Ashish Ganda

Indian population in Australia is growing rapidly. In 2008, there were about 77,000 Indians among Australian Residents in NSW according to Australian Bureau of Statistics. The figures did not include Indians that were present in NSW on student visa, long term business visas and other modes. Given the likely immigration numbers they constitute another 50,000 to 70,000 Indian settlers in NSW. Thus it is likely that at present about 150,000 plus Indians are resident in NSW. They almost constitute about 1% of the total Australian population.

Such a sizable chunk of Indian population needs an effective leadership to represent them at the State and National Level in Australia. The leaders of Indian community also need to:

• Facilitate development of friendly relations between India and Australia by identifying areas of cooperation and collaboration between them. 
•  Enable non-Indian origin Australians to understand and appreciate the culture, history and traditions of India. 
• Facilitate creation of harmonious relationship between Indian ethnic community and other ethnicities in Australia. 
• Ensure Indians do not get divided among state / language / caste / classes lines in Australia and instead remain a cohesive and collective unit fostering and aiding each others growth. 

 The demographics of the Indian community in Australia have been changing over time. The first Indians to come to Australia engaged in running camel trains in the pre road and train network era. The next wave was the sikh farmers who came and settled in and around Wolgoolga and engaged in Banana plantations. There were then the Britishers born in India as well as Anglo Indians (born of British and Indian mixed parentage) that settled in Australia post India’s declaration of Independence in 1947. When Australia abandoned its all white migration policy in mid-1970’s the next wave of settlers from India that came to Australia were highly skilled professionals like doctors, engineers, and teachers. In the mid-2000 the largest waves of migration are occurring. These migrants include skilled trade workers like carpenters, plumbers, hairdressers, besides other skilled professionals like IT professionals, doctors, accountants, teachers, nurses, etc. 

 The Australia government has also tapped into students’ immigration to earn export revenue, provide much needed labor backbone to support business growth and enhance Australian cultural diversity. Students also provided additional consumer spending power to bolster the economy. Students coming to Australia from India presently have different goals and aspirations than those that were coming earlier. Earlier the student immigration numbers were low and the students who came to Australia entered into prestigious colleges and universities to enhance their knowledge and employability by post graduate and doctoral trainings. Still a number number of such students come to Australia but the largest chunk constitutes of students training in vocational skills. Students enrolling into vocations training colleges prefer to work long hours to to maximize their earnings. They are oriented towards earning money getting a permanent residency.

 Austalian governments policy to allow a transition to permanent residency to students from vocational training colleges has spurred wide spread migration from India for enrollment into vocational training courses. Immigration is even happening from remote villages and poor families. A large number of students who are coming in are ill-equipped with English communication skills and find the going tough for them. They are also unable to appreciate and adjust to cultural differences between India and Australia quickly enough and sometime act in manners inappropriate for Australia. These students need mentoring and coaching to quickly adjust to Australian culture and expectations to ensure that they do not tarnish India and its inhabitant’s image amongst Australian Society.  

 With such diversity among the Indian community in Australia and changes to it over time it is necessary that a visionary mass leader for Indian’s come to the fore. The leader needs to be visionary to ensure that he / she has the vision for the needs of the community and its contributions to Australian life and India over time. He / She needs to guide the community and its behavior within Australia. He / She also needs to have a grasp of the consequences of the action of the Government policy on the community. As an example, the Indian community should have guessed in advance the changes in its demographics that would ensue due to the recent immigration policy of the Australian Government to student immigration. If this would have been seen in advance than the leaders could have gone ahead and advised the government of its impact to Australia and also prepared the community to help and prepare these students.  However, when student start agitations against so called racial attacks we saw only knee jerk reactions from the leaders. Many were unable to even come forward. Even among those who came forward very few could guide the students properly. 

 The leader also needs to be a mass leader to ensure that he/she can connect to the constituents of the Indian community. He/ She should be equally accessible to intellectual elites as to hard working tradesman. He / she should understand the aspirations of the rich as well as poor among the community. He / she should be able to connect to the large student population and work to address their issues. In fact the leaders should have the compassion of heart to devise programs for the betterment and uplift of the deviant in community. 

 The Indian Leadership in NSW is currently tagged along to associations and societies. A variety of such associations are in existence in NSW. Most are designed along region / language / religious practices. They lack cohesiveness and cater only to niche community. A few organizations have tried to bunch together and form an apex organization that purportedly represents Indian’s in Australia. However seeing the mission statement of the comprising organizations and their constituents it is hard to imagine that the apex organization is in fact capable of representing Indian’s in Australia. One such organization in existence is the United India Association (UIA). 

 UIA is constituted from organizations representing Punjabi, Tamil, Kannad, Telugu, Malayalee, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali communities. It also has organizations like India Sports Club Inc (a for profit organization) whose website does not even describe who are its founders and current position holders, Hornsby Senior Citizens Association (which by definition only looks after senior citizens in Hornsby irrespective of the fact that they are Indian’s or not), Federation of Indian Student Associations (FISA). FISA is an associate member and they do not have voting rights or membership to the Governing council of UIA. Another two members of UIA are Technocrats Association of Australia Inc (again a for-profit organization) and Australian Indian Medical Graduates Association Inc (AIMGA). Technocrats are supposedly led by Dr Rohitas Batta whose business interests are in students’ immigration to Australia as Director (Australia) of IAAC. 

 In 2009 UIA major contributions have been organizing an India Australia Friendship Fair and discussion forum on students’ issue. The author was part of the discussion forum and found the gathering to be quite small for a topic of such importance. The students gathered at the event were not confident about UIA and felt that it needs to do more to earn their faith. They also felt that some constituents of UIA had conflict of interest with them and they will not be able to represent them properly.  UIA has also tried to alter the media perception in India to the fact that the attacks on Indian students were not racist in nature.

 Last year infighting among the UIA members was covered in detail by the media and some of it is available on the website of Mr Rohit Revo, Editor of the “The Indian”. There were also reports of how cross-membership across associations is leading to branch stacking and double voting power. Infighting also seems to be common within UIA. The infighting may stem from the fact that the organization is a patch of disparate organizations trying to show a pan-Indian cohesiveness while their membership base may not be aligned to it.  

 Actively raising a challenge to UIA recently has been Dr Yadu Singh, a leading medical professional in NSW. Dr Yadu Singh claims to have given right but unpleasent advice to student during their agitation. He also claims to have high degree of integrity and interests of Indian Community in mind. He is currently Secretary of AIMA. In the past Yadu Singh has had a fair degree of media coverage in TV channels, Sydney Morning Herald and Indian Community Newspapers. He is currently in the process to organize a joint Australia India Day celebration on 24 January 2010. According to Yadu Singh it would be a game changer event and would see participation from lot of Senior Australian leaders and Indian Consulate. 

 There are other organizations also who can lay claim to represent the Indian community. GOPIO is slowly gathering membership base and has provided good leadership to Indians in USA. GOPIO is also organizer of the Pravasi Bhartiya Divas world wide. GOPIO however needs to do a lot more in NSW to claim to lead the Indian community. Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan caters to pan-Indian community but it is not politically oriented. Federation of Australian Indian Associations (FAIA) is another organization which has been focused on holding melas and fares to showcase Indian culture. It pays some attention to student issues and immigration issues. Its vision “Actions aiming for benefits to community” is very generic. Large base of its founding organizations are Dance and Theatre performance groups. 

 So it is now for the readers to decide whether they agree with the views presented in this article and who merits leading the Indian community in Australia. Do these leaders have the vision and touch to lead all of us Indians here? We look forward to your responses.