O P I N I O N S

guest column
Down Under up and above on PM’s agenda
The Australia-India relationship is clearly an idea whose time has come, but it will require political nurturing before it acquires a momentum of its own. Fortunately, Modi and Abbott have bonded well.
Amitabh Mattoo
Even contrarians now admit that there has never been a visit quite like this by an Indian leader to Australia. Both in terms of style and substance. No one quite remembers the last time an Indian leader demonstrated this kind of chutzpah — an approach to leadership that is energising the diaspora and wowing audiences internationally.

Fifty Fifty
Thanksgiving or bargain hunting?
This time in New York, things look a little different. Enormous turkeys are waiting to be stuffed and basted, but what the city is geared up for, more than anything else, are the Black Friday sales.
Kishwar Desai
THE last time I was in the US for Thanksgiving was more than a decade ago, and we were in Chicago where everyone was talking turkey. There was little else that anyone spoke about or discussed. It was all about the size of the turkey, how to stuff it and then finally, cook it.

GROUND ZERO
Modi is hot on climate change, that’s good
What Modi should push for is a plan of the magnitude of the Manhattan Project, but for peaceful purposes. Given that the future of life on earth is at stake, we need to bring together the world’s best scientists to come up with affordable clean energy solutions.
Raj Chengappa
In the hoopla over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Australia that saw him do a repeat of the Madison Square Garden act at the Allphones Arena in Olympic Park, Sydney, and an address in English to a joint sitting of Australian Parliament, his visit to the island nation of Fiji almost went unnoticed.

guest column
Down Under up and above on PM’s agenda
The Australia-India relationship is clearly an idea whose time has come, but it will require political nurturing before it acquires a momentum of its own. Fortunately, Modi and Abbott have bonded well.
Amitabh Mattoo

Even contrarians now admit that there has never been a visit quite like this by an Indian leader to Australia. Both in terms of style and substance. No one quite remembers the last time an Indian leader demonstrated this kind of chutzpah — an approach to leadership that is energising the diaspora and wowing audiences internationally. As he travelled across the East Coast of Australia, from Brisbane to Melbourne through Sydney and Canberra, Modi was accorded a reception that was unprecedented. One Australian commentator compared his aura and presence in Australian Parliament, where he became the first Indian leader to address both Houses, to a rock star!

But more significantly, together, Prime Ministers Abbott and Modi have transformed the bilateral relationship between their countries from one characterised by missed opportunities into a genuine strategic partnership. The long shadow of Cold War, India’s autarkic economic policies, the White Australia policy, and Canberra’s decision not to transfer uranium to India, had kept the two countries apart for several decades. But this is now history.

Modi and Abbott in Australia.

Today, few countries in the Indo-Pacific region have more in common in both values and interests than India and Australia. Apart from being two English-speaking, multicultural, federal democracies that believe in and respect the rule of law, both have a strategic interest in ensuring a balance in the Indo-Pacific and in ensuring that the region is not dominated by any one hegemonic power. In addition, Indians are today the largest source of skilled migrants in Australia.

The extent of Australia and India’s common interests was reflected in the agreement between Mr Modi and Mr Abbott on a “Framework for Security Cooperation between India and Australia”. Apart from annual summit-level meetings, a regular dialogue between the two Foreign Ministers, there will be frequent joint naval exercises, and cooperation on counterterrorism and cyber security. Earlier, when Prime Minister Abbott visited India in September a 36-paragraph joint statement included cooperation from water management to clean energy, from trauma research to skills and higher education. This was apart from the landmark civil nuclear agreement that was signed during the visit, which will ensure Australian exports of uranium to India. Clearly, a world of opportunities awaits the two countries if they can work in harmony.

Late last year, the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne and Sydney’s Lowy Institute commissioned a comprehensive survey of Indian public opinion on foreign policy and governance challenges. Indians ranked Australia in the top four nations towards which they feel most warmly. Only the United States, Japan and Singapore ranked higher. Indians feel warmer towards Australia today than towards countries in Europe, including Britain, or India’s fellow emerging economies in the so-called BRICS group.

Relations between India and Australia have deepened dramatically over the past decade. India’s economic growth and its burgeoning demand for energy, resources and education have made it suddenly one of Australia’s largest export markets. Beyond the trade links, there is the shared concern in Canberra and New Delhi about security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. Both India and Australia have deep economic relations with China, but equally both are concerned about Beijing’s aggressive behaviour in the recent past, and would ideally prefer the region not to be dominated by any single hegemonic power. In the past Canberra has shied away from an explicit military partnership with India, Japan and the US.

This has now changed. Both Modi and Abbott are China sceptics, open to a more candid assessment of China’s rise and its consequences for the region. The Australia-India relationship is clearly an idea whose time has come, but it will require political nurturing before it acquires a momentum of its own. Fortunately, Modi and Abbott have bonded well.

The transformation is not just at the level of the political leadership, but corporate Australia is much more bullish towards India than ever before.

