Australia has so much more to learn about India

By building on cultural similarities, the two countries can further develop political and economic ties.

A few years ago I was travelling through the north Indian city of Meerut, about 65 kilometres north-east of Delhi, when the bus ground to a halt. I was caught up in a roadblock. Students were protesting in the streets. “What’s the issue?” I asked, leaning out the window on side of the bus. “We are protesting about our right to cheat in exams,” came the reply. “The university often cheats us,” the students said, “so why shouldn’t we be able to cheat it back?”

An Indian movement for the right to cheat in exams seems far removed from the lives of young people in Australia. But look closely and there are some fascinating similarities.

What underpinned the right-to-cheat movement in Meerut was students’ fury about the declining value of their degrees. They felt they had to get high marks, without which they would not get jobs. They were also worried about how to meet the expectations of their parents. Australian youth have some of the same fears about how to obtain good educational qualifications in a globalised world, acquire secure jobs, and please their parents.

Sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote of the importance of a sociological imagination – the ability to put oneself in the shoes of people in far-off places. A careful consideration of dynamics such as the right-to-cheat movement in north India provides an opening for young people to reflect on what unites and divides Australia and India, to develop a “sociological imagination”.

The Australia India Institute (AII) was established in October 2008 with this goal of promoting empathy and understanding between Australia and India. Building on financial support from the federal government through the Department of Education and Training, the Victorian government through the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources, and the University of Melbourne, the AII wants to build connections between public intellectuals in India and Australia, create new opportunities for dialogue and co-operation, and provide the public, scholars, people in business and others with up-to-date research on contemporary India.

My predecessor as director, Amitabh Mattoo,  achieved these core objectives, and seven years since its inception, the AII is now recognised as a centre of initiative on India.

But there is always more to do, particularly in the area of building a sociological imagination in Australia. This is the fourth country in which I have been based as an Indian scholar, but in many respects this provides the most fascinating base. Indians are now migrating to Australia in increasing numbers. There is growing interest in India among people throughout Australia, and governments, firms, academics and students are crying out for information and opportunities in relation to India. My goal is to build the AII into the leading centre for research and teaching on India in the English-speaking world while also enhancing public understanding of India across Australia.

This will involve working hard in at least four areas. First, we need to identify key intellectual focus areas for the institute for the coming years. To develop this idea, I want to run a lecture series on keywords in which scholars and the public debate the meanings of particular words – such as money, power, development, work – for modern Australia and modern India.

Second, we need to invest in people. I want to strengthen and deepen India research in Australia through developing a new-generation network of postdoctoral scholars working on India in different Australian universities. There are many world-class researchers of India in Australia but there is also a pressing need to increase the number of people studying India in this country and to expand the teaching of Indian languages.

Third, I want to develop new research projects. We need to know more about the Indian diaspora in Australia. I want to see the development of a comparative project on educational change in India and Australia. This could involve a project on the problem of unemployment among educated youth in India, Australia and other countries in the Indo-Pacific.

Fourth, I want to offer people in Australia and India – especially youth – the opportunity to understand similarities and differences between their lives; for example, in relation to education, skills, work, health, and relationships. This is crucially important not so young people can run off to start businesses together or set up joint projects (although it would be great if they did), but also so they can understand what connects them and what makes them human.

Connecting India and Australia is the need of the hour. India and Australia, located at two corners of Asia, share in their belief in democracy, tolerance, and

openness. They share challenges – around the provision of skills, environmental change, and unemployment, for example – and they are increasingly interlinked via flows of people, materials and ideas. The time is ripe to capitalise on these family resemblances between nations in such a way that we generate knowledge, improve public policy, and – most important  – improve mutual understanding among youth and the public more generally.

Professor Craig Jeffrey is the new director and chief executive of the Australia India Institute. This is an edited version of his inaugural address.

Source: The Age