Australia’s national media appears to be looking at India with a fresh eye. How else does one explain the following: “Modi comes bearing gifts on trade, defence,” ran the front page headline of The Australian.
The Age headlined it as “Albanese’s Modi Operandi”, a play on the words modus operandi meaning mode of operation, while the Sydney Morning Herald said it simply as it is: “Indian PM’s visit seals multi-billion dollar uranium deal.”
To be sure, the spoilers were also there, said Mahadevan Shankar, Brisbane-based Indian origin entrepreneur and strategic adviser who spoke took time off from his business trip to Papua New Guinea to speak to StratNewsGlobal.
“On social media there have been massive negative comments. That’s more driven by the anti-immigration policy, by a few vested interests and politicians who I guess, for want of a better word, don’t have merit based policies. So the easy thing is to blame everything on the largest intake of migrants coming in, whether it’s students, etc. a lot of them are coming from India and that’s because the skills are there. The skills migration is happening. So yeah, there has been a lot of negativity in that.”
But he believes the anti-India sentiment is driven by a minority of people. The generally more positive view of India draws from the fact that “India has now become a very large economy, which cannot be ignored. India has become a militarily powerful nation. The whole of Australia saw what happened at Galwan, and India’s the only country that actually challenged China.
He believes the agreement on the sale of uranium is the key takeaway of the Modi visit. He also sees education as the other big driver.
“The education sector is massive. And I’m not talking of education in terms of school universities, but the sports education in terms of massive amount of fitness programs that are being driven in India. Kabaddi is a game which has been introduced to Australia. It’s picking up in terms of its public awareness.”
Tune in for more in this conversation with Mahadevan Shankar on Modi’s visit to Australia.
