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‘Nuclear handshake on course’ KV Prasad talks to Peter N Vargehese, Outgoing Australian High Commissioner
As a first-generation immigrant to Australia, Peter N Vargehese was posted to India as the Australian High Commissioner in August 2009 when relations between the two nations were marred by frequent attacks on Indian students there. He worked patiently to undo the damage and nurture the decades-old relations, including shared history in the form of curry, cricket and Commonwealth. He will be returning home for a new innings as head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Excerpts: After a setback in 2009, India-Australia ties have seen an upswing. What is your assessment of its trajectory? Our relations are getting stronger. The last three years have seen a substantive movement in trade and investments, and political dialogue on regional and global issues have intensified. People-to-people links have expanded despite obstructions relating to safety and security of students. The government has removed these obstructions and it is hopefully behind us. The Australian Prime Minister led a push-to-change policy on the issue. You came to India at a time when bilateral relations were hit due to attacks on Indian students. What steps have been taken to prevent such attacks? We have taken a lot of steps at the central and state government levels. It received serious attention from the Prime Minister. Additional law and order steps were taken in providing security, besides briefing Indian students about the do’s and don’ts. Additional policing was introduced around transportation hubs and a 24x7 hotline was set up for Indian students. We can see the result. There has been a sharp decline in the number of Indian students heading for Australia. There are a number of reasons for the sharp drop. As a matter of policy, labour pathway has been separated from education. A lot of students would join private vocational courses, hoping to acquire permanent residency in the long run. That tap has been switched off. There would have been cases of student safety where parents may have discouraged their children from travelling to Australia. There has been a 60 per cent growth year-on-year in applications and the broad strategy is to focus on university-level education in Australia with vocational training in India. This two-pillar model makes more sense. During the visit of Prime Minister Julia Gillard last month, a number of pacts were signed. What is the status of proposed negotiations for Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement? Our Prime Minister informed Dr Manmohan Singh of the changes in policy. We were ready for an agreement, but have not set a date. We have got to do this in a careful and measured way. There is no urgent need (by India) for Australian uranium. Legal and other requirements have to be put in place, and there are a number of issues since India is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty and find a way how requirements can be met. What is the nature of defence cooperation after the visit of Defence Minister Stephen Smith last December? In G-20, the concept of strategic partnership has begun to take a more concrete shape, recognising the shared interests on issues of security and stability in Asia; working together in East Asia Summit; and the challenges the Asian region is likely to face. It is reflective of shared economic and strategic cooperation. India is the current Chair of the Indian Ocean Rim-Association of Regional Cooperation and Australia is scheduled to take charge next. It reflects that both recognise maritime environment is an important part of strategic policy. As for defence, we have service-to-service relations and would like to have more navy-to-navy exercises. The policy dialogue has strengthened. We are hoping the Indian Defence Minister will visit Australia next year. What kind of technology does Australia possess, which it can share on river
basin flows? The water technology partnership (WTP) will draw upon the work done by Australia in the Murray-Darling river basin running across east-south. The focus is on sharing complicated modelling work developed by investing Australian $300 million, with the Central Government and IITs. There is a lot we can share like centre-state power, how to manage it, developing water pricing path and increasing water level in the basin area. Australia is known for the quality of its wool and Punjab for its woollens. How do you think the agreement will work out? Australia markets wool worth $250 million to India and a majority to mills in Punjab. The memorandum of understanding takes the commitment further by including technical cooperation in sorting wool. Who are your favourite Indian cricket players? Sachin Tendulkar is a great favourite of Australian cricket lovers. We recently bestowed him with the Order of Australia. Rahul Dravid is another player whom the Australians respect. They were saddened by his retirement. He was not only a terrific cricketer, but a popular figure off the field. Virat Kohli is an exciting player.
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Fortyseven-year-old Maity is currently making a 12-foot installation for the India Art Summit, 2013. The installation is 6 feet in diameter and portrays the evolution of Delhi as a metropolis. Maity graduated in fine arts from the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. He shifted to Delhi in 1990, which he calls his home. He began his illustrious career as a landscape painter in 1980. “I started painting figures in 1990 when I travelled to Rajasthan. The sights, sounds and colours of the desert state influenced my style. My works became more colourful and figure-oriented,” he says. Some of his best canvases have been painted in Venice, Egypt, Mexico and Varanasi. He was excited when a leading daily of Delhi asked him to do a special painting on this year’s Budget, but executing the painting on canvas was not easy. “Before executing a painting, I always imagine it in my mind. The painting took a long time because I had to express something which would convey a lot of meaning, thoughts and ideas,” he told his friends while giving the finishing touches to the bright visual. “I tried to show Pranab babu (the then Finance Minister) with many hands and projects, with many hopes and lights,” he says. Putting the complex process of the Budget on a small canvas was an arduous task, but the result was spectacular. In one hand, the Finance Minister was depicted holding dollars, pounds and investment from various countries, and in the other, medical facilities. Maity is also a sculptor and a keen photographer. One of his new-age installations that made news around the world was an abstract concept. A procession of 50 ants, made of 100 motorbike spares, was exhibited at the Art Stage in Singapore in 2011. “I dismantled 100 Royal Enfield motorbikes and reassembled them to look like a procession of large ants,” he says. A few years ago, Maity made his screen debut as a filmmaker with an 18-minute landscape documentary, “The Mystic Melody: A Day in the Golden Desert.” It was shown at the Lalit Kala Akademi. “I always wanted to shoot a movie, and The Mystic Melody is a new beginning. I want to make big films,” he says. The artist wants to make three films in the near future. “The plots and the locales are in place. They will be abstract movies related to my art. I have been visiting the sites where I want to shoot for the past 25 years to understand the ways of life in the areas concerned, the local people and the artistic milieus,” he says.
