Dear Friends
K.V. Dhananjay.
Advocate, Supreme Court of India
+91-99029-09390
Ever seen a prospectus for an Australian University? I have. Unless you make a deliberate attempt to ignore, you will not miss how much they praise themselves for 'ethnic diversity', 'extremely safe environment' or 'very cordial fraternity'.
'Extremely safe environment'? One boy from here was brutally and painfully murdered, another was engulfed in a petrol bomb, yet another was stabbed all over his body with a screwdriver by a mob in a public train. And none of these crimes had anything to do with the victim himself, but with his place of birth. Right, the place of our birth as well.
Our Central Government is finished with shedding 'crocodile tears' and high-level discussions between dignitaries from both countries are in 'progress'. Does it occur to you that Australia is now more safe than before after the so called 'intervention' of our Government? Well, there are more than 97000 students there who must have some relative here who you probably know or are related to. So, I take it that you have some concern for what goes on there in 'Australia'.
Is India so wretched a place that those students would have still chosen to avoid studying in India if only they were sufficiently warned in advance? Universities, under the Australian law, are legally authorised to restrict movements of their students in order to regulate the safety of their 'study environment'. As such, when a hate crime is committed against a 'student' enrolled under a particular university, that University is effectively under a duty to ensure that the perpetrators are fully prosecuted as the occasion for the presence of that student in that province or country is none but the 'University' itself. As such, to allocate burden for such 'hate crimes' to the University in question is legally well founded.
Now, what shall we do to make offshore places more safe for our kith and kin? Kindly ask your State Government to immediately issue a 'law' to require all Australian Universities that market their 'courses' and 'products' in your State to make a full disclosure of all assaults or crimes committed in the past five years against 'students of Indian origin' enrolled in each such University. Would you prefer that the Central Government make such a law? Then, kindly ask it to do so. The Central Government could, under the exclusive powers to set foreign policy' require such disclosure. A State Government, under its authority to curtail deceptive or false advertising or marketing, could easily insist on such disclosure. By the way, 'Education' is a concurrent subject under the Constitution and education, even while offered offshore, is a subject of regulation by either Governments in the matter of 'solicitation' to such education.
Australia lives off the wealth of Emerging nations. It sustains itself by export of iron ore to emerging economies firstly. Then by exporting coal, again to emerging economies. And then comes export of education. India is a dominant contributor to its economy and just a couple of billionaries of Indian origin could effortlessly lease out the whole of Australia. A giant of such proportion is losing precious lives there. Even a non-Indian will tell you how much 'tragic' this is. Do not let this unaffect you. Ask your State or the Central Government to issue such 'law'. Students from here will go there, no matter what. Let us give them, the opportunity to assess the relative dangers and then to make a proper choice of place in that country, if they must.
Regards,
