Indian Businesses Fear Backlash

Scene: Peak hour morning hour at Town Hall Railway Station

After the student violence issue and the resulting controversy, an Indian student is caught by the Transit officers for travelling without a valid ticket and a verbal altercation takes place. The student blames the Transit official and says the transit official tore his valid ticket and in turn accuses the Transit official of racism.

Racism has become a much abused word and lost much of its meaning. The recent violence against Indian students has divided the Indian community into groups. Your either believe there is racism or you believe racism does not exist here. There is no middle ground left.

Kalid Dib a Lebanese community member, was shot dead by security guards last year when he attempted to rob an armoured van in Parramatta. His funeral procession was attended by over 200 people, which included controversial Sydney cleric from the Lebanese community, Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly. Showing support for Kalid Dib and his family was more important for Sheik Hilaly rather than worrying about what the mainstream people or the media would think. Imagine if Kalid Dib would have been an Indian – he and his family would have been ignored and probably disowned and the community leaders would have discussed all aspects of the situation, including unsafe practices in the security industry and how Indians security guards are not trained well and not up to the job, except worrying for Kalid Dib’s surviving family members.

As the dust tries to settle down in the aftermath of violent incidents against Indian students, blame game amongst some organisations has started with vicious emails and accusations flying across. The main grouse being that some people have been hijacking the situation to make themselves more popular and don’t have the students’ best interests at heart.

I met a few Indian business people in the past fortnight and the mood in the business community is sombre and they are worried. When I countered one of the community leaders who also runs a private cookery school about the malpractices in the industry he shot back, “There is a large number of students who work only for cash. I had a very good employee working with us since the past 12 months and she wanted cash payments. When I put my foot down and told her that my business model doesn’t allow cash payment disbursements she resigned. I am sure she will find a job with someone else on her terms. This is a common practice is some industries. Why single us out. We may be helping the students in some cases.”

Another business man lamented, “The whole student violence issue has been very bad for the whole Indian community. Every community has a typical way of doing business and every community has little secrets. The Indian community secrets are now out in the open. In front of Premier, Community Relations Commission, government servants, mainstream media, both the Indian students and our community leaders have discussed openly and exposed all the bad practices in these 1:1 meetings. Every community has black sheep but the feeling these people now have is that most Indian businesses are using these students as slave workers on cash basis. Our community was regarded as a model community but now they regard our community with disdain and suspicion.”

One of the restaurant owners was very open about the cookery schools in Australia, “Australian trained Indian chefs are not up to the mark and I still have to get chefs from India who have a better idea of Indian cooking. No wonder most of the students trained in cookery colleges don’t get accepted in restaurants dishing out food related to other communities.” It is a common secret that Indian students who have passed out Hairdressing courses don’t get jobs in hair saloons who prefer Italian or Lebanese barbers. With the result these students have to find other sources of living to survive and sometimes get exploited.

I asked one of very successful business operators as to why some Indian businesses kept on paying 9-10 dollars per hour cash rate to these students and he gave his side of the story. “I had an employee whose Permanent Residency application got stuck on 2 counts and he is fighting this in the court. He came to me with his mother, asking me for help. I suggested that they should go back to their country and lodge a new PR application using their proper experience which would normally take 12-18 months. The mother started crying saying if their son went back to India, he would be labelled as a failure and had no future, plus they had sold their home and were buried under bank loans. Even his own family will not accept him and that his best chances are to stay in Australia. The student had no option but to work on 9 dollars per hour cash basis for survival. What do you want me to do in such situations?”

There are fears that Australian visa regime in India will be made more strict back to the old days when they will go strictly by the law and ask for cumbersome paperwork from potential visitors. Australian main stream TV and news channels have realised there is a lot of scoop and dirt to dig in the Indian community to make up for investigative headlines and some of these so called investigative TV programs have been sending decoys to Indian businesses to dig in the dirt and expose them. As soon as there are more whistle blowers who gather courage to stand up against these businesses, more dirt will be dished out.

Some of the students have huge loans to pay back home and don’t find enough job opportunities in Australia, they work at a feverish pace. Says a doctor, “I had a student whose blood pressure had shot up to 220 x 140. When I enquired about his activities, he was working for 80 hours a week, having Red Bull and high energy drinks twice a day and meals daily at McDonalds. I asked the student to drink only apple juice and eat brown bread and after 1 month his blood pressure was back to normal. There is no point in killing yourself.”

Some of the students come from mofussil towns and find very hard adjusting in Australia. Some students also levelled allegations against private colleges saying the colleges deliberately failed some students so that they could get extract more fees once they enrolled back for the next terms. In one incident a student was failed for 3 terms in a private college, but when he changed the college he passed out within a single term.

One of the business persons raised a valid point, “When you allow students to come to Australia you have to make sure they can survive in Australia. In some predominantly vegetarian Indian cultures like Amritdari’s in Sikhs, Jains and some sections of the Gujarati community touching and eating non vegetarian food is not allowed. But in Australia over 98% of the cooking in restaurants is non vegetarian. Similarly Sikhs are not supposed to cut hair and can’t become barbers. But you still have students from these communities come to Australia for study with the sole aim of gaining PR here and then don’t take up these professions and end up looking for other jobs wherein they have no expertise and end up being soft targets for exploitation.”

When I asked one of the business owner that the government will now come out in full force and stop the bad practices in Indian businesses and clean up the act, he said with a smirk that USA has been trying to do the same thing for the past 30 years and has failed. “Today cheap labour is the grease that runs their US economy and there are still workers being exploited on cash basis, they could not stop it. How can Australia stop it?”
DFAT WARNING ON TRAVEL TO INDIA

In the current circumstances, Australians in India should maintain a high level of personal security  awareness including by monitoring developments that might affect their safety. Read the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s current India travel advice

DFAT’s general travel advice website www.smartraveller.gov.au

Since 31 May 2009, there have been a number of non-violent protests directed at Australian interests in several Indian cities, including near the Australian High Commission in New Delhi and the Australian Consulate-General in Mumbai. Further protests directed at Australian interests are possible.

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