally, it is intriguing to ask why Chinese students, who account for an equally high percentage of foreign students and, together with Indians, make up nearly 40 per cent of all international students, are not the targets of such attacks. My enquiries revealed that the Chinese community in Australia is very cohesively organised, politically powerful and uses its economic muscle for the benefit of its community. The same perhaps cannot be said about the Indian fraternity in Australia. Early Indian immigrants were largely professionals, who are now happy 'enjoying' the fruits of the Australian system. There is no collective sense of Indianness, which may include the new 'students' from India.
While the Australian government may take various steps to ensure that the 'golden goose' of Indian students is not prematurely strangled, it is imperative that the Indian system of post-secondary, vocational and higher education is modernised, restructured and upgraded on an urgent basis. The government's recently launched Skills Mission has the potential to educate students in and accredit a variety of skills and competencies needed in Indian society and the economy today, provided it is established in an inclusive manner and has systems for third-party certification of prior learning assessments as well. Otherwise, many more Indian students will be rushing to Australia and elsewhere to get certification in such skills as plumbing, masonry, massage and hospitality—skills which have been learnt and practised in India for centuries.
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