FEATURE ARTICLE: Curry bashing? A Racist Australian Underbelly and the Education Industry February 6, 2010
Posted by southasiamasala in D'Costa, Bina, India, South Asia - General.Tags: Australia, economy, education, government, India, media, racism, students
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Bina D’Costa
Nitin Garg had arrived in Australia from Jagraon, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, expecting a promising future. Three years later, as a permanent resident and with a postgraduate degree in Commerce he left for India in a body bag. By the time the next ‘breaking news’ occurs, his violent death will be forgotten. But for his mother, his 98 year old grandfather and his siblings, Nitin’s violent stabbing at West Footscray in Melbourne will be forever remembered with the tears of losing a loved one and the guilt for making the decision to send him to the West, which is assumed to be safer than India. Nitin and perhaps his whole family’s future relied on his endurance, even if dreadfully lonely, in an alien metropolis. The south-eastern state of Victoria, one of the most multicultural locations in the world, is where 21 year old Nitin died alone on 2 January 2010. Violent deaths and assaults like his stabbing, racially motivated or not, have consequences, not only in political terms but for personal lives. (more…)
India: Mr Chidambaram’s security ‘revolution’ February 2, 2010
Posted by southasiamasala in Gordon, Sandy, India.Tags: domestic security, India, security reforms, terrorism
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Sandy Gordon
In a far-ranging speech on 23 December, the Indian Home Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, outlined his vision for India’s ongoing internal security reforms. Mr Chidambaram has been in the position just one year. In the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks now known in India as 26/11, he had been briefed by the Prime Minister to fix up India’s arcane internal security structure in light of its poor performance at the time of the attacks. Since, he has been engaged in strenuous efforts to create a viable internal security architecture out of India’s complex federal structure and Byzantine layers of bureaucracy.
Reforms to date or those planned and announced in the speech of 23 December would amount to a virtual ‘revolution’ in India’s internal security architecture if fully implemented.
The reforms include:
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‘Alex’ Kuhendrarajah and the Australian media January 20, 2010
Posted by southasiamasala in India, Sri Lanka.Tags: asylum seekers, Australia, refugees, Sri Lanka, Tamil
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Guest author, Michael Roberts
The waves of boat people in October 2008 made headline news in Australia. So did ‘Alex’ of the Jaya Lestari. The Australian media stirred the pot: they ran with both the hares and hounds. They catered to the sympathy for these people among Australians of liberal disposition who regard all asylum-seekers as victims of intolerable situations. In the same breath they promoted opposition to illegal immigrants by underlining the surge in numbers of these “queue-jumpers.”
Alex is at the heart of this conundrum. He also underlines the ‘double act’ performed quite deliberately by some arms of the media. Investigative reporters at Merak, where the Jaya Lestari is berthed, chose initially to present his voice without probing deeper. Alex became the face of the poor persecuted Sri Lankan Tamil people fleeing their homeland. The details attached to this message included: (a) they had embarked in Malaysia and were heading for Australia; (b) passages could have cost as much as $15,000; (c) Alex himself, as befitting his Canadian accent, had been educated abroad, but was deploying a pseudonym because his wife and children would be in danger from the Sri Lankan government. (more…)
Waiting for India’s education revolution January 18, 2010
Posted by southasiamasala in India, Sundaram, Manu.Tags: eduction, India
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Manu Sundaram
The past decade has witnessed policy initiatives and political interest that have rejuvenated the education sector in India. Lofty rhetoric of earlier politicians being replaced with action plans; and hollow promises substituted with time-bound strategies. In many ways, the new year will be an indication of the long-term development inclinations of the present political establishment.
Now is the opportune moment to pause and reflect on the ground covered by policies of the past, and deliberate on the directions for the future. However, this alone will not suffice. Like the Green Revolution and White Revolution soon after independence, the country needs to urgently review its approach to education if it wants to satisfy the growing demands of a literate population competing in the global market. Innovative, far-sighted and bold approaches that will revolutionise Indian education are the need of the hour. (more…)
India: inducing a slowdown through restrictive policy January 15, 2010
Posted by southasiamasala in India, Jha, Raghbendra, Uncategorized.Tags: economy, GFC, growth rate, India, inflation
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Raghbendra Jha
Indian policymakers pride themselves on the fact that the Indian economy was able to pull out of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) relatively unscathed with real GDP growth rate falling to 6.7% in 2008-09 as compared to the 9 per cent in 2007-08 and expected to rise above 7 per cent in 2009-10. At the onset of the GFC many commentators had expected a collapse of growth with some even predicting a return to the sluggish growth of the mid to late 1990s.
Thankfully, the Indian economy proved the predictors of doom wrong. A number of factors have been ascribed to explain this performance: high consumption in India, as compared to China, and lower exposure to the global economy, again as compared to China. High home consumption is desirable as it gives support to the domestic economy in the face of a collapse of international trade, as happened during the GFC. Additionally, lower exposure to international trade reduces the impact of external shocks. The existence of substantial controls on the banking sector is said to explain the fact that no Indian bank had to be ‘rescued’. In addition, however, credit is sometimes also given to ‘good policy design’ by the government. (more…)
Unexpected alliance challenges Sri Lankan President January 7, 2010
Posted by southasiamasala in Perera, Jehan, Sri Lanka.Tags: Sri Lanka
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Jehan Perera
The forthcoming election has generated a coalition of political forces that few would have believed possible even a few weeks ago. Today an increasingly beleaguered President Rajapaksa gives the impression of being a man who knows he has the fight of his life on his hands. The change is astonishing as the New Year dawns that the government that so recently seemed invulnerable should now be doing its utmost to win what had seemed a cake-walk election.
