Indian Government Travel Advisory to students against Australia
This content is syndicated from the personal blog of Mr. Nishidhar Reddy Borra, founder of Atlas Consultants, which is a leading overseas education consulting company in India. He also holds an executive member position in the AAERI (Association of Australian Education Representatives in India) council and founding member of FFECI (Federation of Foreign Education Consultants in India). Opinions expressed here are his own and not of any organization that he is a member of.
A nine-year-old Russian girl was allegedly raped on Tuesday evening in Goa’s Arambol beach, a popular hub for foreign and domestic tourists. According to the complaint filed by the victim’s mother, the girl was raped while playing in the waters. The mother said that as one Indian tourist struck up a conversation with her, another ventured in the waters and raped her child. None of the politicians or elders of the society have condemned this enough
On December 1, 2008, a Goan politician, John Fernandes, raped a 25-year-old Russian near Colva beach. Four (4) Australians have been killed in Mumbai terror attack in Nov 2008. In the past Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burnt alive in their car by Hindu extremists in Orissa and in 2004 Australian tourist Dawn Griggs was robbed, raped and murdered by two taxi drivers after arriving late at night at Delhi airport.
Many incidents like this have become quite common for us. Our politicians don’t bother to look into these nor issue any warnings to our own people. Foreigners in India are exposed to many bad experiences like cheating, begging, unhygienic conditions, lack of safety, robberies, racism etc.
But the few Australian attacks on Indians attracted more attention that any of the above, film stars, community leaders, politicians have all raised their voices on this. But again no one has raised any concerns on the rape of a 9 year old Russian girl in Goa which happened
Indians have been going to Australia from the past many years, never did we hear about incidents like this. But again today things have taken an ugly turn. For me it looks like Australian & Indian media are using these attacks for trashing each other.
The Australian attacks on Indian taxi drivers are examples of urban crime. Yes I agree that Indians are over-represented in robbery statistics and there is definitely a racist element to some attacks, but we must know the real reason for this. The behavior of a few Indian students has definitely a role to play in this all. It’s a common problem all over India and also abroad.
Indian students are allowed to drive cabs; many students especially from Punjab are into this. They are strangers to Melbourne and don’t know the routes very well, they also lack English fluency and they purely depend on the GPS system to know the routes. Some times the GPS only guides the cab thru the main routes and avoids shortcuts. These cabbies are exposed to drunk teenagers and gangs at nights, sometimes they take the long route and end up in fights / arguments with the passengers, some how even these are being reported as racist attacks.
Indian government and Australian government fail to understand these issues. The Australian government policies have too many loop holes and they are unable to come up with the correct measure to control such incidents. The attacks were stray incidents and small street brawls which have been given great importance. The Australian Immigration policy has also to be blamed in this, student visas were issued without proper checks and protocols. The result was that the quality of students that Australia absorbed from the past few years was really bad and hopeless. Its time they have a look into this and adopt a policy where good genuine Indian students wanting to study in universities and good institutes are encouraged and change their policies.
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