Australia’s worst natural disaster in history…Where is the Indian community?

200 people already declared dead and many more feared to be dead. Over 360,000 hectares burned and 1000 home gutted.

Within 36 hours, 20 million dollars collected which has zoomed to 50 million dollars in 5 days. TV channels and corporate Australia have started to chip in generously. The public support is five times greater than that seen during Tsunami 2004.

Indian external affairs minister and the acting Prime Minister Pranab Mukherjee could find time from his busy schedule to ring up his Australian counterpart Stephen Smith and offer help to fight the bushfires in the State of Victoria. But our local community organisations representing Indian community have not even issued a statement offering help.

We should be collecting donations in buckets in Wigram Street in Harris Park, Station Street in Westmead and outside Parrammatta Railway station. Why leave it only to Salvos and Red Cross. The Indian community needs to chip in and do its bit. While each one of us is moved and wants to help, collectively as a community we are moving like headless chickens because we have failed to build a collective leadership and the existing leadership has failed the collective community.

Till the time of writing this editorial there has been no news in the media of any Indian organisation trying to chip in money or try to help the affected. Operating in a multicultural environment puts its own challenges on many communities who need to vie with each other for attention and do their own bit to get noticed in the din. One of the things most noticeable amongst the Australian multicultural communities is the mainstream fixation and possibly obsession with the Chinese and Middle Eastern immigrants and communities. Local councils go head over heels to organise Chinese New Year festivals with funds approved every year and the news about Federal and State programs for Middle Eastern communities never ends.

Hosting and toasting a select set of politicians by our organisations will yield limited results as they won’t change unless the ground opinion changes. The Australian public is suffering from nuclear allergy which is fuelled by ignorant politicians ranting about how they don’t want nuclear plants in their backyards. To change this public opinion each one of us has to work hard at changing this. And hard times such as the ones now present a thriving opportunity for us to prove ourselves. Being visible at the time of such tragedies is a must. Our community needs to gear up to this crisis and form teams consisting of doctors, workers, students and motivate people to raise funds.

If we need Australia to sell Uranium to India, we as a community need to work on it and get involved with the mainstream community in its efforts towards rehabilitation of people and rebuilding their communities.

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