President Rajapaksa’s strategy of ruling by division has compelled other political forces, ranging from the UNP on the right, the JVP on the left and the ethnic minority parties, to unite to save themselves from the juggernaut of government that sought to inflict similar defeats on them. The unexpected alliance between the UNP and JVP is a result. An alliance between these two parties had seemed an utter impossibility until it actually happened. (more…)
Improving prospects of India-Australia nuclear co-operation January 5, 2010
Posted by southasiamasala in Guest authors, India.Tags: Australia, India, nuclear, Uranium
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Guest author: Rahul Mishra
This article first appeared on the IDSA website on 24 December 2009.
Indications are that not only India will get ‘yellowcake’ from Australia, which has the world’s largest uranium resources, but it might also get a parallel position equivalent to that of a ‘Nuclear Weapon State’ so that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is reinvigorated. The report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Eliminating Nuclear Threats – A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, released last month, offers a cue in this regard.
The Commission was set up in 2008 by the Australian and Japanese Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Yasuo Fukuda in Kyoto. Chaired by former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans and former Japanese foreign minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, the commission’s aim is to make the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference a success. The report says that the “three Elephants” outside the NPT (as India, Pakistan and Israel are called in the report) will not become party to the treaty and that “every effort should be made to achieve their participation in parallel instruments and arrangements which apply equivalent non-proliferation and disarmament obligations”.
This, indeed, is a welcome suggestion, which will not only prove valuable in saving the NPT but will also help India meet its energy requirements. Asserting the need to devise specific mechanisms to include India, Gareth Evans wrote in The Age, the leading Australian daily, that “It’s self-evidently rather quixotic for Australia to be maintaining a ban on the sale of uranium until India joins the NPT when manifestly it is not going to join the NPT and manifestly this is not going to stop it acquiring uranium from other sources.”
Counterpoint: in response to ‘Can privatisation help?’ December 24, 2009
Posted by southasiamasala in India, Sundaram, Manu.Tags: education, India
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Manu Sundaram
The article titled ‘Can privatisation help?’ reviews the challenges in implementing the Right to Education Bill. In doing so, the authors weigh up the role of private education providers in meeting our goal of universalizing education, and in conclusion, provide two major findings: a) “The cost of private schooling limits the accessibility and has negative implications for the breadth and depth of school accessibility across socio-economic groups”; and b) “A well equipped and functioning government school sector will encourage a quality private school sector.”
While the discussion on the Right to Education Bill is timely and welcomed, educationists and policymakers must take note of the misdirected conclusions, arising from wrongful interpretation and omission of research, in this article. In fact, recent research has unearthed strong evidence directly contradicting the hypotheses suggested in the abovementioned article. (more…)
Winning the confidence of the Tamil electorate December 23, 2009
Posted by southasiamasala in Perera, Jehan, Sri Lanka.Tags: General Fonseka, President Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka, Tamils
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Jehan Perera
Who the Tamil people will vote for has become an important question at the forthcoming Presidential elections. The departure of former Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka, and his joining the opposition, has deprived the government leadership of its monopoly regarding credit for the war victory over the LTTE. This has meant that President Mahinda Rajapaksa can no longer appeal to the majority Sinhalese electorate for their vote of gratitude to himself alone.
The entry of General Fonseka into the ranks of the opposition has also rejuvenated it, particularly the UNP, which was unable to face up to the President’s war victories and appeal to the ethos of the Sinhalese electorate. Many traditional UNP voters from the Sinhalese ethnic majority began to vote either for the President’s party or for other Sinhalese nationalist parties. With General Fonseka becoming the common opposition candidate there is a strong likelihood of these renegade UNP voters returning to the fold. (more…)
Nuclear deal or nuclear recognition: which first? December 21, 2009
Posted by southasiamasala in India, Weigold, Auriol.Comment
Auriol Weigold
While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was greeted in Washington by President Obama naming India as a nuclear power, their late November 2009 meeting was not scheduled to conclude discussions on the reprocessing of spent fuel, a crucial part of the Indo-US Nuclear Agreement.
Logically the conclusion of the Indo-US nuclear deal ought to see India’s recognition as a nuclear state but Obama appears to have jumped the gun and given India its long-sought status without its signing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and without approval from the international community. With nuclear energy agreements in place, however, with Russia, Canada, France and Italy, India has, ipso facto, international recognition.
A timetable for completion of Article 6 (iii) of the 123 Agreement on bilateral nuclear cooperation sets out that that final agreement on procedures should commence no later than one year after the start of formal consultations. They took place in late July followed by further negotiations in late November, leaving some eight months to completion in 2010.
The last area of dispute relates to the United States’ right to withhold reprocessing technologies if India carries out a future nuclear test. Washington is still waiting for a written undertaking not to test from New Delhi, a requirement before the US Energy Department can license American nuclear firms to operate in India. This is seen at least in India, as a matter of working out specific words that can be agreed too. (more…)