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good news Every day around 7 am, Vijay Goel, a septuagenarian, reaches a particular spot at the Dhobi Market in Bathinda and takes a seat along the roadside. He stays there till 11 pm, when it is time to finally head home. This open-air office functions all day and late into the night and provides assistance to the sick, downtrodden, accident victims or any person in need. It is from here that free arrangements for the cremation of unclaimed bodies are also made and the treatment of the sick, especially beggars with maggot-infested bodies, is managed. Ailing animals are also taken care of. Inspiring initiative This is not a one-day drill for Vijay Goel. He has been operating from this office since December 1990. He started the initiative all by himself after suffering huge losses in brokerage. Having understood the pangs of hunger and poverty, he took up social worker and started helping the needy when he managed to pull himself together. He runs the Sahara Jan Sewa, an NGO, with a team of over 40 volunteers. A volunteer is always by his side to respond to any desperate call for help. Two motorcycles and a scooter are parked there, ready to be used. Ten ambulances of the NGO are stationed at strategic places in and around Bathinda to help anyone in need. Vijay Goel and the volunteers sit amid calls of hawkers and noise of vehicles passing by and make way for pedestrians “walking through” the office. His hands are full as distress calls pour in. “Our NGO has 10 dedicated mobile numbers, of which three are with me and the rest with volunteers,” he says, as he responds to the call of a person who has spotted a body in a canal; another from a doctor seeking financial help for a patient; and yet another for urgent blood donation. A distraught Anita (name changed) reaches the office of the NGO, saying her husband who had been suffering from AIDS had died. She and her two-year-old son are also HIV positive. For the past several months, the NGO had been bearing the medical expenses of the family, besides providing them with food and clothes. “I am from Bihar and my husband was from West Bengal. When we learnt about the disease, we left our village as no one helped us. Someone told us about this NGO. They provided us comfort and bore our expenses. My husband could not make it. I don’t even have money for his cremation,” she wailed. Not wasting time, the NGO volunteers quickly arranged for money and transportation. “I am worried about the future of her two-year-old son. We will have to do something about him. He is HIV positive, but he can live a long and healthy life if proper care is taken,” Goel tells the volunteers. Pictures that speak The NGO keeps photographs of all those, living or dead, who it has helped. One feels nauseated flipping through the albums. There are pictures of swollen bodies being taken out of a canal and volunteers removing maggots from bodies of beggars. The contribution of social workers like Vijay Goel and his team is huge. While it is not easy for some to even see the pictures, these people actually help diseased victims and lift decomposed bodies. “Someone has to do this work also. We can’t leave everything to the government. We want the government to maintain cleanliness and hygiene. We want schools, roads and hospitals, besides sources of entertainment. But the neglected sections of society, the lepers and abandoned beggars, need a helping hand. It shocks me every time a man callously passes by a poor man infested with worms. Our volunteers do not look away. They rest only once he is cured,” says Goel. Thirtysix-year-old Tek Chand has been a volunteer with the NGO for two decades now. His father was a gardener at a cremation ground in the city. “Vijayji used to come there regularly for cremating unclaimed bodies. My two brothers and I used to place wood on pyres. Since then, we have been together,” he says. The NGO has also suffered a loss of life while helping others. Tek Chand’s younger brother, Ram Chand, died in a road accident in 2006 while trying to help an injured victim of a road accident. “He had lifted a badly injured person lying on the road late at night and was crossing the road when a car hit him. We were shocked.” The NGO organises a blood donation camp on December 14 every year as a tribute to Ram Chand. “We organise seminars in schools and colleges about safe driving, but very few listen,” says Goel. Though everything can’t be left to the government, so many accidents and the poor, who have been forsaken, hint at the failure of the system. “Every other day, a sick person is found abandoned at the railway station. They come from every nook of the country. It seems their families just put them on the train to get rid of them. This shows the failure of the welfare state we claim we live in,” he says. The NGO has no plans to have a proper office. “We virtually work on the road, off the road and for the road,” says Pratap Singh, another volunteer and ambulance driver.
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Brian Leveson, lord justice
(uk) Omar Abdullah, j&k chief minister Lalit Modi, former ipl chairman MS Dhoni, captain of the indian cricket team Sukhbir Badal, punjab deputy chief minister
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It is unacceptable that it undermines the ability of society to require that regulation is not a free-for-all, to be ignored with impunity. The answer to the question who guards the guardians, should not be ‘no one’.
We have been on the forefront to safeguard the country. We have sacrificed. Do not place us in the category of other hilly states when the question of extending help to J&K arises. 
The Enforcement Directorate and the Indian passport office have underestimated the level of threat against me. I have been presented as a fugitive who is willfully evading authorities, which is incorrect.
Apart from KP and cook, scoreboards of both sides resembled each other, one or two big innings and the rest all phone numbers … 9, 8, 3, 5 or something like that. 
There is no policy to allot houses on the basis of a threat perception. Good quality tents are easily available. They are even used to promote tourism. Bhattal can stay in a tent if she wants.