By Patricia Mukhim
Sometimes it is healthy to move away from the vortex because it threatens to swallow you alive. Seeing things from a distance helps us adjust our skewed lenses. My recent trip to Australia (Melbourne) via Singapore gave me an insight into the problems that the two countries are wrestling with. The problems are not very different from ours. In the state of Victoria thousands of teachers were up in arms asking for better pay. Nearly 40,000 teachers are taking part in the strike, with up to 400 schools closed. The Australian Education Union which is what the teachers union is called has rejected the Victorian Government’s offer of a 2.5 per cent pay rise with performance bonuses. Our own deficit school teachers are in a similar predicament.
The Union led by Mary Bluett says the disruption is widespread but most parents will understand why the teachers are striking. The teachers had given notice to stop work a month ago and parents too have been informed. It is coincidental that teachers in the State of Victoria also went on a mass strike on September 5, although Australians do not celebrate Teachers’ Day like we do in India. About 15,000 teachers dressed in red gathered at Rod Laver Arena for a rally demanding better wages. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard feebly argued that teachers should not strike work since the quality of education has not improved. The teachers are demanding raises, fewer short-term contracts and smaller class sizes. The strike, apparently is likely to continue in October and November.
As of September 12, 2012 Mary Bluett who has led the teachers Union for 31 years announced that she is prepared to move on the teachers’ pay claim of a 30 per cent pay rise over three years. It appears that teachers in different states of Australia get different pay. In Western Australia teachers at the top of the incremental pay scale are paid $7441 (approx Rs 4,46,000) a year, more than teachers in Victoria for the same role. However while the Teachers Union said that while they may be prepared to budge on pay they were resolute in their opposition to the government’s proposal to introduce performance-based pay apart from the high level of short-term contract employment.
It was a quite a sight to see 15,000 or more teachers gathered at a particular place all wearing red – a sing of protest. Aussies say this is the largest strike in 40 years. So now we know that even in the developed world all is not well with the teaching community. Similarity number one .
Travelling to Australia invariably means a stop-over at Singapore. Here too things are not hunky dory. And newspapers give you a sense of what the prime issues of any country are. Like us in the North East and Meghalaya in particular the Government of Singapore too is troubled by large scale immigration from India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. A columnist writing on this issue said that Singapore’s founder and former prime minister, Lee Kwan Yew while speaking at a function in 1971 had warned that what the Singaporean refuses to do such as cleaning the streets and other menial jobs will have to be done my migrant workers. But migrants, he pointed out are not tuned to the milieu of Singapore. He said migrant workers import the culture of their homelands which do not put a premium on cleanliness or the orderliness that marks out Singapore. Hence migrants by nature are a necessary evil, the former premier is said to have observed then. Today, forty off years later Singapore is facing its greatest challenge following the global economic recession.
Recently Lee Kuan Yew stated that Singapore’s economy could shrink by as much as 10 percent in 2012 and that the worse affected by the economic downturn are migrant workers as massive construction projects are halted or companies are simply unable to make ends meet. John Gee, head of ‘Transient Workers Count Too’, a Singapore-based organization dedicated to looking after the welfare of migrant workers, says many more workers have been coming to them for help in the past few months. He says most migrant workers in Singapore fulfil their contracts and return home. But in the recent economic downturn migrant workers are not even paid. Hence they have literally had to look for a free meal, which is becoming a burden for Singapore.
In Australia its illegal immigration which is a thorny issue. Every day boat-loads of people from Korea, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia brave the high seas to land on Aussie shores wanting to settle there. At the time when I was in Melbourne, a boat carrying 20 Sri Lankan illegal migrants was stuck at some place a little away from the mainland because it had run out of fuel. The migrants refused to be deported back and asked for refuelling and also sought asylum in that country. In November last year Australia recorded the number of illegal immigrants at 60,000. Their newspapers say this number is enough to fill one whole region. Interestingly these illegal settlers are mainly Americans, British, Chinese, Malaysians and South Koreans who arrived in Australia by plane and overstayed their visas, according to the Herald Sun newspaper. The Herald reports that Australia has enough visa over-stayers “to populate a large regional city.” Sixty thousand may look puny by Indian standards but in a country with a total population of 22 million, that is a significant chunk of humans. Again interestingly, one in three visa over-stayers have been in the country 10 years or more.
The Australian Human Rights Commission president Catherine Branson said there are many more asylum seekers in Australia who arrive by plane than by boat. The logic therefore is that illegal migrants will always move from a poorer country to a more affluent one. In the case of India and Bangladesh, immigration is from the poorer nation of Bangladesh to the lesser poorer India. Similarity number two.
Another disconcerting point involves media freedom. Australia too is worried about the growing licentiousness of media operators. Don’t we have a similar bugbear in India? The Australia Government is coming up with what media persons term as “draconian proposals” for a new media regulator with the power to jail journalists for misconduct. While agreeing that self regulation is the best regulation, leading journalists and media honchos such as News Limited Chief, Kim Williams said there are ways to boost the accountability of journalists without the unhealthy prospect of “unhealthy levels of government oversight.” He said that answer to “who watches the watchmen?’ must be ourselves – through a body that is independent of us.” The Indian Parliament had sought to put curbs on the media recently but has not yet succeeded in doing so. Similarity number three.
The moot point here therefore is that whether a country is developed or developing it is peopled by human beings with similar needs, hopes, fears, hatred, aspirations and ego. Hence it is pointless to paint the doomsday picture or to believe that ours is the only state where things are sliding. Our politicians are venal, but political venality cuts across continents. And those of us who point fingers at them do not necessarily qualify to also cast the first stone. We too struggle with our own peccadilloes; we live with grave shortcomings and character flaws. I find it rather unpalatable and also uncharitable when some new, young (?) writers don the garb of impudence and begin to rave and rant merely because they have produced half a dozen write-ups. To label other writers and thinkers as spineless merely because they have only “written” and not turned ‘activistic’ and taken to the streets, is to my mind a shallow argument laced with insufferable vanity. Writers share their concerns over a host of issues. They are not expected to also turn activists and pull down governments or smash every brick of governance infrastructure. Some of us have written for decades and for a range of newspapers before we even dared to use the word “I ” in our columns. Today’s new kids (?) on the block have mountain-sized writer’s egos. I wonder how far they will go.
(The views expressed in these columns are purely personal. They do not reflect the views of the newspaper)