When I chaired a session of Australian CEOs with Prime Minister Modi this change was clearly in evidence. Present there were the foremost leaders of Australian businesses, including Andrew Mackenzie, head of BHP Billiton, the world’s largest resource company; Gina Rinehart, the richest woman billionaire in Australia; Anthony Pratt, chairman of the world’s largest paper manufacturing company. One CEO said this: “Because of Narendra Modi, the next decade will be the greatest 10 years in India’s long and great history.”

In private conversations, one Australian business leader compared Modi approvingly to Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew: a benevolent, authoritarian, incorruptible leader who could transform his country. Modi, with his usual fondness for alliteration, sees India’s unique selling point as its unbeatable combination of the Three Ds, democracy, demand and demography — the rule of law; its huge market of nearly 300 million middle-class Indians; and the youth bulge of more 500 million Indians under the age of 25, who could become part of a global workforce in an otherwise ageing world.

The challenge is now for Prime Minister Modi and his government to translate his vision into reality through reforms that can be painful but are essential if India has to live up to its potential.

The writer is CEO of the Australia India Institute, Professor of International Relations at the University of Melbourne and Co-Chair of The Leadership Dialogue.

Fifty Fifty
Thanksgiving or bargain hunting?
This time in New York, things look a little different. Enormous turkeys are waiting to be stuffed and basted, but what the city is geared up for, more than anything else, are the Black Friday sales.
Kishwar Desai

THE last time I was in the US for Thanksgiving was more than a decade ago, and we were in Chicago where everyone was talking turkey. There was little else that anyone spoke about or discussed. It was all about the size of the turkey, how to stuff it and then finally, cook it. Recipes were exchanged with a fervour, as though these were Angelina Jolie’s latest photographs. And then of course there was the whole excitement about the Thanksgiving parade, where the city would turn out to watch.

If in the past the pilgrims had celebrated a good harvest and offered prayers and hoped for blessings, now many more things, mostly to do with food and clothes, are celebrated. It often seems as though we offer Thanksgiving through the power of our credit cards. And why not? Festivals all over the world have become ways in which we invent rituals in order to spend money. And that’s how we bond and reach out to each other.

And so, many years back in Chicago, we had also decided to venture out for a turkey, except that the sheer size of all of them was fairly daunting. They were and still are huge. Ultimately, we decided to buy a large chicken and pretend it was the real thing. We picked up all the other ingredients, stuffed the chicken and had our family get together. It was pleasant, one has to admit, to follow the customs and rituals of the land we happened to be in at the time.

Turkeys can wait.

This time in New York, things look a little different. Of course, the enormous turkeys still lie waiting to be stuffed and basted in every grocery and meat store, but what the city is geared up for, more than anything else, are the Black Friday sales, where everything will be available at cutthroat prices. This is the major excitement all around, and all that anyone discusses is that they are going to be meeting at midnight at Macy’s next week. And perhaps that will be actually followed up by breakfast at Tiffany’s and brunch at Bloomingdales.

Yes, the tradition now is that the shops will open at midnight on Thursday, just after Thanksgiving to allow the crowds to shop all night into the early morning hours. So the buzz is where does one begin... as there are many rival department stores offering more and more alluring prices. A feast of riches! An invitation to splurge.

Thanksgiving Day will begin with its traditional parade, which will eventually wind its way onto the high street. So that the real purpose of Thanksgiving does not escape anyone: shop till you drop.

The pragmatic few who don’t want to join the street hordes say it is also possible to just sit at home and shop online, and seek out the perfect bargain. But where is the fun? With a long weekend looming ahead, the actual bustle on the streets of New York is preferable, where all, like competing crusaders after the Holy Grail, hunt for the perfect bargain.

So how did Thanksgiving become just quantified by turkeys and sales and bargain hunting? Of course it’s a major festival, and no doubt President Obama will send out a message to the people of the US of peace, harmony and so on, but in reality, many of them would have been scouring the streets of New York, fighting each other for Prada shoes, YSL dresses and Gucci handbags, like modern gladiators.

Yes, we all love the razzle dazzle of New York! Even more at a time like this when we are all geared to attend a major festival.

But at the end of the day, one wonders how commercially driven this entire exercise is going to be, even if this is hugely enjoyable because all the streets around Columbus Circle and beyond are lit up with Christmas lights. The trees are wrapped in luminous bulbs, while stars twinkle large all along the street.

How jolly it all looks. And what perfect timing, because with all the bargains that we can pick up, many Christmas stockings will overflow.

The reality is that no one can miss a good bargain, and whoever invented the Black Friday sales was a clever marketing man. He knew that somehow the four letter word ‘sale’ would make every Thanksgiving more unforgettable than the last. We no longer are looking at turkeys but trying to make lists of what to buy and from where. The excitement is palpable.

So can one complain about the ‘good old days’ when Thanksgiving meant exactly that and no one had as yet thought of sales where prices fall so fast that you barely notice as they whoosh through the floor?

Should one even wonder if the whole meaning of the festival has been lost? And would it be better if President Obama simply called it a bargain hunters’ weekend?