INDIA and Australia are now caught in a web of sensitive concerns and sovereign rights. India's concerns over thousands of its vocational-course students in Australia intersect the latter's sovereign right to regulate immigration visas. These concerns have now come to the fore though New Delhi has passed the stage when it was beset with crises over the physical safety of Indian students across Australia, including those at universities and not just the vocational training institutions.
Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi, who visited Australia around the middle of June, appreciated the practical measures the authorities at various levels there had taken in recent months to ensure the protection of Indian students. Australia was also told that India did not regard the problems of its students in that country as a racial issue.
These circumstances are refreshingly different from the waves of despair in India on these issues not long ago. Truly sensitive, therefore, is the current dialogue between the two countries on the future of the Indian students who were granted Australian visas for vocational courses before the start of the current exercise in Canberra to change the relevant laws.
Almost all of these students had gone to Australia to pursue courses that entitled them to take up part-time work up to 20 hours a week while studying and to seek permanent residence and jobs on attaining these occupational skills in that country. India's current worry is that the latest Australian moves will have a retrospective and negative impact on such students. They had registered for courses relating to the 400 occupational skills that Australia classified for immigration visas until recently. With this number of immigration-grade vocations being reduced now to 181, courses catering for the other occupations in the list of 400 have ceased to have value for the affected students. And, they have now been given time until the end of 2012 to find sponsors for the non-immigration-grade courses or simply leave the country.
Tracing India's argument on these interrelated issues, Ravi told this correspondent in Singapore on June 22 that sponsorship was becoming a new complication. India would have no quarrel with Australia on its move to reduce the list of immigration-grade vocations for courses of study. But sponsorship, not easy in itself as a fund-mobilisation issue, should be seen under another prism.
On this, Ravi said the Australian authorities would, of course, allow changes in the courses for study. But such new choices would be difficult because many vocational colleges were closed in recent months for lack of quality or other reasons. He briefed the Australian Ministers on these lines.
While Ravi did not receive any categorical promises from Australia on these issues concerning the vocational-course students, the overall climate of the ongoing bilateral dialogue is reckoned by both sides to be as positive as possible. On the Indian side, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and High Commissioner Sujatha Singh, among others, have kept the dialogue on course.
In all, three inter-related issues need to be addressed at the same time, Australian and Indian observers point out. These are the safety of Indian students in Australia; the quality of their education; and the sensitivities over immigration-grade courses of study.
An interesting development is that Sravan Kumar, the Indian student who was brutally assaulted in Melbourne over a year ago, has been granted permanent residence in Australia after he received state-of-the-art medical care in that country. Will his sad case help raise the level of confidence between the two countries as they address issues concerning the big picture in the education domain?
P. S. Suryanarayana in Singapore
