29 March

Perceptions of 2009: Looking back at the Indian students’ crisis

Date: Thursday, 29th March 2012
Time: 1:00 PM
Where: UTS Building 10 (235 Jones St, Ultimo), Level 14, Room 201

RSVP is required: Cornelia.Betzler@uts.edu.au

About the workshop
2009 was a period of crisis for many Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney. This crisis and its representation in the media of both India and Australia led to such strong tensions in the bilateral relationship that formal delegations were sent to India to provide reassurance. Perceptions of both countries were affected and Indian student numbers in Australia dropped. This workshop will examine the 2009 crisis; reflecting on lessons learnt and future strategies to strengthen relations between communities inAustralia.

PROGRAM:

12 noon Lunch

1 pm – 1: 20 pm

Heather Goodall (UTS): Looking back, looking laterally; university responses.

1: 30  – 3:30 pm

  • Matt Wade (Fairfax Correspondent in India): Reporting from India in 2009
  • Rory Medcalfe (Lowy Institute): Implications of the 2009 student crisis on the bilateral relationship between India and Australia
  • Devaki Monani (Research Scholar UTS): Human Rights missing in Action: state wide approaches in Victoria

Discussant: Professor Amitabh Mattoo (Australia-India Institute, University of Melbourne)

3:30 to 4 pm Afternoon tea

4 – 5:30 pm

  • Amit Dasgupta (Consul General of India): Perception and reality: thinking about Harris Park
  • Robert Redfern (NSW Police): Managing Harris Park: what worked and what didn’t
  • Stepan Kerkyasharian (Community Relations Commission): Lessons learnt from the crisis

Christopher Kremmer: Reflections

Rajiv Gandhi Visiting Chair for Contemporary Indian Studies at UTS

ISOARN is pleased to announce that Professor Ujjwal Kumar Singh (Department of Political Science, University of Delhi) is the first incumbent of the Rajiv Gandhi Visiting Chair for Contemporary Indian Studies at UTS. The chair, a collaborative venture between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the University of Technology Sydney,  was announced in 2011 during the visit to UTS of Dr Abdul Kalam, former President of India.

Professor Singh specialises in the areas of laws and institutions, electoral governance, democratic and human rights and indigenous rights. He is the author of The State, Democracy and Anti-Terror Laws in India (2007, Sage, New Delhi) and Political Prisoners in India (1998, 2001, Oxford University Press)

Professor Singh will be at UTS for four months and leaves on the 20th June. He will be engaged with students in the undergraduate subjects ‘Global Politics’ and ‘Ideologies, Beliefs, Visions’. Professor Singh will also be available for consultations with postgraduate students.

He will be presenting seminars at various universities and for the Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network at UTS .The title of his talk at UTS is ‘Cat and Mouse Games: Hunger Strikes and Political Prisonerhood’ and it will take place in late April. Please contact Cornelia Betzler on ph 02 9514 2768, email cornelia.betzler@uts.edu.au or Associate Professor Devleena Ghosh on ph 02 9514 1963, email devleena.ghosh@uts.edu.au for details.

Professor Singh’s visit to UTS will help to increase Australia’s understanding of India’s economy, culture and politics and the complexities of the bilateral relationships between India and Australia in its political, economic and cultural aspects. His enhanced knowledge of Australia’s diverse, dynamic and multicultural society will also add to the connections between the two countries.

Talking India Series

10th February

Palagummi Sainath: The agrarian crisis and farmer suicides in India

Date: Friday, 10th February 2012
Time: 12:30 PM
Where: UTS Building 10 (235 Jones St, Ultimo), Level 5, Room 425 (China Research Centre Meeting Room)

RSVP: Lola.Davidson@uts.edu.au

About the paper: Over a quarter of a million Indian farmers have taken their lives between 1995 and 2010 according to the National Crime Records Bureau, a part of the country’s Union Home Ministry. This is the largest single wave of suicides within an occupational group ever recorded. Millions have also quit agriculture altogether. The reports of the National Commission of Farmers on the issue lie untouched and undiscussed in Parliament. Yet, India’s agrarian crisis is poilcy-driven  -  and set to get worse.

About The Speaker: Palagummi Sainath, or P. Sainath as he is popularly known, is India’s most highly-awarded journalist with over 40 international and national awards for his investigative and social sector reporting. He is the Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu – a 133-year-old daily with a circulation of over 1.6 million. Sainath was the first Indian  journalist in 25 years to win the Ramon Magsaysay Prize in 2007 for his “passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s national consciousness.” He won the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization’s Boerma Prize in 2001 and was the first reporter in the world to win Amnesty International’s Global Human Rights Journalism Award. Sainath’s book Everybody Loves a Good Drought, now in its 33rd printing, has remained a Penguin non-fiction best-seller for years.