New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Australia in three years has garnered mixed reactions from the Indian diaspora and human rights groups in the country. He’s scheduled to attend, along with Australian PM Anthony Albanese, a massive community reception titled ‘Melbourne Meets Modi’ Thursday in Melbourne, which he last visited in 2014. The duo will also attend the Australia-India Annual Leaders’ Summit.
The Guardian reports that as the Indian diaspora awaits Modi’s visit with excitement, human rights groups, Alliance against Islamophobia in particular, have stated that they will take to the streets in protest.
“Human rights organisation Amnesty International urged the Albanese government to raise India’s human rights record in the bilateral talks, with a statement describing the visit as an opportunity to reaffirm mutual commitment to human rights, democratic freedoms and the rule of law,” states the report.
The statement issued by Amnesty urged India to ensure “journalists and human rights advocates could work free from intimidation and address discrimination of religious and ethnic minorities”.
Modi will attend the ‘Melbourne meets Modi’ event at Marvel Stadium, which is expected to gather 25,000 to 30,000 people, according to Pranav Aggarwal, a spokesperson for Australia India Foundation which is hosting the event.
“The non-profit organisation, Alliance Against Islamophobia, is planning to protest against Modi’s visit on Thursday evening. The organisation said the demonstration would speak out against ‘bigotry and persecution’, including anti-Muslim hate and caste oppression,” the report says.
The New York Times reports on ‘Operation Hard Ball’, which cracked down on “a vast criminal network that preyed on Indian diaspora communities around the world and has been linked to the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia three years ago”.
The operation was a “result of a broad investigation into a dizzying array of drug smuggling, extortion and other crimes choreographed from India by jailed kingpins using international operatives and smuggled cellphones”, says the report.
According to the report, it has led to more than a dozen new arrests, with charges filed against more than three dozen people—including Lawrence Bishnoi, a convicted gang leader who has been in jail in India for more than a decade already.
“Other defendants were accused of supporting the criminal network by smuggling guns and narcotics along long-haul trucking routes on the West Coast between Canada and Mexico,” it adds.
“Patrick Grandy, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles field office, said that 11 people were arrested in California, one in Indiana, one in Georgia, one in Spain and three in Vancouver, British Columbia. Several others facing charges were already in custody, but the authorities were still searching for additional gang members who were indicted.”
The arrests, according to Grandy, helped dismantle vast criminal networks that had “terrorised families, exploited communities and stolen lives through ruthless acts of violence in the United States and abroad”.
Indian business tycoons are bringing back investments to science and technology. Many see it as a major shift in India’s dried up research landscape, the BBC reports.
Abhishek Lodha of the Lodha Group, has asked Indian-American physicist Jainendra Jain to lead a new theoretical physics institute in Mumbai as its founding director. The proposal came as a surprise to Jain. “I was pleasantly surprised someone building skyscrapers would suddenly be interested in putting money into fundamental sciences. It’s a common thing to do for very rich people in the US, but not so much in India,” he told the BBC.
“Weeks later, Rajiv Bajaj, scion to one of the country’s oldest business dynasties, launched India’s largest scholarship programme for women in core engineering, where female scholars would receive financial support of up to 800,000 rupees ($8,411, £6,293) for their education across select reputed universities,” says the report.
“In a country where faith rather than science has played an outsized role in philanthropy – nearly half of donations go to temples and religious organisations – this fresh wave of commitments to pure sciences and institution building marks a turning point in the way India’s wealthy are approaching giving,” it adds.
Investments in scientific research have grown over the last few years, with a special focus on artificial intelligence and robotics. BBC notes that Indian entrepreneurs are making the connection between the investment in research and national competitiveness.
“A bevy of Indian tycoons have ramped up monetary commitments to such initiatives – from Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan funding brain research to pharmaceuticals entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw starting a laboratory for frontier biology in 2022 to pursue cutting-edge research and innovation in bio-sciences.”
“No great nation has thrived without a deep scientific base. And we believe India produces great minds. So, it’s not for a shortage of talent that this has not yet taken off, but a shortage of infrastructure,” Lodha told the BBC.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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