Indian diaspora poised to shape Australia-India ties

The Australia Indian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership is witnessing a meteoric rise since the virtual summit of Narendra Modi and Scott Morrison transpired in June 2020. The summit was held amidst the global havoc caused by Covid-19, and as the world economies suffered a brutal battering from the pandemic, tensions with China spiralled dramatically. While Australia demanded an inquiry into the origins of the outbreak of the pandemic infuriating Beijing, Indian troops on the other hand were also locked into a bloody battle in the Ladakh sector with the People’s Liberation Army.

The cumulative effect of the two developments spurred Australia and India to deepen their bilateral ties and strategic engagement within the framework of Quad in the Indo-Pacific. The first virtual summit of the Quad leaders on 12 March has further brought Australia and India even closer. Strategic analysts on both sides are in agreement that Australia India bilateral business and trade ties will benefit from their growing cooperation in the Quadrilateral framework. In this context, the Indian diaspora in Australia has now a critical role to play in complementing business and trade ties and complementing the core objectives of the strategic partnership.

Numbering over 700,000, constituting 2.8% of the Australian population, the Indians are the fourth largest and the fastest growing migrant community here. Around the years 2001-2017 around 400,000 people migrated to Australia. Of the 700,000 Indians 88% are of the working age and 61% are in full-time and 27% in apart-time employment. This makes them the second highest tax-paying migrant community after the UK-born migrants, contributing over $12 billion to the Australian economy. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Hindi is the largest spoken language in the community, followed by Punjabi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Marathi, Kannada and Bengali.

The Indian students contributing $6.6 billion to the Australian economy forming the second largest international cohort constituting over 15% of the Australian university enrolments.

While these are impressive statistics, the role of the Indian diaspora remains still way below their potential. According to Surjeet Dhanji in a recent article in the Indian Express, “Australians of Indian origin account for 0.5 per cent of representatives in the federal parliament, 0.7 per cent in the Victorian state parliament, and even lower proportions for local councils in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. They are doing relatively well in the NSW state parliament, where they account for 1.5 percent of elected representatives”. In order to shape bilateral ties and Australia’s policy towards India, this record needs to improve considerably.

Similarly, the diaspora also needs to build their prominence in the corporate sector as well. Peter Varghese in his India Economic Strategy to 2035 observed, “Most Indian diaspora business in Australia are SMEs, and they too have the capacity to be meaningful drivers of economic integration with India”. But having said that Indian corporates Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, HCL, Cyient, NIIT, iGATE (now part of CapGemini) and the Adani Mining (now named Bravus) are bolstering India’s footprint into the big corporate world.

Indian community organisations are now playing an even larger roles, attracting a larger turnout, of both Indians and non-Indian communities, in organising and celebrating major public events like Holi and Diwali across Australia, and enriching the multicultural ethos of Australia.

In sum, the Indian diaspora has a major role to play in building India literacy not only in the cultural realm but also in business, trade, academia and strategic realms. This will not happen on its own, and the diaspora leaders depending on their individual expertise in various fields will have to push harder to build new academic and research programs and institutional collaborations, set up new businesses, host larger public events, assist Australian businesses in doing business with India, and also fight for a greater pie in the Australian politics. The constellation of bilateral, regional and global opportunities have never been so favourable, something the diaspora cannot afford to let slip away.