Modi has an added reason to embrace Australia: For not being embargoed from visiting Down Under after the 2002 Gujarat violence, when the US and Europe had denied him visas, writes Ashutosh Misra
lasting legacies sometimes hinge on blending divergent interests, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott understand this well. If India is Australia’s Kalpataru beholding economic opportunities, for Mr Modi, it is his Kurukshetra, where the war drums to shape the nation’s destiny were sounded in May 2014.
As Mr Modi undertakes his Australia visit, one wonders as to why it took so long to break this inexplicable self-imposed moratorium on prime ministerial visits since 1986. It’s true that Mr Modi’s historic visit to attend the G20 summit in Brisbane has also been abetted by upswing in bilateral relations, following the Australian nod to sell uranium and concerns of Indian students’ safety being addressed, seeing the rise in enrolment to over 4,000 in 2013, marking a 7.3 per cent increase in visa lodgements from previous years.
Mr Modi also has an added reason to embrace Australia — for not being embargoed from visiting Down Under after the 2002 Gujarat violence, when the US and Europe had denied him visas. In recent years, Government reports highlighting that India no longer remained a ‘blind-spot’ in the Australian foreign policy calculus also created a positive atmosphere in Canberra and New Delhi. And India too, a few months ago, contributed to Mr Abbott’s ‘stop the boat’ policy by accepting the Tamil refugees who had arrived from India on the Australian shores in July.
When the two leaders meet, outside the rubric of G20, trade is expected to top the list. Australia continues to be a major exporter of coal, gold, copper ores and concentrates, vegetables and services to India, and an importer of passenger motor vehicles, medicaments, pearls, gems and jewellery. There is also enormous scope beyond coal and uranium in the energy sector, and Australia can tap into India’s renewable energy sector which suffers from various impediments such as sub-standard goods manufactured by overnight manufacturers, under-developed research and designing, lack of public awareness and inadequate private investment. Australia has made significant advancements in wind energy, special-purpose vehicles, solar hot water, waste-to-energy conversion and hydro-power systems which can be of immense utility to India’s future energy requirements.
Australia’s Direct Aid Programme continues to fund small-scale sustainable development projects in several States and Union Territories, especially in vocational training for youth; solar power and end-user training and electrification of hundreds of households; construction of diversion based irrigation to create permanent irrigation facilities; women’s economic empowerment; access to education for women and girls; and capacity development for people with disabilities. These initiatives also complement Mr Modi’s vision for inclusive development.
Australia is equally well placed to share its successes at preserving its ecosystem by contributing to the cleaning of the Ganga, another key promise of Mr Modi in his constituency, Varanasi. In the past, Australia contributed to the Swatcha Ganga Chhatra Sangam at Tulsi Ghat, a joint venture mooted in 1992 between Oz Green, an Australian non-governmental organisation and the Sankat Mochan Foundation.
Both sides, also stand to benefit from operationalising the Memorandum of Understanding in technical and vocational education and training, and encouraging cultural, students and academic exchanges, which is covered under Australia’s New Colombo Plan which funds students’ visits to Asia and the Pacific. Taking technical and vocational services to India would also spare Australia the trouble of catering to the Indian students in Australia.
Internal security is another area of potential cooperation, particularly, in dealing with home-grown terrorism. The Joint Working Group on Counter-terrorism provides the necessary framework for security cooperation. In July, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security signed a MoU with the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy to strengthen policing and security cooperation and promote research collaboration, academic-practitioner interaction and capacity building programmes. Similar MoUs are expected between the Centre for European Policy Studies and the National Investigation Agency as also the Central Bureau of Investigation to develop capacities in counter-terrorism, forensic investigations and combating transnational and organised crimes.
But opportunities are also accompanied by differences. last week, ignoring the opinion of his Treasurer Joe Hockey, strategic experts and the labour Party, Mr Abbott and the National Security Committee declined China’s invitation to join the $50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, of which India is the inaugural president. While India and China seek to create alternatives to the West- dominated global financial institutions, Mr Abbott remains aligned with the US.
Australia needs to do more to deliver on what former Prime Minister Julia Gillard had announced. “Australian Government is committed to build a greater understanding between our two peoples and Australians’ understanding of India, its history and place in the world.” But, as opposed to $53 million allocated to set up a China Research Centre at the Australian National University, just nine million dollars were allocated to create the Australia India Institute, which has recently been oxygenated by a paltry funding of three million dollars.
(The writer is a research fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, Griffith University, Australia)